Maestro and the Fake Nose Hall of Fame – The

“Maestro” and the Fake Nose Hall of Fame – The New York Times

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In August, the first trailer for “Maestro,” a biopic about Leonard Bernstein, the composer of “West Side Story” and many others, sparked an almost immediate backlash: Bradley Cooper wore a prosthetic nose for the title role.

Critics on social media accused the star, who is also a director, of playing into an anti-Semitic tone with the size XL prosthetics – and asked whether someone who was Jewish would have been more sensitive in their choice of make-up

Cooper and Netflix, where “Maestro” will begin streaming Wednesday, declined to comment. In a statement at the time, Bernstein's three children, who worked with Cooper on the film, defended the actor a series of posts about X“It is actually true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose.” (The family declined further comment.)

This isn't the first time an oversized septum has appeared on screen or caused controversy. Here are 12 of the most memorable fake noses in film history, ranked by size from petite 🥸 to elephantine 🥸🥸🥸🥸🥸.

Like Edmond Rostand's poet and swordsman Cyrano de Bergerac, Orson Welles was obsessed with his nose. (He believed his was too small; that was completely normal, of course.) But instead of channeling his fixation toward a healthy goal, like helping another man win the affection of his own lover, he transmitted dozens of fakes his own career. One of the biggest was the fierce pair of nostrils he sported as corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan in the 1958 crime thriller Touch of Evil.

Nicole Kidman may have delivered a stirring performance as Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002), but Denzel Washington joked that it was the prosthetic beak she wore that won her the Oscar for best actress. (“The Oscar narrowly goes to Nicole Kidman,” he joked as she announced her win.) Kidman wore a new one on set every day, though she told The Associated Press that she was holding on to a silver one she got while shooting wrapped up.

Does this thing even work? Probably not; Snakes don't have noses – only nostrils – and smell with their forked tongues. We wouldn't be surprised if JK Rowling's reptilian villain in this 2011 franchise finale had something like that too. But perhaps we finally have an answer to what Voldemort's unnaturally long fingers are good for: nose picking.

Like Kidman, Meryl Streep wore the prosthetic nose she wore to play British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Phyllida Lloyd's 2011 biopic, winning an Oscar (her third). But this time the genius of the transformation lay in its subtlety – when the first photos of Streep on set were released, the press didn't spare a word.

Unlike Welles, Laurence Olivier did not usually wear a false nose for his roles because he was insecure about his height. Rather, it was just one of the many theatrical accessories, including masks and wigs, that he and many other actors used to transform themselves into various characters. In Richard III (1955), which Olivier also directed, his character's nose is, as one blogger put it, “protruding majestically.”

Credit…Rankin/Bass Productions and NBC

In this 1964 special, since there's a Santa Claus elves workshop nearby, was Rudolph's father Donner's best way to help his son adjust to school by making an artificial nose out of mud? He will not win any Father of the Year awards for this achievement.

Margaret Hamilton brought a lot to the role of the Wicked Witch of the West: She was known for her oversized nose, which her own father had surgically altered. But she got the last laugh when she landed the role of the now-iconic villain in The Wizard of Oz (1939) – for which her nose was made even longer (and greener).

Sure, there are artists with bigger noses on this list, but Matt Damon may be the only one who has a scam planned around him. In this 2007 sequel, his character Linus wears the prosthesis – which Damon dubbed “The Brody” in reference to actor Adrien Brody's fountain – to disguise himself and gain access to a suitcase full of diamonds.

Steve Carell's souped-up schnozz in this 2014 true crime story might have left some people off scratch their heads – The real-life version of his character, John du Pont, the millionaire wrestling enthusiast turned murderer, wasn't well known, so the attention to detail seemed excessive. But the nose served another purpose: It made viewers forget they were staring at Carell, who at the time was best known for comedies.

Charles Dickens wrote Fagin in Oliver Twist as a thoroughly anti-Semitic villain, and in the 1948 film adaptation Alec Guinness, the non-Jewish actor who played the character, spoke with a booming lisp and appeared with his eyes closed and a huge hooked prosthetic nose. The nose was considered “incredibly insensitive,” as The Jewish Chronicle wrote, and sparked considerable anger among Holocaust survivors.

Billy Crystal was so funny in The Princess Bride (1987) that director Rob Reiner claimed he had to leave the set during Crystal's scenes as Miracle Max because he couldn't contain his laughter. The addition of a bulbous tomato nose surpassed Crystal's physical comedy. (Mandy Patinkin, who played Inigo Montoya, actually bruised a rib trying to stifle his own laughter.)

You could land a bird on the thing (which director Fred Schepisi did). Steve Martin's five-inch member for the 1987 film took 90 minutes to attach and two minutes to remove every day. “God, how I hated that thing,” he told the Washington Post.