After working with Jenny Shircore
on "Four Feathers", star Heath Ledger insisted
that the make-up designer be brought in to work on
"Ned Kelly".
"Jenny is an absolute
genius," says Ledger. "She won an Academy Award on
"Elizabeth", and I wouldn't have done this movie
without her. She really did give me a wonderful mask to
hide behind and gave me the confidence to believe I was
the character I was playing."
The film covers a
number of different periods in Ned Kelly's life, from
his early arrest as a teenager through to his life as an
outlaw in his 20s.
"In terms of developing the
looks for each period, we worked backwards," explains
Shircore. "We started with the final look of Ned Kelly,
with the full beard and the quiff that everyone knows
from the famous photograph. We go back to when he is 15
and then he goes to prison for three years and comes out
with a close cropped, brutalised kind of haircut. Then
he develops longer hair, a short beard, a longer beard,
until he eventually gets the look you see at the
end."
Some of the looks required Ledger to spend
over three hours in the make-up chair before stepping
out on set. The process of attaching a beard saw glue
pasted on to Ledger's face "Heath would read from Ned's
Jerilderie letter while he was in the chair. He had such
a strong feeling for Ned," says Shircore. "I found
myself really drawn into it as well."
While wigs
and facial hair were used to give the actors a similar
appearance to the people they portrayed, Shircore was
careful not to be too exacting.
"We did have a
look at photos of the real people involved, but we
didn't want to force the look. We wanted reality, so we
used hair and beards but didn't add things like bumps on
the nose or anything like that. You can encourage a look
in little ways, without forcing somebody in a particular
direction - a higher parting, thickening of eyebrows, a
little bit of light and shade here and there. That can
give you little similarities to the real person the
actor is portraying." | |
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The film’s armourers were granted
access to the Kelly Gang’s original suits of armour in
order to make authentic replicas |
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Hair and make-up designer Jenny
Shircore |
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Heath Ledger as Ned Kelly with a full
beard |
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Orlando Bloom gets his look touched-up |
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