Rick Baker

Richard Alan Baker (born December 8, 1950), known professionally as Rick Baker, is an American retired special make-up effects creator and actor.^[1] He is mostly known for his creature designs and effects. Baker has won the Academy Award for Best Makeup a record seven times from a record eleven nominations, beginning when he won the inaugural award for the 1981 horror comedy film An American Werewolf in London.^[2]

Early life

Baker was born on December 8, 1950, in Binghamton, New York, to Doris (née Hamlin), a bank teller, and Ralph B. Baker, a professional artist. He and his family moved to Covina, California when he was less than one year old.^[1][3]

Career

As a teenager, Baker began creating artificial body parts in his own kitchen.^{[citation needed]} He also appeared briefly in the fan production The Night Turkey, a one-hour, black-and-white video parody of The Night Stalker (1972), directed by William Malone.^{[citation needed]} Baker's first professional job was as an assistant to prosthetic makeup effects veteran Dick Smith on the 1973 film The Exorcist.^[2][4] While working on The Exorcist, Baker was hired by director Larry Cohen to design and create a mutant infant for Cohen's 1974 film It's Alive.^[5]

At the 54th Academy Awards, Baker received the inaugural Academy Award for Best Makeup for his work on An American Werewolf in London (1981).^[6] Subsequently, he has been nominated for Best Makeup ten more times, winning on seven occasions, both records in his field.^[2] Baker also created the werecat creature Michael Jackson transforms into in the music video Thriller (1983).^[7]

In 2008, he was awarded a Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.^[8] Baker also contributes commentaries to the web series Trailers from Hell for trailers about horror and science fiction films.^[9] Baker claims that his work on Harry and the Hendersons (1987) is one of his proudest achievements, for which he won his second Oscar.^[10] On October 3, 2009, he received the Jack Pierce Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chiller-Eyegore Awards.^[11]

On November 30, 2012, Baker received the 2485th star of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The star is located in front of the Guinness World Records Museum.^[12]

On May 28, 2015, Baker announced his retirement, saying: "First of all, the CG stuff definitely took away the animatronics part of what I do. It's also starting to take away the makeup part. The time is right, I am 64 years old, and the business is crazy right now. I like to do things right, and they wanted cheap and fast. That is not what I want to do, so I just decided it is basically time to get out. I would consider designing and consulting on something, but I don't think I will have a huge working studio anymore."^[13][14][15]

In 2018, Baker was approached by DC Comics, due to his daughter Veronica working for them at the time, if he would be interested in creating a collectible display bust for them. He agreed with the following terms that he would be left alone with total creative freedom and DC accepted them. Baker, with the aide of his long-time mold maker Rob Freitas, created a bust of The Joker.^[16]

Acting roles

Baker played the title role in the 1976 remake of King Kong. He had initially only been hired to create an ape suit that would fill in for scenes where it was not practical to use a life-sized mechanical version of Kong that had been designed by Carlo Rambaldi, but problems with Rambaldi's creation resulted in Baker playing Kong on-screen for almost all of the film.^[17] In the 2005 remake, he had a cameo as the pilot and gunner (with director Peter Jackson) who shot down Kong. He has also made cameo appearances in: Michael Jackson's music video Thriller (1983) as "Zombie Opening the Crypt"; Into the Night (1985) as a drug dealer with a business card; Men in Black II (2002) as "MIB Passport Control Agent", an MIB agent helping provide aliens with disguises; Men in Black 3 (2012) as "Brain Alien"; The Wolfman (2010) as "Gypsy Man / First Killed"; The Strain as a convenience store customer (2014, Episode 8, uncredited) and Rings (2017) as a flea market vendor.^[18]

Personal life

Baker is married; he was previously married to Elaine Melba Parkyn for ten years. He met his second wife, hairstylist Silvia Abascal, while they were both working on Into the Night (1985).^[3] Baker and Abascal had their first daughter, Veronica in 1989 and their second, Rebecca, in 1993. ^[19]

Selected filmography

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards

BAFTA Awards

Saturn Awards

Other awards

• 2485th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame^[12]
• Time Machine Award at the 2015 Sitges Film Festival
• Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Academy of Art University
• Jack Pierce Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chiller-Eyegore Awards
• Inducted in the Monster Kid Hall of Fame at the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards
• Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974)^[21]

See also

• Prosthetic makeup
• Special effect

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rick Baker.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Rick Baker.

• Rick Baker at IMDb
• Rick Baker at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television