Hollywood may be famous for its flawless smiles and bright white veneers, but Chris Lyons – owner of Buckinghamshire-based dental prosthetics firm Fangs FX – deals in a very different type of showbiz teeth.
He’s brought vampires to blood-sucking life (Nosferatu, Blade, several Draculas), rendered dentures to resurrect real-world figures including Napoleon and Nelson Mandela, and perfected pairs of zombified teeth for World War Z, The Last of Us and, most recently, 28 Years Later – continuing the work he began on the post-apocalyptic franchise in 2002.
“For the original 28 Days Later,” says Lyons, “the zombies had their jaws locked open, so we developed a safe breakaway segment that wouldn’t endanger people during action scenes. Spin forward to 28 Years Later, and there are now three types of infected, so three different styles of teeth – some dirty, some broken, some missing.
View oEmbed on the source website“Each director has a different slant on zombies – it’s the same with vampires. You’ve got Hammer vampires, sexy vampires, and we recently did a project where a vampire had double fangs on each side!”
The success of this project led to them creating prosthetic teeth for Sir Ridley Scott’s Legend, starring Tom Cruise. “It snowballed from there. Three years ago, we sold the dental laboratory, and now all we do is film stuff.”
“We made a pair for William Hurt for Lost in Space,” says Lyons. “Halfway through filming, he asked the director, ‘What do you think of my teeth?’ He hadn’t realised! But that’s just what some actors want.”
Fantasy is where Lyons flourishes, as the genre breeds invention. The Witcher on Netflix features Lyons’s favourite Fangs FX teeth, worn by Norwegian actor Agnes Born in the show’s second season. “They were on the outside of her mouth,” he says of the vampiric design, “but connected to her actual teeth so she could still articulate them.”
“On top of that, we’ll sculpt the design in wax, and send it off for approval,” Lyons explains. “Once approved, we’ll make moulds and then create the finished article – using only medical-grade dental materials, and AcrylStains, an emulsion to stain the teeth.
Doctor Who isn’t the only British institution Lyons has worked on. Fangs FX created teeth for every Harry Potter film (and is currently working on the new HBO adaptation). One Harry Potter director even requested Lyons make false fangs for a dog, but these were ultimately nixed in favour of an animatronic. “Very tricky, very hairy,” he says of the experience.
And then there’s Bond. “Everybody wants 007 on their CV,” says Lyons, “but it eluded me until I got the call to do Skyfall – and Javier Bardem’s false teeth. For the scene where he takes his teeth out, he had to wear two sets, and take out the ‘good’ teeth to reveal the rotten ones. Then visual effects got involved to make it even messier! But, once I got Bond, I was happy.”
“The lookie-likies can be tough. Freddie Mercury’s teeth are so iconic that there’s a fine line between realism and caricature. We made over 20 sets before we got them right for Rami. Freddie’s real size were far too big, so it was a case of taking them down millimetre by millimetre, adding a little here, taking some off there until we got it.”
“For which we also did the lead actors,” says Lyons. “That’s something people don’t consider: if characters are living isolated, with no access to toothbrushes or toothpaste, they wouldn’t have Hollywood teeth, so we have to paint them, make them grimier.
“In our line of work, everything’s a challenge – but nothing’s beaten us yet.”
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