In August, the first trailer for “Maestro,” a biopic of Leonard Bernstein, the composer of “West Side Story” and more, sparked a backlash almost immediately: Bradley Cooper wore a prosthetic nose for the lead role.
Criticism on social networks accused the star, who is also a director, of playing into an anti-Semitic trope with the Size XL prosthesis, and asked if someone who is Jewish would have been more sensitive when choosing makeup.
Cooper and Netflix, where “Maestro” will begin streaming Wednesday, declined to comment. In a statement at the time, Bernstein’s three children, who had been working with Cooper on the film, came to the actor’s defense, noting in a series of posts about“It turns out that Leonard Bernstein had a nice big nose.” (The family declined to offer additional comment.)
It is not the first time that a large partition appears on screen or generates controversy. Here are 12 of the most memorable fake noses in movie history, ranked by size, from dainty 🥸 to elephantine 🥸🥸🥸🥸🥸.
Orson Welles, ‘Touch of Evil’ 🥸
Like Edmond Rostand’s poet and swordsman Cyrano de Bergerac, Orson Welles was obsessed with his nose. (He He thought his was too small.; was, of course, completely normal.) But instead of channeling his fixation into a healthy pursuit like, say, helping another man win the affections of his own beloved, he sported dozens of fakes throughout his life. career. One of the biggest was the pair of bellicose nostrils he wore as corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan in the 1958 murder mystery “Touch of Evil.”
Nicole Kidman, ‘The Hours’ 🥸
Nicole Kidman may have given a moving performance as Virginia Woolf in “The Hours” (2002), but Denzel Washington joked that it was the prosthetic beak she wore that won her the Academy Award for best actress. (“The Oscar goes, by a nose, to Nicole Kidman,” he said. he joked when announcing his victory.) Kidman wore a new one every day on set, although she told The Associated Press that she kept a silver one she was given while filming wrapped up.
Ralph Fiennes, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2’ 🥸
Is that thing even functional? Probably not; Snakes have no nose, only nostrils, and they smell with their forked tongue. We wouldn’t be surprised if JK Rowling’s evil reptile in this 2011 franchise finale had one of those too. But at least we can finally have an answer as to what Voldemort’s abnormally long fingers are for: picking his nose.
Meryl Streep, ‘The Iron Lady’ 🥸
Like Kidman, Meryl Streep rode the prosthetic nose she donned to play British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 2011 Phyllida Lloyd biopic and won the Oscar (her third). But this time, the genius of the transformation was in the subtlety of it: when the first photos of Streep on set were released, the press said nothing about her nose.
Laurence Olivier, ‘Richard III’ 🥸🥸
Unlike Welles, Laurence Olivier did not often wear a false nose for his roles due to perceived insecurity about the size of his own; rather, it was just one of a host of theatrical props, including masks and wigs, that he and many other actors often transformed into various characters. In “Richard III” (1955), which Olivier also directed, his character’s nose is, as one blogger said, “majestically prominent.”
Rudolph, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ 🥸🥸
With a Santa’s elf workshop nearby in this 1964 special, the best thing Rudolph’s father, Donner, could do to help his son fit in at school was to make a fake nose out of clay. He won’t win any father of the year awards for that effort.
Margaret Hamilton, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ 🥸🥸🥸
Margaret Hamilton got some of the goods to play the Wicked Witch of the West naturally: she was known for her oversized nose, which her own father had encouraged her to surgically alter. But she had the last laugh when she landed the role of the now-iconic villain in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), for which her nose became even longer (and greener).
Matt Damon, ‘Ocean’s Thirteen’ 🥸🥸🥸
Sure, there are artists with bigger noses on this list, but Matt Damon might be the only one who planned a scam around his. In this 2007 sequel, his character, Linus, gets the prosthesis. which Damon nicknamed “The Brody” in a nod to actor Adrien Brody’s well, you know, in an attempt to disguise himself and gain access to a box full of diamonds.
Steve Carell, ‘Foxcatcher’ 🥸🥸🥸
Steve Carell’s Improved Silliness in This 2014 True Crime Story May Have Left Some People scratching your head — the real-life version of his character, John du Pont, the millionaire wrestling enthusiast turned murderer, was not well known, so the attention to detail seemed excessive. But the nose had another purpose: to make the audience forget that they were watching Carell, who at the time was known primarily for comedies.
Alec Guinness, ‘Oliver Twist’ 🥸🥸🥸🥸
Charles Dickens wrote Fagin in “Oliver Twist” as a thoroughly anti-Semitic villain, and in the 1948 film adaptation, Alec Guinness, the non-Jewish actor who played the character, spoke with a monotonous lisp and appeared with squinting eyes and a huge prosthesis. nose. The nose was considered “incredibly insensitive.” as The Jewish Chronicle wroteand sparked great anger among Holocaust survivors.
Billy Crystal, ‘The Princess Bride’ 🥸🥸🥸🥸
Billy Crystal was already so funny in “The Princess Bride” (1987) that director Rob Reiner claimed he had to leave the set during Crystal’s scenes as Miracle Max because he couldn’t contain his laughter. Adding a bulbous tomato nose took Crystal’s physical comedy to the top. (Mandy Patinkin, who played Íñigo Montoya, actually He hurt a rib trying to suppress his own laughter..)
Steve Martín, ‘Roxanne’ 🥸🥸🥸🥸🥸
You could land a bird on that thing (which the director, Fred Schepisi, did). Steve Martin’s five-inch appendage for the 1987 film took 90 minutes to apply each day and two minutes to remove. “God, how he hated that thing,” he told The Washington Post.
