14 DAY TRIAL // HBO aired this weekend its highly anticipated Liberace biopic, “Behind the Candelabra,” with Michael Douglas and Matt Damon as leads. Rob Lowe, who plays Liberace’s plastic surgeon Dr. Startz, says the project was definitely one of the most difficult he’s ever worked on.
In the film, assuming you haven’t had the chance to see it just yet, Lowe looks like this: see the photo attached to this article.
He tells Entertainment Weekly that the look they were going for was incredibly tight and plastic, and even reveals some trade secrets into how they managed that.
Besides squinting, Lowe also achieved this unnatural look with makeup and prosthetics, for which he has to thank the entire makeup team working on the film.
“It’s tape and pulled behind my head. It’s literally what they used to do in the early days of cinema before there were facelifts for actresses. You know, Joan Crawford, her whole career was this. You tape, you pull around the back of the head, but you have to have a wig because it covers the elastic,” he says.
“We did that, and I’m also wearing a dental piece and then I’m doing a couple of things, a couple of tricks with my own face, the way I’m holding it. Then of course the makeup is literally like Earl Scheib autobody paint sprayed on my face,” the actor adds.
The experience was far from comfortable or painless.
“It was actually really painful, because being pulled that long and that hard for a 12-hour day — it gave me migraines. We shot during the summer. It was unbelievably hot. The wig, being pulled, it was definitely not the most comfortable experience physically for sure,” Lowe explains.
In the same interview, he also talks about how director Steven Soderbergh gave him free reign in his portrayal of Dr. Startz, a well-known plastic surgeon who worked on Liberace and his boyfriend, along with many other celebrities, and eventually killed himself when his reputation took a major hit.
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