High-tech make-up not new to Perlman

Press, 18 March 1988, Page 19

High-tech make-up not new to Perlman

The actor Ron Perl--man plays the less human half of “Beauty and the Beast,” a fantasy drama which screens tonight at 9 on Two. To achieve the Beast Vincent’s fearsome look. Perlman spent the first early hours of every day of shooting in the makeup artist’s chair. His short curly hair was disguised by a ling shaggy wig, his nose broadened and his top li? developed a distinctly cat-like cleft. None of this was new to Perlman, who has been down the high-tech make-up roal before. In his first starring movie role, he spent eight months filming' barefoot and almost laked in the frozen bogs of Scotland, playing j a prehistoric Ulam tribesman in JeanJacques Annaud’s “Quest for Fire.” Extensive make-up i was required for this role. More recently, in the movie adaptation of Umberto Eco’s best-seller

“The Name of the- Rose,” Perlman again i underwent a daily transformation to become a facially deformed and {hunchbacked monk called Salvatore. j Then came the plum role in “Beauty and the Beast.” , “I ; have the least known face of anyone in

the business, and it looks like that will continue into the foreseeable future,” says Perlman. Perlman is a native of Manhattan, where the hoiir-long drama is set. He began his ‘ acting career with the Classic Stage Company in New York, performing the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen and Pinter for two years. Perlman performed on and off Broadway and toured Europe and the United States with different productions for a number of years before landing the I role in “Quest for Fire” in 1982. This was the turning point for the actor, who was then offered a part in| “Ice Pirates” with Angelica Huston and Robert Urich. But while he was able to appeari more or less as himself! in this role, it was not a major part, and Perlman returned to the silver screen as the hunchback Salvatore in “The Name of; the Rose.”