IT’S no mean feat transforming delicate English rose Helena Bonham Carter into a loping, pawing, hair-sniffing ape.
But, thanks to Hollywood makeup maestro Rick Baker and a crash course at “ape school,” Carter and co-stars Tim Roth, Michael Clarke Duncan and Paul Giamatti turn in remarkably convincing performances as hirsute primates in Tim Burton’s lavish re-imagining of the ’60s classic “Planet of the Apes.”
Carter, who plays the ape Ari – a senator’s daughter sympathetic to humans – admits she found the coursework tough.
“Apes are flat-footed, so you have to walk on the outside of your feet to get that rolling gait,” says Carter, who was back to her ethereally beautiful self sporting long, tousled red hair at the film’s New York premiere Monday night.
“And humans have 50 different ways they can sit in a chair, whereas apes swivel into a chair, get into one position and stop.”
The “Planet” stars, along with hundreds of extras, were schooled in simian behavior by movement coordinator Terry Notary.
Notary, a former national gymnastics champion and performer with Cirque du Soleil, spent weeks studying National Geographic films of apes, and visited the Los Angeles Zoo more than 20 times to study the chimps.
“In essence, we had to teach the actors how to find their own sense of being primal, to tap into their own inner ape,” says Notary, who also acted as Roth’s stunt double in “Planet of the Apes,” which opens Friday.
While the apes from the original 1968 movie look laughably stilted today, Burton’s new-millennium primates are astoundingly lifelike.
Much credit must go to Baker, the makeup whiz who’s won six Oscars and has also worked on such ape-related fare as “Gorillas in the Mist,” “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan” and “Mighty Joe Young.”
While the original “Planet” had only one basic ape costume, Baker created 500 individual faces with lips, teeth and tongues that move when the actors speak.
The principal actors spent four hours in the makeup chair each day, plus another hour having the makeup removed.
Secondary characters wore flexible rubber masks that took about an hour to put in place, and the legions of ape extras wore simpler masks.
“We wanted to keep it actor-driven and performance-based, so Rick Baker devised these makeups which we feel give the actors playing apes subtlety of expression,” Burton says.
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Can you match the actors below to their on-screen characters at bottom? (graphic)
1. Tim Roth (DMI)
2. Helena Bonham Carter (DMI)
3. Michael Clarke Duncan (Steve Granitz/Retna Ltd.)
4. Paul Giamatti (Kelly Jordan/Globe photos)
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a. “Limbo”
b. “Attar”
c. “Thade”
d. “Ari”
ANSWERS: 1:C; 2:D; 3:B; 4:A