To play Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo , Rooney Mara had her head shaved, her eyebrows bleached and her body pierced, she tells Vogue .
BY Melissa Whitworth | 17 October 2011
Rooney Mara for US Vogue. Photo: VOGUE/Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott
Rooney Mara's physical transformation to play the part of Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (released in the UK December 26th) was nothing short of brutal.
At the hands of makeup artist Pat McGrath, costume designer Trish Summerville and hair stylist Danilo (he goes by just the one name), Mara submitted to having her head shaved - and the remaining locks dyed black - her eyebrows bleached to appear invisible and various piercings in her ears and nose.
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It was all in a day's work for the young actress, who was plucked from obscurity to play the part of Salander. She'd been spotted by David Fincher, the film's director, after appearing in The Social Network and beat Scarlett Johansson to the role.
McGrath, she of the outlandish and fantastical creations that make a Galliano couture show appear as theatre, oversaw the transformation which took place over two weeks in New York.
Was she traumatised, Vogue asks? "The eyebrows were the biggest shock because that really changed my face, and I didn't recognise myself," says Mara. "But I was fine because I knew it was going to be really helpful for getting into character.
"Before, I dressed much girlier," she says. "A lot of blush-colored things. Now I literally roll out of bed and put on whatever is there. I have really enjoyed being a boy this last year," Mara tells the magazine.
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Over an intense two-day period, the team created 26 different looks for Mara's character. "We went from the white-powdered sick-clown makeup to stitches in the face all the way to greasy, bloody eyes," says McGrath. "I instantly knew how I could make her character so different. And then once the hair was cut in that mad shape, I was like, Well, the eyebrows have got to go. And in the end, it would look now and it would look new."
For these pictures which appear in the November issue of Vogue and were shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Mara's look was decidedly more Vogue appropriate. During filming, Fincher asked his leading lady to "Go out and get really, really drunk and come in the next morning so we can take pictures of you." He wanted to show the movie's producers that she could look "strung out."
That is not the kind of shoot preparation Anna Wintour would approve of.
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