Stuart Freeborn

He is a British motion picture make-up artist which works for the greatest directors, Stanley Kubrick, Richard Donner, Jim Henson, Sidney Lumet, David Lean, Jeannot Szwarc, Richard Lester and George Lucas, to name a few. He is of course best known for his work on the original Star Wars trilogy, for which he created the make-up for all of the characters, including Chewbacca the Wookiee, and Yoda the Jedi Master, whom he supposedly based on his own face and that of Albert Einstein's eyes.

Freeborn was also the make-up artist on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, where he created the apes for the "Dawn of Man" sequence, and Dr. Strangelove, handling Peter Sellers' multiple lead roles.
Notable examples include Alec Guiness' outsized nose as Fagin in Oliver Twist, Red Skelton as a neanderthal in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Albert Finney's Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express. For the Superman movies, he enhanced the Man of Steel's costume, applied Lex Luthor's bald pate on actor Gene Hackman, and ensured that Christopher Reeve's hairstyles for Clark Kent and Superman were kept distinct.

Freeborn was the key make up artist in the UK, so he works on many productions : Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Omen, Top Secret!, Santa Claus, The Bridge on the River Kwai…

Writer: PG