publication date: Sunday, January 14, 2018 (part of Winter 2018)

category: Movies

clue: He's played a galactic supreme leader, simians both gigantic and war-making, and a one-armed Marvel villain, but he's best known for playing a paranoid, big-eyed, cave-dwelling, ring-obsessed DID sufferer.

explanation: Serkis has played Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, King Kong in the 2005 remake, Caesar in the recent Planet of the Apes films, Klaw in Black Panther, and Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films. more…

intended difficulty: easy

solved by: Russ Wilhelm, LaVonne Lemler, Samir Mehta, Chris Lemler, Richard Slominsky, Matthew Preston, and Erik Bates

Hidden Hollywood: Who better to embody the twin masks of comedy and drama than these seven actors, who disappear completely into their most famous roles? Through makeup, prosthetics, and motion capture, these actors are known for creating inhuman characters on the silver screen. You know their work, but you rarely see their faces.

Similar Goos

Mike Myers

This SNL alum and current game show host has put on bald caps and pinky rings, black-rimmed glasses and false teeth, long black wigs and baseball caps, curly mustaches and bushy long beards, dead-sexy fat suits, behatted cat suits, and more prosthetics to bring his bizarre characters to life. Go »

Ron Perlman

You might have seen him as a hirsute beast, a hircine priest, a hellish boy, a villainous vampire, an anarchic biker, or a trekking Reman. Go »

Helena Bonham Carter

She wore a spiky red wig in Women Talking Dirty, a curly blonde wig in Cinderella, a disheveled black wig in the Harry Potter films, enormous stitches in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a lazy eye in Merlin, a simian face in Planet of the Apes, a CGI-enlarged head in Alice in Wonderland, and an eye patch over old-age makeup in Big Fish. Go »

Doug Jones

He's been villains to Batman and the Fantastic Four, a zombie to Bette Midler, amphibious creatures opposite Hellboy and Sally Hawkins, sci-fi icons in Star Trek and The Time Machine, and even a faun who spoke Spanish. Go »

Alan Tudyk

It's appropriate that he was a guest voice on Robot Chicken, because those words sum up his roles in films based on Japanese manga, the Pleistocene era, Isaac Asimov novels, Polynesian myths, and Star Wars. Go »

Zoe Saldana

She's well-known for having blue skin on the planet of Pandora and green skin in the Marvel movies, but it was her own skin that let her inhabit an iconic black role on the starship Enterprise. Go »