Ten Star Trek Fun Facts From Michael Westmore’s Memoir

from Makeup Man by Michael Westmore

Michael Westmore was, in his own words, “the makeup creator and supervisor of everything Star Trek” for 18 years. While that history alone is fascinating and well worth telling, his entire career will blow your mind when you read his memoir “Makeup Man — From Rocky to Star Trek, The Amazing Creations of Hollywood’s Michael Westmore,” written with Jake Page and featuring a foreword by Patrick Stewart.

Westmore comes from a dynasty of Hollywood makeup artists that started with his grandfather George, who established the first movie makeup department in cinema history. George’s five sons all went into the same business; Westmore’s father, Monte, designed Paul Muni’s makeup for Scarface (1932), helped create the flapper sensation with Clara Bow’s “It” girl look, and worked on Gone With The Wind.

The book covers the Westmore family history, then takes a deep dive into Michael Westmore’s astonishing career. He worked on all of the Rocky films, and was the ONLY makeup artist on the first one, having to keep meticulous records of each cut, swelling, and bruise on the faces of both Sylvester Stallone and Carl Weathers. This came in handy when he was working on Raging Bull with Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, too.

He has worked with every major Hollywood star you can think of: Bette Davis, Jimmy Stewart, Shelley Winters, Robert Duvall, Shirley MacLaine, Elizabeth Taylor, and more. He made up Michael Jackson so the superstar could go for walks in public without anyone knowing. He created makeup for Blade RunnerMask, and First Blood, the first Rambo movie. “When traveling with Sly,” wrote Westmore, “I could never carry enough fake blood and sweat.”

Star Trek comes a-calling …

In the spring of 1987, he started getting a lot of phone calls from friends who wanted help with Vulcan ears, Klingon foreheads, and alien makeup, all for a brand new Star Trek series. Finally the producers heard his name so many times that they called him in for a meeting, and offered him the job that same day. Westmore created and shaped aliens from the early days of Star Trek: The Next Generation to the final days of Enterprise, and four of the movies as well (Generations through Nemesis).

Some of these stories will be familiar to longtime fans, some will be new, but all are pretty fascinating.

Michael Westmore with Borgs

Photo from Michael Westmore’s book “Makeup Man”

1. Brent Spiner’s chest hairs got special treatment.
Occasionally, Westmore had to make a plaster cast of some part of Brent Spiner for a specific scene. Once, while doing one of his chest, he didn’t have quite enough Vaseline on hand to prep him. When it became time to remove the cast, it stuck, so Westmore had to snip Spiner’s chest hairs one by one until he was free … and each snip, no matter how carefully done, was followed by an “ouch!” from poor Spiner.  (Westmore had some experience with this, as he and his uncle Bud once similarly trapped Rock Hudson’s entire head, and Bud had done the same to Loretta Young with a plaster leg mold, but in that instance, the snipping had to happen a lot lower. Ouch, indeed.)

Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation

Brent Spiner didn’t know what was coming.

2. Alien heads were not always that easy to remove.
Remember the Selay from Star Trek: The Next Generaton? Originally designed by Andy Probert, the costumes followed Gene Roddenberry’s rule that one always had to be able to see aliens’ eyes and mouths. Things were so busy that week, as they were also creating Anticans for the same episode, they farmed out the creation of the Selay headpieces. When they got them back, the heads were very rigid and difficult to put on, or remove, quickly. One day on set, an actor in a Selay costume wasn’t feeling well, and while everyone scrambled to get the headpiece off him, they were too late: he threw up inside it. Needless to say, that particular headpiece was permanently retired.

The Selay

The Selay in Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s  “Lonely Among Us.”

3. There’s a reason Jolele Blalock’s eyebrows kept changing.
Westmore was never happy with Jolene Blalock’s eyebrows; he thought that they violated the rule that all Vulcans have arched eyebrows, and hers were pretty round, especially at the beginning of Enterprise‘s run. Over the course of four seasons, he arched them more and more, and says that if the show had gone to a full seven seasons, they would have been perfect by the end.

T'Pol in Star Trek: Enterprise - Jolene Blalock

T’Pol’s eyebrows underwent some changes between season one and season four.

4. The Borg were made from some pretty old tech.
Westmore’s son Michael helped him design the Borg, using parts from old, broken circuit boards to make the various implants and pieces stuck to their bodies.

The Borg

A Borg drone in “Best of Both Worlds” from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

5. The Borg concealed some silly secrets, right on their bodies.
They took things a step further for the movie Star Trek: First Contact. Makeup artists were creating dozens of individual pieces for the Borgs’ faces, and wrote their own names directly onto the implants, making sure they wouldn’t be seen on camera. One artist added the words “Westmore’s House of BBQ” in one of them, and Westmore himself didn’t find out until long after the movie was finished.

a Borg from Star Trek: First Contact

A Borg with secretly inscribed facial appliances from Star Trek: First Contact.

6. The Borg’s blinking lights were not as random as they looked.
Final Borg fact: the blinking lights on some of the Borg actually spelled words out in Morse code, including the name of Michael Westmore Jr.’s dog.

A Borg with lights from Star Trek: First Contact

Blinking lights on the Borg weren’t as random as they seemed.

7. Sometimes Westmore was very literally behind the scenes … as in RIGHT behind them.
Remember TNG “Conspiracy,” when Remmick swallowed the parasite and his neck started puffing out in all different directions? Westmore attached air bladders to Robert Schenkkan, who played Remmick, and to that attached some rubber tubing and ran it down his back. But the only way to inflate it to get the effect they wanted was for Westmore to lie on the floor behind Schenkkan and puff into the tube whenever the director told him to. It required a lot more takes than he expected, so with each retake he slowly changed from light pink to dark pink to red until he was so exhausted he had to just lie there, helpless, for a while before he could breathe normally again.

