How They Turned Sebastian Stan Into ‘A Different Man’

At age 5, Mike Marino first saw “The Elephant Man” and his life was changed forever. When David Lynch’s harrowing and heartbreaking story of John Merrick aired on HBO in the early 1980s, Marino was horrified but unable to look away, sparking a fascination with prosthetics that would eventually lead him to become one of Hollywood’s top makeup artists.

“I was so scared, but I didn’t know how beautiful this story was and how much of an imprint it would leave on my brain and my soul,” says Marino, 47, who was nominated for Oscars in 2022 and 2023 for his makeup work on Coming 2 America and The Batman, the latter of which featured a completely transformed Colin Farrell. “Without this movie, I wouldn’t be doing what I do.”

But for Adam Pearson, an actor, TV presenter and disability rights advocate, Lynch’s film played a more painful role in his life. Growing up in England with neurofibromatosis type 1, a rare genetic disorder that causes tumors to grow on his face, Pearson was often taunted by classmates who cruelly called him “Elephant Man” and other names. Growing up, he saw how films routinely portrayed disfigured people as monsters, villains or victims, stripping them of their humanity. “There’s a lazy element to it,” says Pearson, 39. “How do you show this character is evil? By putting a scar on them.”

Now, in a twist of fate, Marino and Pearson’s lives intersect on a very different project: the dark, mind-bending psychological thriller “A Different Man.” Directed by Aaron Schimberg, the A24 film stars Sebastian Stan as Edward, a shy, disfigured actor working in New York City. He undergoes an experimental procedure to transform his appearance, only to find himself losing the role he was born to play—himself—to a cheerful, outgoing man named Oswald with the same facial deformity, played by Pearson. Renate Reinsve (“The Worst Person in the World”) co-stars as a playwright whose latest work highlights Edward’s identity crisis.

“A Different Man,” which the Times called “a self-deconstructing meta-pretzel of a dark comedy” after its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, tackles complex themes of identity, beauty and disability with a mix of Charlie Kaufman-esque surrealism and David Cronenberg-esque body horror. In addition to Stan’s performance, Marino’s meticulously crafted prosthetics are essential to bringing Edward and his inner anxieties to life, reflecting the deeper emotional anguish of a man trying to escape his own skin.

“The film shows that our soul and our personality should not be dictated by our shell,” Marino says. “I think it’s a very important film, just like The Elephant Man was.”

When Schimberg wrote the script, inspired by his own struggles with a cleft palate and his experience working with Pearson on his 2019 satire “Chained for Life,” he initially had no idea how he would pull off the film’s demanding prosthetic work. “I was kind of blissfully ignorant,” Schimberg says. “After Sebastian came on board, we started tinkering with the movie really quickly. It wasn’t until about a month before shooting that I realized this movie was going to completely fall apart if we didn’t get it right. It was all very tight.”

When he signed on as executive producer on the film, Stan asked around for makeup artists in the New York area who could handle such a difficult job under such tight deadlines. One answer came back consistently: “Literally, everyone, without hesitation, said, ‘You have to get Marino,'” the actor recalls.

Although he was already busy with work on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” Marino, who has worked on more fantastical creatures, jumped at the challenge of recreating a real-life disfigurement like Pearson’s. “I’m fascinated by people who have something going on in their skin because it’s the most interesting, artistic, natural thing,” Marino says. “To me, there’s an incredible beauty in Adam’s appearance. He wasn’t a scary face or a monstrous person. I don’t like to do things like that without a soul or a purpose.”

Marino’s passion for makeup and prosthetics began early in life, inspired by industry legends like Dick Smith (“The Exorcist”) and Rick Baker (“An American in London”). Growing up in New York City, Marino began honing his skills at a young age, practicing on his friends with latex, foam and various chemicals, destroying his bedroom carpet in the process, much to his parents’ dismay. While still in high school, he sent Smith his portfolio and received encouragement and advice over the phone from the makeup legend, who won an Oscar in 1985 for “Amadeus” and an honorary Oscar for his lifetime achievement in 2012. “Once he recognized me, I was like, ‘Okay, this is serious. There’s no stopping me.’”

