Mike Marino: Transforming Colin Farrell into the Penguin

The Penguin was the spin-off show we never knew we needed. With Colin Farrell setting new heights to prosthetic makeup performances in The Batman, his portrayal of the Penguin in the titular HBO series truly expanded the character’s simple-not-so-simple personality and grand ambitions through a magnetizing presence on screen. Credit must be given not only to Farrell but also to the artistry of Prosthetic Renaissance’s Mike Marino, who created an iconic makeup that allowed the Hollywood star to fully immerse himself in the character. “Colin went off the rails. Once he was in makeup, he didn’t have to be himself at all in any way … he’s embracing the character completely. It’s very liberating for him, even though it’s a difficult process. He mastered the expressions, and I think we mastered the trick with making him look a certain way—and through that he went to levels that a lot of actors really can’t go to or haven’t gone to yet. He completely disappeared into the character,” Marino shared.

For Farrell’s version of the infamous villain, Mike Marino went back to previous iterations of the character, starting with the original look and campy performance of Burgess Meredith in the 60s Batman TV series to the gothic version of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns—iconically portrayed by Danny DeVito: “I’m playing with the lines of how far it can go … it’s like a tightrope, but you have to stay grounded in a way that still works for the tone of the film. What we did was risky but worked, and the performance is totally on another level.” The Penguin’s new, hyperrealistic makeup for Matt Reeves’ The Batman and The Penguin is an outstanding achievement—bringing true suspension of disbelief to both the cast and eventually the audience. “No one looks like the Penguin. You can’t find that person in real life. Cristin Milioti and Rhenzy Feliz had many scenes with him, and they were so used to Oz that when they would see Colin Farrell they wouldn’t know how to act around him. It was an intimidating thing, and that’s a compliment to us because he isn’t real. He doesn’t exist,” said Marino with great pride.

Acting in full prosthetic makeup requires a much higher range of expressivity than usual, which can be a daunting task for the makeup department—trying to find the perfect balance of natural flexibility and comfort for the performer. For Oz Cobb’s makeup, Mike Marino approached it with the idea of having it move as real as possible by varying densities of silicone: “Usually you might cast out something in one softness, but we do things differently. We make the bridge of the nose denser, then the brow and the cheeks softer. For the chin, I use a different material because I don’t like how silicone stretches the pores … it’s the most mobile area. I use a formula we came up with—similar softness to the cheeks, but it’s a different material so the pores don’t stretch.” Farrell’s forehead was left open because it’s naturally expressive. “I took a lot of photographs of him making expressions so I could see where he’s wrinkling, and when I’m sculpting, I try to fit everything inside that grouping of wrinkles and forms. We engineered all of it in a certain way so that it moved and felt the best for him,” Marino shared.

Colin Farrell’s transformation for The Batman took about an hour and a half for approximately thirty makeup applications, which considerably increased for The Penguin to over eighty with an extra hour in the chair since the actor played the protagonist of the show and could not shave his head this time around. Even though chronologically they are a week apart, five years have passed since Farrell last transformed himself into the Penguin. Marino revealed that there were several challenges to keep a consistent makeup between the film and the TV show: “Flattening his hair was a real challenge. We went through many iterations of the hair and the bald cap until we finally landed it, which was really hard to do.” He added, “On the film, he was 70 pounds heavier, so the makeup was sculpted much thinner. When we finally got to [The Penguin], he was at a balanced weight, so I had to make him big enough.”

In the first episode of The Penguin, the audience got an intimate glimpse of Oz’s physical vulnerabilities as he takes his shoes off–revealing a painful disability that gives his distinct penguin-like walk. Mike Marino explained that the prosthetics for the left leg and foot were based on real life examples, and that this idea was conceptualized on a 3D printed miniature version of Colin Farrell’s leg, knee down: “One morning in the trailer before Colin came in, I had sculpted the foot for a half hour. I showed it to him, and he loved the idea. Then we just built the life size one based on my tiny design. We tried to do a 3D sculpted one, but it wasn’t quite working, so one day I just took clay and did what I thought it should be. And that’s what it became.” Dented thighs caused by a lifetime of wearing a brace were designed but never quite made it into the scene: “I airbrushed all this irritation down the leg and heels. What would this really feel like if a person is wearing a brace for years? He’s going to have dents in his skin … that brace is a part of him.”

Although some flashback moments of Oz Cobb were unveiled, the cause of all his scarring was never explained. Marino confessed that even though these events might not have yet been written, he still imagined possible traumas the Penguin might have gone through while designing the makeup to inform the rough life the character has lived in order to survive and rise to the top. He revealed, “Oz has two gold teeth, on the top and on the bottom, as if some kind of injury–maybe a knife or something went across his face, or a car crash. That side of his face was damaged, even his eyes, so that maybe a monocle could be added later on. These are not just random scars, there was always a thought in mind while designing them. Maybe we’ll fill the gaps one day and learn about what happened to his face.”

If you want to learn more about Mike Marino’s outstanding makeup for The Penguin and all the other incredible transformations created by Prosthetic Renaissance, then make sure to follow him on Instagram.

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