TORONTO — Traci Loader helped devise the haunting blood tears Lily-Rose Depp’s character cries in "Nosferatu."
On Thursday, the Ontario makeup artist said she couldn't contain her own tears as she learned she'd earned her first Oscar nomination.
“I’ve just been crying from happiness. As a Canadian, to achieve something like that, I just didn’t think it would happen in my career. It was really overwhelming and surreal,” Loader said on a video call from Toronto.
The Newmarket, Ont., native is part of the team from Robert Eggers’ gothic horror film who are up for best makeup and hairstyling, along with England’s David White and Suzanne Stokes-Munton.
“I’m just glad that it was Canadians that Robert clicked with for some of the key creative roles,” she said.
Loader is one of several Canadians who’ve earned Oscar nods for their work on Eggers’ remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic, which stars Depp as Ellen Hutter, a young woman ensnared by the dark obsession of the enigmatic vampire Count Orlok, played by Bill Skarsgård.
Toronto’s Linda Muir is up for best costume design, while fellow Torontonian Craig Lathrop is competing for best production design.
“I definitely had tears in my eyes because I feel the entire costume team worked so hard and so diligently to meet the demands of the script and of Robert's vision,” Muir said after receiving the news.
“As a team of collaborators working with Robert, I think we all have very similar ideals. We all enjoy research. We all see the value in striving for authenticity in these period films that Robert writes. And it's a challenge, really, because the locations he chooses to write into his scripts, they're all periods that are not necessarily well-documented.”
Eggers first began working with Loader, Muir and Lathrop on his 2015 debut feature “The Witch,” which brought colonial New England to life in Kiosk, Ont. The director wanted to recruit a local team, said Muir. The Canadian trio would go on to work with Eggers on several more films, including 2019’s “The Lighthouse” and 2022’s “The Northman.”
“I think we both have the same vision. We don't like things to look like makeup or to take you out of the film,” said Loader, who’s worked as a makeup artist since the early ’90s and won a Canadian Screen Award for 2021’s Indigenous sci-fi thriller “Night Raiders.”
“With ‘Nosferatu,’ it’s not your typical beauty makeup. It's all character makeup, and it's being true to the period and true to adding elements that are realistic for those characters.”
For Depp’s character, Loader used various tints and hues rather than conventional glam makeup to illustrate Hutter's gradual possession by Orkok. Loader made Depp's skin appear paler, drew her eyes out more and highlighted her natural veins.
“When you take a photo of her at the beginning of the film, and then the end of the film, there's a huge difference, but the progression is very planned out so it’s not like, ‘Oh, they're possessed now.’ It’s very subtle.”
“Nosferatu” is set in 1938 Germany and Transylvania, and was filmed in Prague. Muir’s research included fashion journals from the time period, primarily from Germany.
“That was a bit of a hunt to find. I don't read German and I don't live in Berlin,” said Muir, who has worked in film, television and theatre since the 1970s, and has Canadian Screen Awards for her work on Atom Egoyan’s 1994 erotic thriller “Exotica” and John Greyson’s 1996 drama “Lilies.”
For Orlok, who was born about 300 years before the film takes place, Muir endeavoured to find garments that a Transylvanian nobleman from the late 1500s would wear. That included clunky leather boots and a massive overcoat that draped over his gaunt frame like a shadow.
But because Orlok is undead, his outfit needed to be tattered – or “corpsified” – as Muir said, “so that the story of his death and his reanimation would have some feeling of reality.”
Muir said she hasn’t given much thought to her own outfit as the Oscars, noting that she's more focused on those who have lost homes and lives to the wildfires in Los Angeles.
“It’s been really harrowing for everyone in Los Angeles. It's been extremely stressful for everyone having to contend with the wildfires. It’s very serious and very real,” she said.
Loader also hasn’t thought of the awards gala yet, but she hoped the nominations show how Canada’s film industry has evolved over the years.
“I remember in the ’90s, when bigger shows shot here, they would always bring the department heads here and then just hire their crew. And now Canada's making its mark and showing that we are capable of doing all these things. And that makes me really proud. Because we can.”
The 97th Academy Awards are set for March 2 in Los Angeles, and will air on CTV.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 24, 2025.
Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press
