For The Smashing Machine, Benny Safdie’s sports biopic about legendary MMA fighter Mark Kerr (played by Dwayne Johnson), prosthetic makeup design guru Kazu Hiro (The Darkest Hour, Maestro) was confronted with two choices: craft a close resemblance to Kerr or merely capture his essence.
“It’s always tricky when we do [someone’s] likeness because, if I have time, I could come up with more than 10 answers of which direction to go,” says Hiro. “In this case, just to show Benny, I sculpted two [makeup] versions. One as close as possible and a more subtle version.”
