Quebec’s Adrien Morot snags Oscar nomination for his work on ‘The Whale’ | 24CA News

Adrien Morot, a Montreal-born make-up artist, woke as much as an e-mail Tuesday morning from his “good friend: Brendan Fraser.”

The Hollywood actor was writing to congratulate Morot on his Oscar nomination for his work on The Whale.

“I was still very groggy. I was like, ‘What’s going on here?’,” Morot stated.

Before replying to Fraser, nonetheless, Morot had some issues he wanted to do.

“I went to look at the news to see if he was nominated so that I could reply quickly and he was,” Morot stated, including the pair exchanged a number of jokes.

Fraser snagged a nomination within the Best Actor in a Leading Role class, for his portrayal of Charlie — a 600 lb man, who tries to construct a relationship together with his estranged daughter Ellie, performed by Sadie Sink.

Morot was nominated within the Makeup and Hairstyling class and is liable for Fraser’s radical bodily transformation.

Morot stated when he was first approached by The Whale director Darren Aronofsky, with whom he’s collaborated prior to now, he was advised he had a five-week window wherein to develop the character.

After studying the script, Morot began constructing a picture financial institution of what folks with Charlie’s situation would appear like. He additionally researched what different make-up artists earlier than him had achieved.

“It’s always a starting point,” he defined, including that’s the way you be taught what could be achieved and the way far you may push issues.

But what rapidly struck him was that motion pictures wherein overweight characters have been depicted have been typically comedies or science-fiction motion pictures.

“Every time those kinds of makeup have been done in the past, it was always like the character was the butt of the joke,” he stated.

That’s when Morot realized he would wish greater than 5 weeks to have the ability to do the character and the storyline justice.

“It’s a heavy drama,” he stated of the movie. “It can’t be a joke. It cannot be. It cannot be any of these other movies that I’ve seen.”

It was essential to Morot to method the the subject from a spot of empathy.

So he did what wanted to be achieved and obtained down on his knees and begged for extra time.

“And so we ended up with 12 weeks to build all of the body prosthetics and facial prosthetics for the character,” Morot stated.

Building the prosthetics is just one a part of the problem. The subsequent one is placing them on.

The first make-up take a look at, the place Fraser was reworked into Charlie, took seven hours.

Morot remembers how Aronofsky then advised that possibly it wasn’t needed to make use of all of the prosthetics and that possibly padding might work.

Morot, nonetheless, argued towards and gained his case.

The workforce finally managed to get make-up all the way down to lower than three and a half hours, not together with the time it takes on the finish of the day to take away all of it — a course of that takes about an hour.

Moreover, the prosthetics can solely be worn as soon as and need to be always remade, which is usually a painstaking course of.

At the start of the film, Charlie sports activities what Morot described as a “scruffy beard.”

“To do that in the prosthetics, all those hairs need to be punched in one at a time.”

Morot dispelled any fantasy concerning the job being glamourous.

“It’s very hard work,” he stated, joking that the interview requests he obtained Tuesday morning are about as glamourous because it will get.

But he’s OK with that. Morot stated he’s happiest when he’s busy operating round with issues to do and stuff to repair.

In truth, whereas successful an Oscar is perhaps good, Morot is somewhat apprehensive.

“I am hoping that I am not going to have to walk on stage and make a fool of myself,” he stated.

While Morot relies out of Los Angeles for work, he divides his time between L.A. and Montreal, the place his spouse and two sons reside.

He credit his hometown for jumpstarting his profession and says as a result of Montreal’s movie neighborhood is small, it may well do the identical for others.

“I think that you have a lot more chances of impressing big name producers and directors that might be coming … from out of town. And if you can impress them and or impress them enough that they remember you, well, that can be a great launching pad for a an international career.”

This is Morot’s second Oscar nomination. He was nominated in 2011 for the movie Barney’s Version.

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