Michael Westmore

Michael George Westmore (born March 22, 1938) is an American make-up artist best known for his work in various Star Trek productions, winning nine Emmy Awards, and is a member of the Westmore family. He won the Academy Award for Make-up in 1985 for his work on the film Mask. His career began at Universal Studios in 1961, and spanned four decades, including working for the CIA creating make-up kits for spies overseas.

Biography Born in Los Angeles, California, Westmore is the son of Monte Westmore, who are also make-up artists. His family is heavily involved in the Hollywood make-up business. In 1917 his grandfather George Westmore had created the first studio make-up department. Michael's father was a make-up artist for Gone with the Wind and his uncles were Bud Westmore, famous for co-creating the creature in Creature from the Black Lagoon, Perc (main make-up artist at the Warner Brothers studio), Wally (Paramount), Ern, and Frank, all make-up artists working regularly in major Hollywood productions for decades.

He is a 1961 graduate of the University of California-Santa Barbara and a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. He began working for Universal Studios in 1961 as a make-up artist, and was promoted after three years to Assistant Department Head of Make-Up. Some of Westmore's earliest roles at Universal included The Munsters and Land of the Lost. For Raging Bull, Westmore designed the prosthetic noses which Robert De Niro wore throughout the film, and the make up which simulated bleeding through tubes placed under fake skin. One of the more unusual effects used on the boxing film was a special effect which showed a nose breaking from a punch on screen. He worked with Tom Burman on make-up sets for the Central Intelligence Agency for operatives overseas to change identities. A set created by the pair sold for $20,000 in 2011. He was hired in 1986 to work on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and would go on to work on Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. Jem'Hadar, and further developed the make-up used on Klingon characters. One of his first roles was the development of the make-up used on Brent Spiner to create the character Data. He left the Star Trek franchise in 2005, following the cancellation of Enterprise.

Following Star Trek, he went into semi-retirement and worked on the musical version of Mask, having previously worked on the movie version. He has begun work as a producer and aims to write a two-volume autobiography. After that, he has appeared in subsequent seasons as a mentor to the contestants of the show.

Indian Films

Westmore introduction to Indian Cinema was through 1985 Tamil Film Oru Kaidhiyin Diary for Kamal Haasan's elderly man character David - Biological Father of the Protagonist. .He was also responsible for Kamal Haasan's make up in the S. Shankar directed Indian Tamil film called 'Indian'. He also did an elderly women makeup for Kamal Hassan in a Tamil film Avvai Shanmugi. He also spent eighteen months on the Indian film Dasavathaaram, where actor Kamal Haasan played ten different roles which each required prosthetics.

Awards Westmore won an Academy Award for Makeup for the 1985 Cher film Mask, and has been nominated three other times, for 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986) and Star Trek: First Contact (1996). He has won nine Emmy Awards, and was nominated for at least one Emmy every year from 1984 to 2005 (as well as from 1976 to 1978). He has also suggested that he may be indirectly responsible for the addition of a make-up award at the Oscars as he was put forward for a special Oscar in 1980 for his work on Raging Bull, and after it was turned down there was such a reaction that a proper award was instituted during the following year. Westmore won a Tamil Nadu State Film Awards for Makeup for the 2008 Tamil-language film Dasavathaaram.

Published works