Makeup Artist Kazu Hiro Receives his Second Oscar

February 2020

Earlier this month, makeup and prosthetics artist Kazu Hiro won an Academy Award for his work on the movie Bombshell.

Along with colleagues Anne Morgan and Vivian Baker, Hiro was honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his work with actors Charlize Theron and John Lithgow (among others). Hiro made a life cast and 3-D scan of Theron’s face, which he used to craft prosthetics that transformed her appearance (learn more about his work on this film via the Los Angeles Times. Hiro’s Bombshell award is his second Oscar; he received his first in 2018 for the movie The Darkest Hour, in which he used prosthetics to transform actor Gary Oldman into British prime minister Winston Churchill.

Hiro was born in Kyoto in 1969; he learned about special effects makeup from American magazines. Inside a copy of Fangoria magazine, he found the mailing address for Oscar-winning makeup artist Dick Smith, who became Hiro's penpal mentor and helped boost the young artist's career. Shortly after completing high school, Hiro worked on his first production, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 1989 film Sweet Home. Later, he founded Makeup and Effects Unlimited, one of the first special effects makeup companies in Japan, and collaborated with Akira Kurosawa on the film Rhapsody in August. Hiro broke into the world of Hollywood film with notable work on the 1996 movie Men In Black, and quickly became an in-demand makeup artist for American movies.

Beyond the world of film, Hiro creates large-scale, hyperrealist sculptures made of resin, platinum silicone, and other materials; like his makeup work, his sculptures are based on the human face, but the sculptures are built to be twice as large as their real-life models. His works were recently on display at the LA Art Show.

Learn more about Hiro's career via IndieWire, Flaunt, The Japan Times, and kazustudios.com.