‘The Batman’: Why Colin Farrell Wasn’t Supposed to Be So Unrecognizable as the Penguin

variety.com:

Matt Reeves never meant for Colin Farrell to look unrecognizable in “The Batman.”In the finished film, Farrell’s appearance is utterly obliterated in the role of Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot, the scarred and dumpy mid-level Gotham City gangster with the (unwelcome) nickname of “the Penguin.” But when the 55-year-old director — who co-wrote “The Batman” with Peter Craig — first approached Farrell for the role, he was focused on Farrell’s ability to bring grit and sensitivity in the same performance.“He could have that mix of being incredibly, incredibly scary and volatile, and then all of a sudden, you’d see this vulnerable side that really made you feel for that guy,” Reeves tells Variety. “So I really wanted him to play the character.” When they met, however, Reeves noticed that Farrell had recently gained weight for a different movie, which fit into his conception of the longstanding Batman villain as a mobster akin to John Cazale’s Fredo in “The Godfather” films.“I thought John Cazale has a kind of Penguin nose,” Reeves says. “I thought, well, maybe there’s something visually that we do.”Reeves turned to prosthetic makeup artist Michael Marino (recently Oscar-nominated for his makeup work in “Coming 2 America”) to design a look for Farrell’s Penguin.

Reeves cited Cazale, Sydney Greenstreet and Bob Hoskins as potential inspirations. “I saw him as being almost like a throwback Warner Bros.

gangster,” he says.But then Farrell told Reeves that he didn’t feel healthy carrying the extra weight and needed to lose it, which Reeves relayed to Marino. “So Mike factored that all in,” Reeves says. “And one day he showed me this sculpture on a head cast of Colin.