After cutting his teeth on “Saturday Night Live” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Marino made his feature film debut with the 2007 psychological thriller “Anamorph” and quickly became known for his versatility, seamlessly shifting from fantastical creatures to more subtle, realistic applications. His work on Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” amplified the film’s psychological horror, while on Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” he enhanced the digital de-aging of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino’s film with carefully crafted prosthetics.

Outside of film, Marino created The Weeknd’s botched plastic surgery look for the singer’s “Save Your Tears” music video. “These are all problems to solve,” Marino says. “There’s no manual.”

For “A Different Man,” Marino used photographs and 3-D scans of Pearson’s face, which has undergone about 40 surgeries over the years, as the basis for a multi-part silicone prosthesis that would match Stan’s features. “I had no way of completely replicating Adam’s exact proportions,” he says. “I had to make aesthetic choices.”

While the makeup for “The Elephant Man” benefited from the film’s grainy black-and-white photography, the prosthetics for “A Different Man” had to withstand more unforgiving scrutiny. To put his Edward face to the test, Stan had to walk from Marino’s makeup chair to the set through New York City streets and crowds of strangers, giving him a firsthand look at how people treat those who look different.

“I went to my old coffee shop and the same barista who had served me for years couldn’t identify me,” Stan recalls. “I could really feel people’s reactions in real time. Some people couldn’t even look at me, some people would stare at me, and sometimes you’d get a stronger reaction, like, ‘Oh shit, it’s the Elephant Man!’ As Adam says, you feel like public property.”

Pearson, who shares his character’s sunny, outgoing side, encouraged Stan to think about it as he does about his own movie-star experience. “I said, ‘You don’t know how much I get swarmed by people pointing and staring and taking pictures, but you understand a very similar thing from that angle, so lean into that hard,'” he says. “And if it makes you uncomfortable, lean into that even harder.”

While wearing his prosthetics, Stan was only able to see out of one eye and have limited hearing in one ear, challenges that helped inform his portrayal of a man who learned to walk away from potential threats and insults. “Edward is a character who’s had to endure a lot of emotional abuse and probably some physical abuse, so he’s probably always kind of on his left foot in case something happens,” Stan says.

As Edward’s face changes following his radical treatment, Marino made additional prosthetics showing the transition, including an “extremely soft, doughy version” that, in one particularly Cronenbergian scene, Stan could perform in pieces.

Marino’s talent for transforming stars is on full display in Farrell’s massive, brutal look as the Penguin in 2022’s “The Batman” and the new HBO spinoff series. “When Colin saw the sculpture I had done, the ideas started exploding,” Marino says. “Once we did a makeup test, it was magic: He could talk, he could walk, and he was already the guy.”

Marino, who is preparing to make his directorial debut from a script he wrote in the 1980s (“There are deliberately not a lot of special effects,” he suggests), has lost none of his passion for the transformative power of latex and silicone since obsessively leafing through Cinefex magazine as a teenager. “If you think of Michelangelo showing beauty 500 years ago in painting and sculpture, I’m still showing that same beauty but in this new hyperrealistic way, in silicone,” says Marino, who calls his special effects studio Prosthetic Renaissance. “It’s a very unique art. It’s like moving sculptures and paintings at the same time.”

As for Pearson, if he were offered an experimental treatment to change his face, as in “A Different Man,” he says he would not accept it. Despite the difficulties it has posed for him, Pearson believes that his face has shaped the life he leads today.

“I joke with my friends that my disability plays a big part in my obnoxious personality,” he laughs. “Everyone thinks it’s hard to go from normal to disabled, but I think the other way around would be even harder. The path we take and the challenges we go through make us who we are, and they’re inseparable from each other.”