Made pale by comparison

Hollywood has long been enamored with gender-bending roles for men in films such as “Some Like It Hot” and “Tootsie,” but the new movie “White Chicks” posed an added challenge for Greg Cannom, a two-time Academy Award winner for makeup design. The premise of the film -- Shawn and Marlon Wayans are undercover FBI agents -- hinges on their believability as white, high-society debutantes in the Hamptons.

“It was the Wayans brothers dressing up like the Hilton sisters,” he says. “It’s not based on the Hilton sisters but that type of look, kind of Britney [Spears]. It really cracked me up.” But Cannom took a wait-and-see approach to the job because the prospect of changing an actor’s race seemed daunting, if not impossible. “The studio said, ‘We don’t think it can be done.’ Then it was my job to prove everyone wrong.”

Human transformation is a specialty for Cannom, who received an Oscar in 1992 for “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (he shares the award with Michele Burke and Matthew W. Mungle) and another in 1993 for “Mrs. Doubtfire” (which he shares with Ve Neill and Yolanda Toussieng). He also received Oscar nominations for “Hannibal,” “Hook,” “Hoffa,” “Roommates,” “Titanic,” “Bicentennial Man” and “A Beautiful Mind.”

To create the “White Chicks,” Cannom cast each actor’s head in plaster, then used the cast to make a clay sculpture of their features. With a mold from the sculpture, he created overlapping foam prosthetic appliances. “You have to get their three-dimensional likeness,” he says. “If it’s not sculpted right, it shows. Then you still have to sculpt the new design on their faces. It has to fit them perfectly.” The process is standard, yet making masculine faces look feminine is no easy task, Cannom says.

“I’m trying to add on a smaller, female face to a larger male face. You want it to all blend. Altering the top lip and the nose were the most important things to change. Male and female top lips are very different. For the face, I used silicone appliances with glue -- we have our own formula. I used foam latex, which has been around since ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ I started with the top lip, then the forehead went on, then a wrap piece under the lip and then the nose went on in the end.”

Once the faces were in place, Cannom needed a convincing skin tone. “If you put a light pink makeup on dark skin it goes gray, so we used an orange-ish pax paint, which is an acrylic paint with acrylic adhesive mixed into it. It will completely cover the dark skin. The trouble is, if you paint it too thick, it starts to wrinkle like latex.” The paint was followed by a thick coat of light makeup.

Of the two Wayanses, Marlon makes a better woman than Sean, Cannom says. “Marlon has the perfect face for it. He has a smaller jaw line. Sean has a huge, masculine jaw line.”

A tight production schedule kept Cannom from creating multiple facial designs. “I did nine or 10 designs for Marlon. I wish I would have had six more weeks for Sean.” But Cannom was pleased with the final product and noted the work of Glen Hanz, the main sculptor, who did the finish work on the faces. “Every pore is put on individually by hand with sculpting tools,” Cannom explains. “Every little wrinkle is tedious, time-consuming work.”

The actors spent five hours a day in the makeup trailer for 60 days -- three hours of makeup, 90 minutes of body painting and 30 minutes to perfect the eyes and wigs, Cannom says. “We did the makeup on them 50 or 60 times. They were great. It was tough.”

The blue scleral contact lenses irritated the Wayanses, he says. “They had to wear them all day long. The contact lenses didn’t exist 10 years ago, and now they have beautiful blue soft contact lenses that cover the whole eye. But even though it’s comfortable, it’s this big thing going in their eyes.”

Truly Hamptons-worthy

The Wayanses were so convincing as women that Cannom didn’t recognize them. “They’d walk in the next morning and you’d say, ‘Oh, that’s right. That’s them.’ You forget the way they look. The first time I talked to Marlon in full makeup, it really freaked me out. His voice was coming out of it. Nothing was there. With ‘Doubtfire,’ Robin [Williams] and his eyes were always there. But here with Marlon there was nothing, just his voice was coming out.”

Hair stylist-designer Linda Villalobos, who has assisted the chameleon-like Wayans clan in many roles dating to the show “In Living Color” on Fox, applied the final touches to the brothers. “I thought one should be a redhead, but most people from the Hamptons are blond, so we stayed with what’s real,” Villalobos says. “I added some dark roots to it -- you never see a blond like that without dark roots. It brought the extra touch. Once I added the roots, it made the difference.”

Cannom agrees. “The most important thing [director] Keenen [Ivory Wayans] and I wanted was that they didn’t look like drag queens. The thin hair with the dark roots worked. I still look at it and go, ‘Wow.’ ”

In addition to shaving the Wayanses’ arms and faces, Villalobos had to flatten their hair to accommodate the custom lace wigs that were designed to create a feminine hairline. “It looked like it was coming out of their own scalp. We had to have length because we had to cover parts of the prosthetics and comb over the Adam’s apples.”

She made sure they were authentic Hamptonites, right down to the nails. “They have to have French manicures. That’s all they wear in the Hamptons.”

Villalobos -- who credits colleague Rebecca DeHerrera with the finishing lipstick, eye shadow and manicures -- agrees with Cannom’s assessment. “Marlon was the pretty one; Sean’s facial structure is different.”

She says the brothers, having felt the pain of beauty, will have a deeper appreciation for the women they see. Instead of ignoring them, she’s certain “They’ll say, ‘You look great.’ ”

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Beauty is only prosthetic skin deep

To become “White Chicks,” Shawn and Marlon Wayans spent five hours a day in the makeup trailer -- three hours of makeup, 90 minutes of body painting and 30 minutes to perfect the eyes and wigs. In the end, “Marlon was the pretty one; Sean’s facial structure is different,” hairstylist Linda Villalobos says.