Why Timothée Chalamet Looks Totally Unrecognizable in ‘Marty Supreme,’ According to the Prosthetic Makeup Designer

Timothée Chalamet looks very different in his new film Marty Supreme, and that change was fully planned. The goal was never to make him look like a movie star. It was to make him look real.

According to Variety, the transformation came from a close collaboration between director Josh Safdie and prosthetic makeup designer Mike Fontaine.

Safdie wanted Chalamet to feel like a kid who grew up on the streets of New York, not someone polished or clean-cut. The film is set in the early 1950s and follows Marty, a young hustler from the Lower East Side who believes table tennis could change his life.

Fontaine explained that dropping Chalamet into the film without changing his appearance would not have worked. “It wouldn’t make sense to drop Timothée in there and have him look like this clean movie star,” he said. The team wanted Marty’s face to tell a story before he even spoke.

The makeup design focused on signs of a hard life. Marty has visible scars, rough skin, and marks that suggest fights and close calls. Fontaine said Safdie was clear from the start. “He wanted acne scars, keloid scars, like he’s been in some fights,” he shared. A deep scar on the cheek and others under the chin and lip were added to hint at past trouble.

The work took time to get right. The team tested several versions on camera with cinematographer Darius Khondji. After reviewing early footage, Fontaine felt the look went too far. He decided to redo the prosthetics so they would blend naturally and not distract viewers. The final goal was simple. The audience should not notice the makeup at all.

In the finished version, Chalamet wears five prosthetic pieces. These include textured areas on the cheeks, scars along the face, and smaller details near the mouth and jaw. The film includes many close-up shots, so every detail mattered. Fontaine also added fake sweat during intense table tennis scenes to heighten the realism.

Safdie also wanted to change how Chalamet saw the world, literally. Instead of using fake glasses, the team used real contact lenses and heavy prescription glasses.

Fontaine explained that the contacts blurred Chalamet’s vision, while the glasses exaggerated the look of his eyes. “We put contact lenses in Timothée’s eyes that made his vision blurry, and then gave him very heavy prescription glasses on top of it,” he said.

Safdie told Variety that Chalamet struggled at first with the setup. “He calls me and says, ‘I’ve got the +10s in right now, and I’m pretty dizzy,’” the director recalled. Chalamet later described the feeling as being inside a fishbowl. Still, he pushed through. Safdie said the actor told him, “I’ll do anything you ask me to do.”

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments!