What do Miss Jane Pittman at age 110, Edward Scissorhands, and the Terminator have in common? All of their distinctive looks are creations of Stan Winston, one Hollywood's finest special effects wizards.
Over his career, Winston designed some of cinema's most memorable creatures; he received ten Academy Award nominations and won four, two of which came from designing the makeup and visual effects for Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Winston's other two Oscars came from creating the queen alien in Aliens (1986) and for making the realistic-looking dinosaurs that rumbled through Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993). Winston's other awards include two Emmy wins and six nominations, and five BAFTA award nominations and three wins. He also won a Clio for television commercials and many other industry awards.
Winston originally aspired to be an actor and came to Hollywood in 1969 with stars in his eyes. While waiting for his "big break," he worked as an apprentice makeup artist under the head of the Disney Studios makeup department. Winston did not enter the field on a whim; as a child he'd been fascinated by puppetry and maskmaking. While at Disney, that fascination became a passion and Winston found himself with a new career.
Winston won his first Emmy for the made-for-television movie Gargoyles (1972) -- many of the stop-motion effects and the creatures themselves were created on his dining room table with the help of his wife Karen. Winston shared his second Oscar with Hollywood's other special effects whiz, Rick Baker, for realistically aging actress Cicely Tyson from 19 to 110 years old. Winston first worked his unique magic in feature films in The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and followed it up by turning Rod Steiger into late comedian W.C. Fields in W.C. Fields and Me (1976). Winston had his first opportunity to do the elaborate effects and makeup for which he is most famous in The Wiz (1978), where he gained special recognition for creating the flying monkeys sequence.
Winston's contributions to movie-making superseded the ability to create recognizable and fantastic characters. He was also a pioneer in special effects technology, especially when it came to combining robotics with sophisticated puppetry to allow creatures a wide variety of life-like moves and subtle emotions. Winston was especially fascinated with facial articulation. One of his early innovations was a device for The Star Wars Christmas Special that allowed Wookies (big, hairy gorilla-like creatures with slightly canine faces) to move their cheeks and foreheads (in the original Star Wars, Chewbacca the Wookie had extremely limited facial movements). Winston's first Oscar nomination came from convincingly turning Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters into romantically inclined robots in Heartbeeps. During filming, Winston met James Cameron, the director for whom he would do some of his best work. Winston and Cameron first teamed up on The Terminator, a sci-fi actioner in which Winston had to help muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger transform into a futuristic robot. Winston's task was to create a robot with the ability to move like a human. Rather than utilize the traditional scale model and stop motion techniques, Winston came up with a life-sized animatronic puppet. He put the notion of full-sized, fully articulated creatures to use again to create the terrifying queen alien for Aliens (1986). Winston's efforts earned him his first Oscar. His third Oscar nomination was for Predator (1987) and a fourth one was for turning Johnny Depp into a strange leather-clad creation in Edward Scissorhands (1990).
As the '90s progressed, Winston became increasingly involved with computer-generated special effects. These allowed him to be equally at ease with such large-scale projects as Spielberg's two Jurassic Park epics, in which full-sized animatronic dinosaurs worked in harmony with computerized images, Mousehunt (1997), and Paulie (1998), in which he created an amazingly realistic mouse and parrot, respectively.
In addition to special effects work, Winston directed two films, Pumpkinhead (1988) and A Gnome Named Gnorm (1994). In private life, Winston was a known philanthropist and sat on the board of director of Free Arts for Abused Children. Among his many honors was an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from the country's largest art college, the Savannah College of Art and Design. Winston did some of his final special effects work on the films A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), and The Shaggy Dog (2006), before succumbing to multiple myeloma in the early summer of 2008. He was 62.
| Title | Year | Editors' Rating | User Rating | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Iron Man
Special Effects |
2008 | |||
|
Bloodsucking Cinema
Participant |
2007 | |||
|
Skinwalkers
Creature Effects |
2007 | |||
|
The Deaths of Ian Stone
Producer |
2007 | |||
| 2006 | ||||
|
The Shaggy Dog
Animatronic Effects |
2006 | |||
|
Smile
Makeup Special Effects |
2005 | |||
|
Hellraiser: Deader
Producer |
2004 | |||
|
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Animation Effects, Makeup Special Effects |
2003 | |||
|
Wrong Turn
Co-producer, Makeup Special Effects |
2003 | |||
|
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
Animatronic Effects |
2001 | |||
|
Earth vs. the Spider
Producer |
2001 | |||
|
How to Make a Monster
Producer |
2001 | |||
|
Jurassic Park III
Animatronic Effects, Creature Effects |
2001 | |||
|
She Creature
Producer |
2001 | |||
|
Teenage Caveman
Producer |
2001 | |||
|
The Day the World Ended
Producer |
2001 | |||
|
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
Special Effects |
1999 | |||
|
End of Days
Special Effects, Visual Effects Supervisor |
1999 | |||
|
Galaxy Quest
Creature Effects, Makeup Special Effects, Special Effects |
1999 | |||
|
Inspector Gadget
Special Effects |
1999 | |||
|
Instinct
Special Effects |
1999 | |||
|
Lake Placid
Special Effects |
1999 | |||
|
The Sixth Sense
Special Effects |
1999 | |||
|
Creature
Special Effects |
1998 | |||
|
Ghosts
Director, Screenwriter |
1997 | |||
|
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Special Effects |
1997 | |||
|
The Relic
Creature Effects, Special Effects |
1997 | |||
|
Terminator 2: 3-D
Director |
1996 | |||
|
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Special Effects Supervisor |
1996 | |||
|
Interview With the Vampire
Makeup Special Effects |
1994 | |||
|
Jurassic Park
Special Effects |
1993 | |||
|
A Gnome Named Gnorm
Director |
1992 | |||
|
Batman Returns
Makeup |
1992 | |||
|
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Makeup Special Effects |
1991 | |||
|
Edward Scissorhands
Makeup Special Effects |
1990 | |||
|
Predator 2
Creature Design, Special Effects |
1990 | |||
|
Leviathan
Special Effects |
1989 | |||
|
Pumpkinhead
Director, Screen Story, Screenwriter |
1988 | |||
|
Predator
Creature Design |
1987 | |||
|
The Monster Squad
Special Effects |
1987 | |||
|
Aliens
Creature Effects, Special Effects |
1986 | |||
|
Starman
Makeup, Set Designer |
1984 | |||
|
The Terminator
Makeup Special Effects |
1984 | |||
|
Dead and Buried
Makeup Special Effects |
1981 | |||
|
Heartbeeps
Makeup Special Effects |
1981 | |||
|
Parasite
Makeup Special Effects |
1981 | |||
|
The Wiz
Makeup Special Effects |
1978 | |||
|
Roots
Makeup |
1977 | |||
|
W.C. Fields and Me
Makeup Special Effects |
1976 | |||
|
The Man in the Glass Booth
Special Effects |
1975 | |||
|
Gargoyles
Makeup |
1972 |

