Rose McGowan Wanted $5 Million to Shave Head and Eyebrows on ‘Conan the Barbarian’

Some actresses would sacrifice anything for their art (just look at Charlize Theron in “Monster”) but, for others, altering their appearance beyond recognition for a movie part comes at a high price. Rose McGowan, for instance, asked for $5 million to shave her head and eyebrows for “Conan.”

In a recent interview cited by The Hollywood Reporter, Rose reveals that, for her part as evil sorceress Marique in “Conan the Barbarian,” she was initially asked to shave half her head and her eyebrows.

She wasn’t opposed to the idea, she says – but she wasn’t going to do it for nothing either. So, she asked for a $5 million extra fee to her paycheck.

“The studio asked if I would shave my eyebrows and my hairline back to here, and I thought, ‘Sure, if you give me $5 million’,” the actress says.

Eventually, it was decided to have her get into character with lots of help from the makeup team. Each day before shooting, Rose would have a prosthetic piece applied on her forehead, covering her eyebrows and half her head.

“I sat from about two in the morning till around 7:30 in the morning,” the actress recalls of the process that transformed her into a “10-head,” as she refers to her huge forehead in the film.

Still, the result was pretty convincing. Marique is the only character Rose ever played that she was comfortable watching on the screen later, she reveals in the same interview.

“I think she looks kind of majestic and amazing. It really freed me up to be as kind of weird as I wanted to be,” Rose says.

“It was the only time I’ve ever actually had an ease with watching myself on screen, normally I cringe... cause it looked so unlike me,” she adds.

“Conan the Barbarian,” a remake of the film of the same name starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, is now running in theaters.