Tom Cruise says it originally took six hours for the “Digger” hair and makeup team to apply his Digger Rockwell prosthetics, but he quickly made the process “more efficient” by showing up with a chalkboard and timing how long it took to put each prosthetic on:
“I had a guy there with a stopwatch and I’m like, ‘OK, you see that time, six hours? By the time we’re done, we’re going to get it under an hour.’ They were like, ‘No, I’m not doing that, it will never happen.’ I’m like, ‘OK, first of all, if you say no, you can’t do it, you will never get there. So can we agree that we’ll maybe make it a little less?’ So with each piece that was going on, it was timed and then we’d drill and practice.”
It worked, and they eventually got his makeup and prosthetics routine down to under an hour: “They were like, ‘What?!’ And they didn’t even know it, and they didn’t even rush. I like going into a system, studying it and trying to figure out how I can do it better, more efficient. The films that I make, I’m constantly going, how can I do it better?”
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