Fun fact: Robert Schenkkan is a playwright who has won both a Tony and a Pulitzer, and co-wrote Hacksaw Ridge.

Remmick in "Conspiracy"

Those neck bulges got their fresh air from Michael Westmore.

8. LeVar Burton had a very specific morning routine.
LeVar Burton used to look at each day’s scripts while in the makeup chair on shooting days, while he ate his cereal out of a coconut shell. He had no trouble memorizing his lines, even though this was the very first time he was seeing them.

LeVar Burton

There’s a reason LeVar Burton is the Reading Rainbow guy!

9. Dax’s spots and Chakotay’s tattoo held secrets.
Westmore used to hand draw both Dax’s spots and Chakotay’s tattoo every day, and would number the day and add his signature every time. Chakotay’s final tattoo was numbered “#750 MW” and Dax’s final set of spots was signed “#538 MW,” right on her neck (but under the uniform collar). He frequently gets asked how he managed to make Dax’s spots identical in every episode, but admits that they weren’t, and no one ever noticed–not the producers, and not even nitpicky Star Trek fans. Chakotay, however, remained perfectly consistent, despite being hand drawn every day, and Westmore accomplished this by making sure he always started and finished in the same spot, right over Beltran’s inner left eyebrow.

Michael Westmore painting Dax's spots on Terry Farrell at a convention demo

Michael Westmore painting Dax’s spots on Terry Farrell at a convention.

10. Makeup had its very, very unglamorous side.
There’s a scene in TNG’s “The Offspring” in which Data has first created Lal and is introducing her to Deanna Troi. Lal doesn’t look human yet, and is a metallic-looking android with no discernible facial features. To get that effect, actor Leonard Crofoot (who also played Trent in “Angel One” and a Qomar dignitary on Star Trek: Voyager) had to endure a very complex process. His whole body was covered, including his head, and while he had a small space near his mouth to breathe, his ears were covered and the director had to shout for Crofoot to hear instructions. More challenging still, getting the right look meant he had to wear  full latex body pants glued in place, coated with an adhesive-based bronze makeup, and was then rubbed down with a bronze powder so he wouldn’t stick to everything he touched. The entire concoction was was so confining that he couldn’t go to the bathroom while he was in it. He spent one very long 14 hour day in that makeup, and avoided all food and drink because 14 hours is a very long time to not use the bathroom!

Leonard Crofoot in "The Offspring"

Leonard Crofoot’s makeup covered him from head to toe.

For many more reasons than Star Trek you should pick up this book. If you have any interest in TV, movies, Hollywood, or the creative arts, you won’t be able to put it down. Pick up the book here.

Makeup Man by Michael Westmore with Jake Page

 

 

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He had a very contentious relationship with Ridley Scott during the making of ‘Blade Runner’. He led a revolt on the set, threatened to quit, etc.

A real genius. His work is wonderful.

“the costumes followed Gene Roddenberry’s rule that one always had to be able to see aliens’ eyes and mouths. ”
I always felt that was so limiting, go watch Farscape, they had me believing that Pilot, was so much more than sculpted foam rubber, from eyes to mouth and more. Plus several of the actors relayed how it was so much easier to play to the character, rather than stare at a green screen or a ping-pong ball on a stick, as many have to do for CG characters.

“The costumes followed Gene Roddenberry’s rule that one always had to be able to see aliens’ eyes and mouths.”

No love for the Horta?

JamfoFL,

Re: Horta

NO KILL EYE?

The Horta had no eyes, at least not until some one at DC comics drew some glowing bits on the LT whose name I don’t remember and a breathing apparatus/UT device where the ‘mouth’ would probably be.

Na’raht IIRC, its been so long since I read those when Kirk was using the Excelsior, while ‘waiting’ for the E-A.

Also (maybe first?) in Diane Duane’s Spock’s World.

Farscape had some truly bizarre aliens . One of my favorites was the diminutive but always farting Hinerian Dominar , Rygel XVI . And Star Wars has the Hutts , as in Jabba too .

This should be a good book to have ! It will have to go on my Wishlist !

His daughter , McKenzie W , has been the Host of Face Off , a Syfy Show , since 2011 . Her father Michael joined the Show as a Mentor in 2013 !

She also had a small speaking role on VGR as Ensign Jenkins in “Warhead,” and was a Ba’ku woman in ST:I.

I didn’t know that , Edzo ! Thanks for that !!

Mr Westmore and team did excellent work. But I feel bad for the actors [especially Leonard Crofoot]!

The blurb above doesn’t tell the part of the story where Westmore had to get in the shower with Crofoot after every day of shooting to help scrub/peel off all that makeup/latex. Westmore is a man truly dedicated not only to his makeup craft, but also to the actors who wore it!

Great Info , Edzo !!

Sounds like an amazing book. It’s always nice to revisit the different series and movies when you have someone else other than the stars telling you about what goes on behind the scenes.

I’m envious of LeVar Burton’s memory!

You still have enough ram to comment Corylea !!

Hee!

For the sake of consistency/continuity, I think Westmore should do the Vulcan/Klingon/Andorian/Romulan/Tellarite makeup for Discovery. I seriously hate how in the first six movies the Vulcans (And the Romulans in ST VI.) just look like red-blooded caucasians with pointed ears. And III-VI couldn’t even get the Klingons’ noses or teeth right, but I guess that can be explained by them being purged of the augment virus (Maybe the magenta blood was also a side effect?).

So is this book worth picking up?
How much of it is about Trek?

One of these days I’ll have to look up the back story on ‘Conspiracy’. That was a very fish out of water episode, clearly meant to set up a story arc, and it just died.

It was meant to set up the Borg.