Caterpillar
This one-day movie shoot was a fun challenge – as you can tell by the results of four hours in the make-up chair, and the vat-load of body paint. When I auditioned for the role, and rehearsed it prior to shooting, I was concentrating on a slow, purposeful, delivery: This was because of the weight of a caterpillar, when measured against its length - corpulent, definitely. As this was a version of Alice in Wonderland, my scene took place in a Hookah den (the smoking apparatus, I hasten to add.), so I imagined clouds of semi-sleep-inducing smoke and an overall lethargic feeling to the scene. But, everything changed after I saw the final make up job, and collar ruff that I was wearing. Together with my loose, baggy, Arabian type pants and a thin stole around my waist. I suddenly felt Regal, like Yul Brynner in The King and I .That wasn’t just the bald cap, either. I became taller, not fatter, and practicing to move my body so that the stripes ‘corsatinered’, rather than slithered, and I eventually came up with a kind of Jeremy Irons-type English, royal drawl. I even sang one line. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
