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Several talented actors blew Us away with their jaw-dropping 2025 onscreen movie transformations.
Stars like Jacob Elordi, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Ethan Slater sat in the hair and makeup chair for hours on end to make sure they got into character for films like Frankenstein, The Smashing Machine and Wicked: For Good, respectively.
For Johnson, transforming into MMA fighter Mark Kerr for Benny Safdie’s biographical sports drama was the opportunity of a lifetime.
“This transformation was something I was really hungry to do,” Johnson told The Hollywood Reporter in September 2025. “I had been very fortunate to have the career that I’ve had over the years and to make the films that I’ve made, but there was just a voice inside of me, a little voice that said, ‘Well, what if I could do more — I want to do more and what does that look like?’”
Scroll below for a roundup of the craziest onscreen movie transformations of 2025.
Jacob Elordi in ‘Frankenstein’
It’s a story that’s been told many times before, but Jacob Elordi somehow manages to bring a special charm to The Creature in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, even though most of the characters in the film view him as nothing more than a monster. It’s Mia Goth’s Lady Elizabeth Harlander who sees the innocence and curiosity beneath his appearance before she meets her tragic fate.
“It was 10 hours to kind of relinquish myself and become this thing that’s other, which was a great relief, really,” Elordi told Deadline in October 2025 of the “incredibly liberating” transformation.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in ‘The Smashing Machine’
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson committed to taking on the persona of Mark Kerr, sporting over a dozen prosthetics and a wig in The Smashing Machine. In fact, his performance in the film was so convincing, it left Us doing a double take.
“I just sat in front of that mirror for three to four hours and watched it all change. There were about 13 or 14 different prosthetics. Subtle, yet I think very impactful,” he told Vanity Fair in August 2025. “By the time I got to set, I was Mark Kerr and I felt it, from how he walked to how he talked and how he looked at life.”
His costar Emily Blunt was impressed by Johnson’s dedication to accurately portraying the former professional fighter.
“It seemed to be an effortless immersion — like a full disappearance, spooky. From day one, he was elsewhere,” Blunt told the outlet. “He has absorbed and borne witness to so much of what Mark has experienced that it was such a beautiful thing to watch this person let go of having to be an image, of having to be The Rock, and crack himself in half for this role.”
Sydney Sweeney in ‘Christy’
Sydney Sweeney gained over 30 pounds to play former professional boxer Christy Martin in the biographical sports drama Christy, unlike anything she has ever done before.
“I loved it,” Sweeney told W Magazine in June 2025. “I came onboard to play Christy, and I had about three and a half months of training. I started eating. I weight-trained in the morning for an hour, kickboxed midday for about two hours and then weight-trained again at night for an hour.”
Emma Stone in ‘Bugonia’
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia wastes no time presenting viewers with an important question — is Emma Stone’s character, Michelle Fuller, an alien or not? She has her head shaved within the first few minutes of the film by kidnappers Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis) and smears her entire body in histamine cream for the terrifyingly brilliant performance that drops jaws.
Stone revealed she would only buzz her hair off to play the role under one condition.
“When I knew we were gonna do this … I said to Yorgos, ‘We’re gonna have to shave your head too so that we’re in solidarity.’ And he’s like, ‘OK,’” she said in a behind-the-scenes clip shared by People in November 2025. “It was exciting but it wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be to shave his head. It was cool. But it felt more dramatic, my shave. I don’t mean to brag, but my hair was pretty long, and his was not.”
Ethan Hawke in ‘Blue Moon’
Ethan Hawke was nearly unrecognizable in Blue Moon, but he assured fans that wearing brown contacts was the reason behind his massive transformation.
“It’s funny, I’ve read reviews that cite the prosthetics or a bald cap or all these different things, none of which is there,” he said at the 2025 Hamptons International Film Festival, adding that the contacts “somehow changed my face dramatically in a way that I didn’t understand or anticipate.”
“But I found the eyes had the biggest impact. And I noticed it right away with my castmates,” Hawke added. “They were like — everybody treated me differently. The height, obviously, the hair, obviously, the body language, the voice. There were a lot of things that went into creating this character, but I found the eyes the most dramatic.”
Ralph Fiennes in ‘28 Years Later’
Ralph Fiennes is quite literally covered in blood and dirt in 28 Years Later, and yet somehow still left Us buzzing over his character’s humanity in a seriously messed up world. The actor also appeared more muscular in the film, something that he intentionally worked on to benefit the character of Dr. Ian Kelson.
“Dr. Kelson had to look strong and agile enough to be able to survive in a world full of the infected and to look like someone that’s able to build the bone temple,” Fiennes’ trainer Dan Avasilcai told British GQ in June 2025.
Nicholas Hoult in ‘Superman’
Nicholas Hoult’s villainous Lex Luthor was, dare we say … still very hot. The actor slayed the bald look for James Gunn’s Superman, a hairstyle choice that reminded Us of his Mad Max: Fury Road character, Nux.
Amy Madigan in ‘Weapons’
Amy Madigan’s performance in the mystery horror Weapons gave a whole new meaning to petrifying. When we first meet Aunt Gladys, she’s already quite spine-chilling in a bright red wig and clownish makeup. It turns out, Gladys is so much more than that — she’s disguising the way she actually looks with witchcraft.
“It was very freeing to work with everybody and create this look because you didn’t have to put yourself in a contemporary box of what a woman is supposed to look like, of how you’re supposed to dress,” Madigan said in December 2025, per Screen Daily. “I loved how Gladys was physically. I loved her whole thing. She puts it together. That to me, workwise, was just liberation.”
Ethan Slater and Jonathan Bailey in ‘Wicked: For Good’
Ethan Slater and Jonathan Bailey tapped into new sides of their Wicked characters in the 2025 sequel. Slater stunned the audience with his portrayal of the Tin Man following a kerfuffle with the heartbroken Nessarose (Melissa Bode) while Bailey made his debut as The Scarecrow, fresh off a steamy cave sex scene with Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba.
“It took a long time,” Slater said of the hair and makeup process on SiriusXM’s The Morning Mash Up in November 2025. “The first time we did it, it took about five hours.”
Matt Smith in ‘Caught Stealing’
Matt Smith with a neon orange mohawk was not something Us had on our bingo card for 2025, but Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing delivered just that.
“I get to work and you put this sort of peacock on, and actually just the very idea of being a punk is an interesting thing because it’s a really deliberate thing,” Smith told Yahoo! Entertainment in August 2025 of the hairdo. “It takes a lot of work and actually something’s drawing you there, because it’s about attitude, ultimately, isn’t it? And I f***ing loved it. I loved it.”
