2025 Oscars: Best Makeup and Hairstyling Predictions
- Final Oscars voting for the 97th Oscars is February 11-18, 2025, with the telecast airing live on ABC on Sunday, March 2 at 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PT.
Final Oscars voting is February 11-18, 2025. The 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2, and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PT. We update our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions .
The State of the Race
The Best Makeup and Hairstyling nominees are “A Different Man,” “Emilia Pérez,” “Nosferatu,” “The Substance,” and “Wicked.” The emphasis on horror (“The Substance,” “A Different Man,” “Nosferatu”) is unusual, with Best Picture nominee “The Substance” as the favorite since the prosthetics are key to Demi Moore’s Oscar-nominated performance.
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Oscar-nominated director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” is a brilliant satire of toxic beauty culture, in which 50-year-old TV aerobics star Elisabeth (Moore) transforms into gorgeous 20-something Sue (Margaret Qualley). But the youth miracle drug turns to body horror, with Elisabeth becoming the decaying mutation called Gollum and both of them evolving into the hideous Monstro. Prosthetics makeup designer Pierre-Olivier Persin (nominated along with Stéphanie Guillon and Marilyne Scarselli) applied the work to look like a slow-progressing disease. He immersed Moore’s upper body in thin silicone prosthetics and then applied thicker appliances to build up some of the bones, knuckles, knees, and elbow. In the end, for the mashup, he just went crazy with the prosthetics.
Jon M. Chu’s “Wicked” tells the origin story of Elphaba/the Wicked Witch (Oscar-nominated Cynthia Erivo) and Galinda/Glinda the Good Witch (Oscar-nominated Ariana Grande). The makeup/hair team of Frances Hannon, Laura Blount, and Sarah Nuth was tasked with creating makeup and hair that could withstand singing, dancing, flying, and 14-hour shoot days. The meticulous transformations for Elphaba and Glinda took over two hours, preceded by a thorough testing process to create the perfect shade of green for Erivo’s skin tone to ensure the product looked good in all lighting.
“A Different Man,” the black comedy from Aaron Schimberg, stars Sebastian Stan as an aspiring actor who undergoes experimental facial reconstructive surgery to cure his Neurofibromatosis (NF). After his surgery, he tries to land a part in a play based on his former self wearing a mask but loses out to the charismatic Adam Pearson (a British actor with NF). Oscar-nominated prosthetic makeup designer Mike Marino (nominated along with David Presto and Crystal Jurado) created multiple layers with realistic detail to emulate the look of NF, using Pearson as a visual connection.
“Nosferatu,” director Robert Eggers’ vampire movie, focused on making Bill Skarsgård’s 400-year-old Count Orlok look as authentic as possible behind his emaciated corpse. Prosthetics designer David White (nominated along with Traci Loader and Suzanne Stokes Munton) sculpted the body, bone, and muscles, and broke them down into sections, and then cast and molded them individually. This eventually devolved into full-body work with 60 individual prosthetic pieces.
“Emilia Pérez,” the Best Picture-nominated musical crime thriller from Jacques Audiard, turned the brutal Mexican cartel leader Manitas into the titular beauty after gender confirmation surgery (both played by Oscar-nominated Karla Sofía Gascón). The makeup team of Julia Floch Carbonel, Emmanuel Janvier, and Jean-Christophe Spadaccini gave Gascón a weathered look as Manitas (while still revealing her feminine side), with long dark hair, a beard, thin eyebrows, metal teeth, and facial and body tattoos.
Nominees are listed below in order of likelihood they will win.
Contenders
“The Substance”
“Wicked”
“A Different Man”
“Nosferatu”
“Emilia Pérez”
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