Bill Skarsgård praised for taking gruelling ‘Nosferatu’ make-up transformation ‘well’

Bill Skarsgård has been praised for taking his gruelling ‘Nosferatu’ make-up transformation “well”.

The actor, 33, was covered from head to toe in special effects – including additional elements for his tongue and eyes, with only the soles of his feet left untouched – during the six-hour daily process of turning him into vampire Count Orlok for Robert Eggers’ recently released horror film.

Robert, 40, has now told Variety about the transformation: “I was not so interested in Bill’s features, aside from his eyes.

“The things that make Orlok not just an intimidating, masculine human being, is the fact that he’s also decaying and dead.

“Even the design of the teeth needed to be something that could be f***** up.”

‘Nosferatu’, a reimagining of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic of the same name, required Oscar-nominated makeup effects designer David White to create more than 62 prosthetic pieces for Bill, applied by a team of six.

One of the key elements of Orlok’s look was his elongated fingers.

Robert added: “I wanted to extend Bill’s fingers ever so slightly, and I asked David about creating something to push the envelope.”

David initially experimented with soft mechanics, but the design was too cumbersome and lacked dexterity.

The 55-year-old told Variety: “I was playing with the idea of soft mechanics to extend them, but they’re really long and they weren’t as dexterous,”

He eventually opted for a dense material that allowed Bill to feel objects while maintaining an unnatural, weathered look.

David added about the vampire’s hands: “They’re not quite right, as if they’ve been used for so many years.”

Robert also sought to replicate Max Schreck’s iconic silhouette from the original film.

It saw David construct a one-piece prosthetic with a thick foam insert to create a hunched posture.

He said: “That took away the weight, otherwise, it would be 46lbs of silicon.”

The prosthetic was applied in sections, with between 18 and 25 pre-painted muscle pieces overlapping across the arms and legs.

Orlok’s full reveal takes place when the character Thomas (played by Nicholas Hoult, 34) discovers his sarcophagus, showing the vampire in a state of decay.

The process also included full-body prosthetics, including a specially designed penis.

David said: “It was a necessary piece to make.”

Robert added: “I was allowed one penis for this movie. He rises out of the coffin naked. That in itself is a bit of a phallic act, as is most of everything that Orlok does in the movie.”

Bill also wore a special contact lens to create a dead-eye effects, with David designing him a prosthetic tongue.

He added: “I even made a sock of a tongue that Bill could use in certain scenes, which was all gnarly and scored and black and horrible, you know.

“So poor Bill, he took it well.”