‘Jonah Hill keeps his teeth in a safe’
Meet Hollywood’s top special-effects dentist.
He made the ‘manky British’ set for Austin Powers, droppable ones for Mrs Doubtfire – and fangs for Tom Cruise.
The Guardian has an interview today with Gary Archer, ‘the Godfather of FX teeth’ – in Hollywood and beyond – having worked on 350 films and TV shows, as well as 200 adverts. It was Archer who fashioned the unforgettable gnashers that Mike Myers sported in the Austin Powers films, a design that he feels actually led to the term ‘British teeth’.
Born in Edgware, London, Archer was 11 when his mother died and his father, a noted dental technician, was intrigued when a cousin living in Los Angeles suggested they try their luck there. “For the first three or four years, I just wanted to go home,” says Archer, 60, who was the only British pupil at his new school. “I said I was mad keen on football, but then I was thrown this ball shaped like an egg. On seeing my reaction, the coach said: ‘Son, you’ve got some learnin’ to do.'”
He was thinking about college and a career in IT when his father had a heart attack and asked him to help out at his AA Dental Labs, which did dentures, partials, crowns and other restorations. “When he came back to work, he asked whether I might want to be a dental technician, so I apprenticed.”
In the early 1990s, they got a call. “My dad said he was too busy and handed the phone to me.” The caller was a dentist who had the makeup artist Greg Cannom in his chair. Cannom asked how he might get a set of teeth that would fall out during a restaurant scene in a forthcoming comedy he was working on called Mrs Doubtfire.
They were able to oblige – and things snowballed. Archer gestures towards hundreds of small white boxes lining the walls of his workshop in Woodland Hills, north of Hollywood. They’re identical and unremarkable until you notice the names on each one – a who’s who of Hollywood stars: Kevin Bacon, Drew Barrymore, Adam Driver, Kathy Bates, Ralph Fiennes, Helen Mirren.
“Each box has the mould I made of their teeth,” says Archer, “plus their measurements and other data. I keep them because so many performers come back when they need character teeth for another role. I encourage them to keep the character teeth, because they’re specially made to fit them. No one else can ever use them.”