The Hunger
To realize the rapid aging of David Bowie’s John Blaylock, a vampire promised immortality but not eternal youth by the exponentially more powerful Miriam (Catherine Deneuve), director Tony Scott called upon the legendary talents of advanced-age makeup expert Dick Smith, credited here for his “makeup illusions,” to gradually turn the mid-30s actor-musician into a desperate, 200-year-old insomniac over the course of a six-stage deterioration. Trained in miming techniques by Marcel Marceau protégé Lindsay Kemp, Bowie employs his experience with physical performance to convey John’s devastating plight beneath multiple layers of prosthetics.

House of Dark Shadows
It was during his tenure on the wildly popular ABC television series Dark Shadows in 1967 that Dick Smith began perfecting his aging makeup techniques for 175-year-old Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), experimenting with methods he would bring with him to MGM’s film adaptation just three years later, with Frid reprising his iconic role. A self-proclaimed perfectionist, Smith was intent on developing his techniques not just for himself, but also to share with the next generation of makeup artists, to what he acknowledged was the entire industry’s mutual benefit.