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Rick Baker
Richard Alan "Rick" Baker (born December 8, 1950) is a retired American special make-up effects creator and actor. 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.
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.
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] Among Baker's first professional jobs was assisting prosthetic makeup effects veteran Dick Smith on the 1973 film The Exorcist. 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.
At the 54th Academy Awards, Baker received the inaugural Academy Award for Best Makeup for his work on An American Werewolf in London (1981). Subsequently, he has been nominated for Best Makeup ten more times, winning on seven occasions, both records in his field. Baker also created the werecat creature Michael Jackson transforms into in the music video Thriller (1983).
In 2008, he was awarded a Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Baker also contributes commentaries to the web series Trailers from Hell for trailers about horror and science fiction films. Baker claims that his work on Harry and the Hendersons (1987) is one of his proudest achievements, for which he won his second Oscar. On October 3, 2009, he received the Jack Pierce Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chiller-Eyegore Awards.
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.
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."
In 2018, when Baker's daughter Veronica was working at DC Comics, he was approached by DC to design a collectible display bust. He agreed on the condition of total creative freedom; working with his long-time mold maker Rob Freitas, he created a bust of The Joker.
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Rick Baker
Richard Alan "Rick" Baker (born December 8, 1950) is a retired American special make-up effects creator and actor. 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.
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.
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] Among Baker's first professional jobs was assisting prosthetic makeup effects veteran Dick Smith on the 1973 film The Exorcist. 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.
At the 54th Academy Awards, Baker received the inaugural Academy Award for Best Makeup for his work on An American Werewolf in London (1981). Subsequently, he has been nominated for Best Makeup ten more times, winning on seven occasions, both records in his field. Baker also created the werecat creature Michael Jackson transforms into in the music video Thriller (1983).
In 2008, he was awarded a Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Baker also contributes commentaries to the web series Trailers from Hell for trailers about horror and science fiction films. Baker claims that his work on Harry and the Hendersons (1987) is one of his proudest achievements, for which he won his second Oscar. On October 3, 2009, he received the Jack Pierce Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chiller-Eyegore Awards.
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.
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."
In 2018, when Baker's daughter Veronica was working at DC Comics, he was approached by DC to design a collectible display bust. He agreed on the condition of total creative freedom; working with his long-time mold maker Rob Freitas, he created a bust of The Joker.