The 'Winter Soldier' actor admits he found it challenging to wear facial prosthetics that left him with no eyesight in one eye to play a disfigured man in his latest movie.
- Feb 19, 2024
AceShowbiz - Sebastian Stan had to overcome the challenges of wearing facial prosthetics in "A Different Man". The 41-year-old actor plays Edward, an aspiring actor with facial disfigurement who undergoes reconstructive surgery in his attempts to start a new life, and found it tricky to adapt to the physical demands of wearing the prosthetics.
"You have eyesight only in one eye, and you don't see someone coming from the other side as quickly," Sebastian told The Hollywood Reporter.
Director Aaron Schimberg revealed that the prosthetics even had an influence on Sebastian's performance in the second half of the film after Edward had had the reconstructive procedure. The filmmaker said, "Even though the prosthetics would physically be gone, it would still be there for him (mentally)."
He said, "The prosthetic was something that, when I was writing the script, I thought, 'Eventually this will get figured out somehow.' But we're three weeks away from shooting, and I am like, 'What are we going to do here?' "
The movie sees Edward become obsessed with an actor called Oswald (Adam Pearson) - who is playing him in a production based on his former life - and Schimberg had trouble trying to incorporate the prosthetic into the picture until Stan came to his aid with a makeup artist.
He said, "The prosthetic was something that, when I was writing the script, I thought, 'Eventually this will get figured out somehow.' But we're three weeks away from shooting and I am like, 'What are we going to do here?' There's no movie without that prosthetic."
Sebastian is a producer on the flick and reflected on how he had total confidence in Schimberg's vision for the project.
The "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" star recalled, "I remember Aaron coming in and saying something I've never heard a director say before, which was so helpful at the time. [He] essentially sat down and said, 'I wrote this thing. You guys are the actors. But we're all here now and we've got to make this our own.' "
