10 Things You Didn't Know About The Hobbit Trilogy
2. Yukkety Yak
Transforming Richard Armitage, James Nesbitt, Graham McTavish and the rest of Thorins Company into dwarves each day was a massive undertaking that required an army of makeup artists and numerous props and prosthetics. Aidan Turner was fortunate in that it only took thirty minutes to ready him to play Kili, whereas Stephen Hunter had to spend three times as long in the makeup chair each day to be transformed into Bombur. In addition to donning latex head cowls, prosthetic pieces and costumes weighing upwards of seventy pounds, almost every actor was required to wear wigs and fake beards obtained from an unusual source: yaks. Hair from the longhaired mammals found throughout the Himalayas was harvested in vast quantities, with six wigs and eight beards created for each dwarf character. Yak hair has been a popular wig-making material since the eighteenth century and was used to create Chewbaccas costume in Star Wars, but its safe to say The Hobbit films set a record as far as quantities are concerned. The costume department cleared Englands suppliers out of yak hair to stockpile 60-80 kilos altogether, and key makeup-and-hair supervisor Rick Findlater estimated that the amount used was enough to stretch to 450 miles, with 20 litres of glue required to fix it all in place.
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