Peter Owen has been making wigs since the 1980s. He has made wigs for the stars of more than seventy films, including Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Johnny Depp in Sleepy Hollow, and Nicole Kidman in The Others. One of his biggest jobs so far has been designing the hair and make-up for the three Lord of the Rings films. He had just six weeks to design and make more than a hundred wigs, each one a different style, colour, shape and length.
The hair and make-up in a film are just as important as the costumes or the sets. Over the years, Peter has made actors look older, healthy and sick. For one film he even made a female actor look like a man! 'What people don't realise about wigs is that we are not always making people more beautiful,'he says.'Often we are covering up beauty and making them look ordinary.'
All Peter's wigs are hand-made using human hair,so they look as real as possible.this alsonmakes them very expensive-between US$4500 and US$12500 each He knows he's done a good job when people don't realise the star of the film is wearing a wig. so he was pleased when one newspaper said that Nicole Kidman had dyed her hair dark brown for a film.'It was a wig and no one knew,' he says.