Makeup

Holland Miller: Military Man Turns Makeup Magician

The Leo and Gemini Award-Winner Goes from the Persian Gulf to Fantastic Four, Fringe and Beyond

“I was 16 when I snuck into the theatre and saw Aliens. At that moment I knew I wanted to make monsters.”

Holland Miller knows all about monsters. The young man from Sacramento mesmerised by H.R.Giger’s designs now inspires the next generation of makeup magicians. You’ve seen his work on Fringe, A Haunting In Connecticut, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Underworld: Evolution, The Chronicles of Riddick, Scary Movie, Twilight: New Moon, The X-Files, and Stargate SG1 and Atlantis. And when he’s not on set, the one-time student teaches the effects course on the Blanche Macdonald makeup program. Holland’s vast experience has taken over a decade to acquire, but the enthusiasm was always there.

“After Aliens I bought a whole lot of Fangoria magazines and all the science fiction and horror fanzines I could get my hands on. It was a pipe dream, like wanting to be an actor or rock star, so I put it on hold, even though I knew it was what I wanted to do. I went to community college when I was 17 and did a couple of art courses, but my teachers found my style inappropriate and offensive. We had to do a commercial illustration for a funeral home and I illustrated a coffin with a corpse coming out of it. I thought it was funny as hell. My instructors rejected it without even looking at it.”

With an artistic career looking unlikely, Holland enlisted in the US Navy. On duty in the Persian Gulf during the First Gulf War, the opportunity to reignite his creative tinderbox arrived unexpectedly.

“We’d run emergency simulation operations. Part of that was first aid. One time they were looking for someone to simulate wounds. I raised my hand, said I was really into horror movies and that I’d played around with rubber before. I had cotton, latex, rubber and little bits of plastic. I did a broken femur and tibia from what I remembered from Fangoria. People were blown away with how graphic it looked. Seeing how shocked people were with how gross and realistic they thought it was, I knew I could do this.”

Holland left the Navy and moved to Canada. Working in a café in Victoria in his early 20s, the time was right to chase his dream career.

“My friend Brandy McQueen had moved over to Vancouver to go to Blanche Macdonald’s Makeup School. She told me they taught kit effects.  I went over, took a look at the portfolio of work coming out of the school, got myself a student loan and started the program.”

The military man with a taste for the macabre threw himself into the less gruesome side of makeup artistry.

“It was very stimulating. Having never done a beauty makeup before I came to school, I learnt so much every day. When I got to the out of kit effects part of the program it was like instinct. It came so naturally to me.

“I knew the business was hard to get into, but it was what I wanted to do. When I was in school I was doing makeup effects and when I had free time, I’d do my own makeup effects projects. Somehow I got hold of Dick Smith’s phone number and called him a couple of times. He was very encouraging and forthright with information.”

After graduation, word of Holland’s abilities quickly spread around Vancouver. The phone call from Toby Lindala at Lindala Makeup Effects soon followed.

He was working on Millennium, The X Files and a feature and was swamped. I went in, did an interview and was hired on the spot. I thank Toby for launching my career.”

Holland worked in the Lindala Makeup Effects’ Lab for two years before being called to set. It’s a day he can still recall vividly.

“It was horrible,” he laughs. “It was a 6am call in February. I was on three hours sleep after working 18 hours in the lab the day before doing a cotton/latex treatment on skeletons for The X Files. Everyone else had to go do a makeup and I had to stay with the bodies on a bridge in Mission. I was all by myself for nine hours in the cold and damp. The first time I stepped out the car I stepped into a puddle up to my ankle so my feet were wet the entire time. And there was nowhere to go the bathroom. I think Toby was doing it purpose to see how tough I was. Let’s see if this kid can handle it.”

Holland could handle it. Working with Lindala Makeup Effects took him to more sets and presented more challenges.

“Working in the lab was fun. And when I started knowing crews and directors it became really fun. A lot of the products we used in the industry weren’t used in school then, so I learnt from my co-workers at the lab and taught myself.”

After several happy years at Lindala Makeup Effects, Holland took a well-earned break from the hectic movie life to concentrate on teaching at Blanche Macdonald. It only took a phone call to pull him back to one of the world’s top effects labs.

“Todd Masters was doing an episode of Stargate, and they needed people to help. He asked if I was available for five days of work. I’d heard rumours Todd would be building a lab in Vancouver and I knew that’s where I wanted to go. The last day we were working I told him, ‘I will be working exclusively for you one day’. We kept in contact when he was in LA and when he came to Vancouver we started working together.”

Since that bold introduction Holland has won a Leo (for Sanctuary) and Gemini Award (for Stargate: Atlantis), but he remains unmoved by the accolades. He’s far prouder about the challenges and triumphs of his current show, Fringe.

“The cast are fantastic. The crew are great. There’s a budget so we can do cool things. I walk on set feeling confident and challenged. In the first series we did underground mole men, numerous brain surgeries, spinal cords extracted, mutants and reverse aging makeups. Every episode is a different challenge. That’s what keeps it really fun.”

Fringe also happens to include Holland’s favourite makeup to date.

“I had to do a reverse aging on John Noble, who plays the character Walter. The whole episode took place in the 1980s, so we had to make him look over twenty years younger. We tried a silicone appliance and thought about doing some fills, but none of us were really happy with either. I thought we should go back to basics and use pulls, tethers you glue to the skin that pull it back, like a facelift. My colleague Mike Fields came up with a great design for a rig that we could hide in his hair. My assignment was to come up with pulls that were going to be strong enough and tabs that could stay down for 16 hours a day, yet couldn’t be seen. It was great. John had full movement of his face and the dailies looked gorgeous. Reverse aging like this had been done before, but not to the extremes Mike and I took it without the aid of any digital enhancement. Not to my knowledge anyway.”

Holland’s creativity can be seen on screens around the world, but the inside scoop on the latest technologies and techniques is reserved for Blanche Macdonald students.

“Every time I take a hiatus from Blanche Macdonald I come back with more stuff. The industry’s always changing. Products come off and on the market. I always try to bring new stuff into the school. Even if it can’t be integrated into the curriculum, I’ll make students aware of the products and how to work with them.”

Holland’s voice is one of the industry insider, delivering the latest information direct from the very biggest productions. It’s also a voice of encouragement.

“Makeup effects as a career is totally doable,” he insists. “But you have to be better than the people you’re competing against. You have to have something the person who’s hiring you will notice, whether it’s your personality, charm, talent or artistic merit. What can you bring creatively to a makeup? For example, if Todd says to me, ‘We’re doing this mutant and this is what we’re thinking of doing’, I’ll say, ‘Cool, can we add this to it?’ ‘Awesome! Let’s put that in there.”

Holland continues to wow audiences and inspire students, all the while bringing to life some of the most grotesque creations ever to hit screens. So has the monster man ever created a makeup that even freaked him out?

“Oh yeah,” he smiles. “All the time.”