Makeup artist David Malinowski is racking up his net worth with amazing prosthetic makeup in big Hollywood blockbusters like Darkest Hour.
David Malinowski’s fame as a makeup artist has been a long time coming with films like The Grand Budapest Hotel and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
David Malinowski, a British special effects makeup artist, specializes in prosthetic makeup, which is basically taking someone’s face and sculpting a whole new one on top of it. Before Malinowski started working in television and film, though, he spent ten years working at Madame Tussauds. Madame Tussauds, a giant tourist attraction in London, is a wax museum. So working with prosthetic makeup after ten years of waxing makes total sense of Malinowski, actually. Starting at Madame Tussauds in 1996, David Malinowski spent ten years with wax figures before looking to further his career.
David Malinowski did some TV shows and even Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but his first big movie was The Grand Budapest Hotel. He wasn’t the designer, but Grand Budapest Hotel won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling at Oscar 2015, a good predecessor for Oscar 2018.
After this success, David Malinowski continued working with bigger and bigger films, creating everything from witches to vampires to titans. And then the perfect opportunity hit Hollywood: turning beautiful women into zombies, perfect for this prosthetic makeup artist. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies wasn’t nominated for anything, but it was another huge project for David Malinowski.
Prosthetic makeup took these elegant nineteenth century women to a whole new level in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Now You See Me 2 quickly followed, where David Malinwoski was a prosthetic makeup technician. He went uncredited in Now You See Me 2, though, but that didn’t matter because his next project was The Hitman’s Bodyguard, where he was the lead makeup artist for none other than Gary Oldman, currently one of the biggest British actors.
David Malinowski met Gary Oldman working on his hair in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, where Oldman played Sirius Black. Putting all that extra hair on his head must have brought the two men closer together, and then adding more age to Oldman’s face in The Hitman’s Bodygaurd must have cemented the relationship, because when the historical drama Darkest Hour rolled around, David Malinowski was appointed as Oldman’s personal makeup artist.
Gary Oldman needed some serious hair plugs to become Sirius Black.
At Oscar 2018, Darkest Hour could earn David Malinowski his first Academy Award.
Gary Oldman transformed into Winston Churchill for Darkest Hour.
Transforming Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill, the UK’s Prime Minister during World War II, for Darkest Hour took a bit more work than his makeup did in The Hitman’s Bodygaurd. Oldman actually brought renowned makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji, who worked on Hellboy, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Planet of the Apes, and countless other movies, out of retirement to design the actual look of Churchill. When all was said and done, Oldman and his makeup team had to come to set four hours before anyone else to receive a whole new face as well as get in a bodysuit. David Malinowski and Lucy Sibbick, along with Tsuji, were always there to help Oldman through the process.
[Malinowski and Sibbick] worked more hours than anyone else on the film. Lucy and Dave are very patient and they have a great sense of humor. That makes wearing the makeup and putting it on so much easier and pleasurable.
Oldman on the exhausting process of transforming physically into Winston Churchill
All of that effort has paid off, though, because Gary Oldman is getting nominations for Best Leading Actor at nearly every award show. David Malinowski’s work is not going unnoticed, though, receiving nearly as many nominations as well as a few wins already at the British Academy Film Awards and the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards.
The biggest honor, though, would be winning the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling at Oscar 18, for which Darkest Hour is up against Daniel Phillips and Lou Sheppard for Victoria and Abdul and Arjen Tuiten for Wonder. If this makeup team gets a hold of that golden statue, this win would not only be David Malinowski’s first Oscar win, but Tsuji’s as well, who has been nominated three times previously for Click, Norbit, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. If Darkest Hour wins for best makeup at Oscar 2018, Tsuji would be the first Asian makeup artist ever to do so.
Looking ahead, Malinowski’s net worth is only going to skyrocket with upcoming projects like Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
Makeup artists make, on average, $88,200 a year, but the top 10 percent are making $120,000. Based on David Malinowski’s current net worth, he’s definitely in the top 10 percent, and really, that’s not surprising given the big name faces he’s been transforming recently, such as Johnny Depp, David Malinowski created a new face for in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
Currently, David Malinowski’s net worth is $1.4 million, which isn’t as much as the Hollywood actors he works with but it’s nothing to scoff at. If Oscar 2018 goes his way and he keeps working with films like Darkest Hour, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and The Grand Budapest Hotel, that number is sure to increase in no time at all. He’s already worked on zombies, political figures, and evil wizards. The sky’s the limit on what creature he could be working on next.
