Nicolas Cage had teeth ‘shaved down’ so he could wear custom Dracula fangs in Renfield
Actor is known for method acting style
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Your support makes all the difference.Renfield makeup artist Christien Tinsley has revealed the extreme lengths Nicolas Cage went to, to play Dracula.
In the new movie by director Chris McKay, Cage plays the vampire, while Nicholas Hoult portrays the title character, Dracula’s long-suffering assistant and henchman.
In an interview with Variety, Tinsley revealed they used 3D printing to craft Dracula’s famous fangs.
“This was the first film that I know of where we used 3D printing to do all the dentures,” Tinsley said. “We jumped in headfirst with 3D printing. We would scan Nic’s teeth and digitally sculpt them.”
Once the fake teeth were made, “We shaved Nic’s teeth down and the dentures were fitted so as not to impede on Nic’s speech and allow full freedom,” he said.
“Nic wanted to emote and annunciate properly, so it was important the veneers were thin.”
McKay recently claimed in an interview that “whatever scene we did he [Cage] would still be 100 per cent living in that attitude after we stopped shooting”.
As such, the director said that if Dracula was “a little frosty” in a given scene, Cage would then be frosty too between takes.
However, Cage later denied being standoffish between scenes. “I just don’t have that recollection, I don’t know why Chris said that,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
“I had a lot of laughs in between takes with both Chris McKay and Nick Hoult, so maybe that was his experience, maybe because I still had the fangs in my mouth that made me speak a certain way, but that wasn’t my experience.”
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The film marks the first time Cage and Hoult have worked together since 2005’s The Weather Man, which Hoult starred in when he was just 14 years old.
“I think getting to work with him again as an adult gave me a true appreciation of what a master he is of the craft, how much he’s given to the cinematic world over the years, all of the iconic performances he’s given, and I think this is another one,” Hoult said.
Renfield arrives in UK cinemas on 14 April.
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