The Weird Role K-Y Jelly and Latex Played in Transforming Christian Bale Into Dick Cheney

The film spanned a course of five decades — from the 1950s to early 2000s — which means there was a lot of research to be done on the characters when prepping the hair and makeup. The majority of this consisted of sifting through throusands of images on Getty and Reuter's, watching documentaries, and reading, but Biscoe also took an unconventional — and not to mention, surprising — approach to her research: "I went on Quora and asked what the shaving regulations for all the government agencies such as the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and the Secret Service were. I was fortunate enough to have people within these agencies reply."

Christian Bale has been in head-to-toe latex before (and Batman won't let you forget it) but its role in his latest transformation into the former VP was completely different: it was used liberally to mold an ageing Cheney. "He gained some weight for the film, and also wore a fat suit a lot, but we still had to use appliances on him to make his face look wider," Cannom said. "It's a lot of big things and little things. We had neck, cheek, chin, nose, and teeth pieces, and then when he was older, [Bale] wanted those nose plugs — those little latex bulbous valve that you stick up your nose — to widen or push up the sides of his nose, so [the team] custom-made those."

Obviously, none of this process was quick: "It would take about three and a half to four hours. As you get down [in age], you use less and smaller pieces, which would take two to three hours," he said.

"Adam [McKay, the director], Greg [Cannom], and I agreed that since most Americans couldn't tell you what Lynne Cheney looked like, it was more important to successfully age Amy Adams over the span of 50 years than it was to create an exact likeness," Biscoe said. "I wanted to get across that Lynne Cheney was always very aware of her public persona as well as her family's. My theory is that Lynne was trying to appear as young as possible to constituents, since her husband kept having heart attacks. She worked hard to maintain that perfect image."

To create that youthful effect, she worked with the film's hair department lead Patricia Dehaney to hide elastic bands and surgical tape under her wig. "I used these to pull at Amy's eyebrows into the same place that Lynne Cheney's were at that age," Biscoe said. "In the early 1960's, fuller darker brows and pink lips were in style. As Lynne got older, her eyebrows became lighter, thinner and wider apart so I would bleach and shave Amy's. She was such a good sport."

Hands down, according to Biscoe: the Stretch & Stipple Latex ($6), which was used around the characters' eyes and nasal labial folds to create a wrinkled effect. "While the material is still wet, you blow dry it, stretching the skin in the opposite direction of where you want wrinkles to be," she said. "When it's dry, you let go and you have wrinkles or saggy, crepy skin."

In Lynne Cheney's later years, Biscoe adds that Adams also wore yellowed dental veneers ("much like Invisalign," she said) to dull her teeth.

"The team did our best to make all 150 cast members portray the characters they were playing," said Dehaney. "Many hair pieces were worn to portray the different decades."

How much is "many," you wonder? Anywhere from one to five, depending on the actor. "We used Christian's natural hair for [the character's younger years] and Dick Cheney had five wigs," she said. "Lynne also had five wigs to carry her through the decades. I used a wig wrap called a Fracture wrap instead of a wig cap, which gives a nice, even, tight wrap. It also allows you to pin it so that you can pull the skin up, or back a bit. Rumsfeld wore two different wigs. George Bush wore one wig that we altered the colour and style to reflect the change of decades."

Obviously, Christian Bale has a full head of hair, so Cannom and the team had to pull out all the stops to cover it up. "On his bald head we'd use PAX Paint from MEL FX — it's an opaque white acrylic adhesive that's mixed with very safe acrylic paints, and it covers really well," he said. "We used that to cover his head and any of the blue or black of his hair coming through. Then, at the very end, we would spray a Valdese plastic material they use for the skin of appliances and plastic ballcaps to build it up. That way, as his hair grew during the day, it wouldn't start showing through the makeup and gave a nice shine to the head."