Tropic Thunder's blackface did to the PC sensitive what The Exorcist (another on his CV) achieved with horrorphobes: it seriously freaked them out. Baker developed the look for silly-but-slightly-credible Method actor, Kirk Lazarus. Robert Downey Jr. got the part, but, explains the makeup man, he wasn't the only actor prepped. "I was contacted by a DreamWorks producer asking me to photoshop Sean Penn to look like a black guy," he tells IFTN. "So he sent me a low res shot and I did the Photoshop thing – still knowing nothing about the film. Then, a couple of days later, I got another call asking me if I could do a list of a whole bunch of actors – I made half of the actors in Hollywood black!"

Rick Baker fact... For his next trick, Baker is transforming beautiful Angelina Jolie into evil Maleficent.