Paul Engelen, who has died aged 75 of cancer, was one of the screen’s top makeup designers, bringing his skills to half a dozen James Bond films – covering three incarnations of 007 – and the first Star Wars prequel in a career spanning almost 100 movies.
When he switched to television for Game of Thrones, he was intent on eliciting gasps from the audience, creating blood and gore in the medieval fantasy series noted for its violence. He made his mark on the first three series (2011-13), joining after the unscreened pilot episode.
“It was decided to rethink the look of the show, essentially to give it a more Earthy feel yet still have elements of the other worlds portrayed in the stories,” he told the online magazine Warpaint. The bloody scars he created for brutal battles, including the throat-slash prosthetics, helped him to win two Emmy awards and three further nominations.
Earlier, for The Man With the Golden Gun (1974), the first of his three Bond films, with Roger Moore as 007, Engelen designed a third nipple for both Scaramanga, played by Christopher Lee in the title role, and the star – presented in the story as a prosthetic one so that Bond could impersonate him.
Engelen was also responsible for another assassin’s memorable identifying feature, the strong metal teeth enabling Jaws (Richard Kiel) to bite through almost anything, in both The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) – for which Engelen also created a webbed finger for the villain, Karl Stromberg (Curt Jürgens) – and Moonraker (1979).
More than 20 years later, Engelen returned to the Bond films for Die Another Day (2002), Pierce Brosnan’s last outing as 007, and developed a diamond-encrusted face for the killer-for-hire Zao (Rick Yune).
Then the popular film series entered a new era and Engelen – working with Daniel Craig on his first two movies in the role, Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace (2008) – sought to highlight the fact that Craig was the first blond Bond, with piercing blue eyes. “Daniel’s not dark, which is what we’ve been used to with Bond, and that meant a completely new look and we wanted to make the most of that,” Engelen told the James Bond website MI6-HQ. A distinctive blood-weeping eye for the terrorist-funding Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) in Casino Royale was another triumph for Engelen.
His move to sci-fi with Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) as head of the makeup department saw him coming up with the macabre blend of red and black tattoos on the face of Darth Maul (Ray Park) that made the character just as terrifying to his Jedi enemies as his double-bladed lightsaber. For Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), Engelen adapted a concept inspired by Mongolian bridal culture to give her “a very particular look not seen on screen before”.
He also worked on Nicole Kidman’s three-piece prosthetic nose for her Oscar-winning performance in The Hours (2002), while his collaboration with Renée Zellweger was considered to have contributed to her Oscar win in Cold Mountain (2003). She said that her role as the gritty farm worker in the civil war drama was rare in being one that focused more on her character than her appearance – and “dirt continuity” was the order of the day, with constant checks to ensure each smudge on her face remained in the same place.
Engelen was born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, to Antoine, who ran an electricals company, and Maureen (nee Robinson). On leaving St George’s college, Weybridge, he studied graphic design at Twickenham Art School and, while there, worked as an assistant making up extras for crowd scenes in the film musical Oliver! (1968) at the nearby Shepperton studios.
His career began as assistant makeup artist on Alfred the Great, Anne of the Thousand Days (both 1969), Get Carter, Macbeth, Mary, Queen of Scots (all 1971) and other movies before getting full makeup artist credits on Pulp (1972) and Gold (1974), the latter shot in South Africa and starring Moore, who then recommended him for The Man With the Golden Gun.
He was twice Oscar-nominated, for Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984, a Bafta award-winner for him) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), in which he worked with the creature makeup artist Daniel Parker to give Robert de Niro’s monster “a different take from [Boris] Karloff’s design”. He found shooting the film particularly gruelling, with 3am starts for de Niro to spend up to six hours in the make-up chair.
Similarly, he said A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999) was “exhausting”, because of the elaborate makeup, hair and costume requirements.
Dozens of other films that benefited from Engelen’s talents included Reds (1981), Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982), Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), Superman III (1983), The Bounty (1984), Empire of the Sun (1987), Batman (1989), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Gladiator (2000), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Kingdom of Heaven (2005) and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008).
In 1976, Engelen married Lizzie Whiteaway, and they had two daughters, Sam and Georgie; the makeup designer Daniel Lawson Johnston, whom Engelen trained, is his son-in-law. He is survived by Lizzie and his daughters, and by four grandchildren, Lottie, Bertie, Max and Ava, his brother Peter and sisters Carol and Maureen.
• Paul Richard Anthony Engelen, makeup designer, born 30 October 1949; died 3 November 2024
