Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About B'Elanna Torres
9. Klingon Cosmetics
As Roxann Dawson admits in the Voyager season five DVD special features Time Capsule: B'Elanna Torres, she knew "very little to nothing" about Star Trek when she went in to read for the role. Not knowing what a half-Klingon was, Dawson was equally unaware at first that playing Torres would require lengthy visits to the make-up chair (two and a half hours, including one hour to remove it).
It seems the original look for the character was also quite different from the final on-screen version, or, as Dawson recalls with good humour, "[it was] quite hideous to begin with". In the same interview, Dawson says that she even held onto a set of Polaroids of the test make-up for B'Elanna.
Thankfully, Dawson didn't have to declare a bat'leth battle (blunted, knockdown rules, of course!) to get the make-up changed — toning down the Klingon and adding a little more human. In the end, this included the removal of a set of Klingon teeth and a full Klingon nose-piece in a compromise between B'Elanna's two halves that Dawson was pleased with, calling it her "beauty monster makeup".
Still, the actress would have to put the teeth back in (and then some) for one particular episode in the first season.