Steve Carell begins Evan Almighty looking like the polished politician audiences might expect after his brief appearance in Bruce Almighty. Then his hair refuses to cooperate, his beard keeps growing, and before long he looks like he wandered in from an entirely different century.
Getting there was much more complicated than simply giving Carell one long wig and beard. Makeup designer David Leroy Anderson created multiple stages of the transformation, with custom facial hair, changing hairstyles, and increasingly old-fashioned clothing. By the final stage, even Carell’s own family had trouble recognizing him.
1. The full transformation could take four hours every morning
By the time Evan reached his complete long-haired look, Carell was spending a serious chunk of his morning getting ready. He recalled that the process generally took three to four hours, depending on which beard was being used that day.
That meant some mornings started around 4 a.m. before Carell had even reached the set. He was reluctant to complain about it, though, and repeatedly praised Anderson and the makeup crew for how convincing and consistent their work looked throughout the movie.
2. His beard was built from individual strands of hair
The beard was not simply pulled out of a box and attached as one finished piece. Carell explained that the facial hair was hand-laid, with individual strands placed over one another to gradually create the finished look.
Production material goes even further, describing a three-person team working on the beards and placing the hairs individually on Carell’s face. It is a remarkably painstaking method for something the movie then treats as if it is magically growing faster than Evan can control it.
3. Carell’s favorite version was the “Mountain Man” stage
The finished transformation might be the one used on the posters, but it was not Carell’s personal favorite. He preferred an earlier point in the process that the production referred to as the “Mountain Man” look.
Carell identified it as roughly the third stage of Evan’s transformation and joked that the combination of longer hair and a scruffier appearance reminded him of a 1970s tennis player, specifically Björn Borg. For a character whose appearance keeps getting further away from his carefully managed political image, it is a particularly funny halfway point.
4. Evan actually goes through seven different stages
The gradual change was carefully planned rather than created by simply making the beard a little longer whenever the script called for it. Anderson designed seven distinct stages that took Evan from polished congressman to the long-haired figure seen around the completed ark.
That gave the transformation its own progression across the movie. Different custom beards and wigs could be matched to exactly where Evan was in the story, letting his appearance become increasingly difficult to hide as he continues trying to maintain his normal career and family life.
5. Some of the wigs reportedly mixed human and yak hair
One of the stranger details was hiding right on Carell’s head. Contemporary production reporting said the custom wigs used for Evan combined human hair with yak hair, helping the crew create the unusually thick, increasingly unruly hairstyles required by the transformation.
It is the kind of material choice most viewers would have no reason to think about. On screen, all that matters is that Evan’s hair seems to keep growing beyond his control. Behind the scenes, getting that effect meant constructing several carefully designed wigs that still had to look like they belonged to the same person.
6. The robes were researched instead of being generic ancient costumes
Once Evan’s modern clothes give way to robes, costume designer Judy Ruskin Howell still wanted his new appearance to feel grounded. Production material says the clothing was designed with biblical references in mind rather than simply giving Carell a vaguely old-fashioned outfit.
The fabrics were also deliberately aged so the robes looked worn rather than freshly made for a movie set. That extra work helps sell one of the movie’s biggest visual jokes: Evan may still be a modern congressman underneath it all, but increasingly little about his appearance belongs in modern Washington.
7. Carell’s own son did not recognize him
The most convincing review of the transformation may have come from Carell’s family. His son was only three during production, and Carell told CBS that the child simply did not recognize him when he appeared in the complete look.
His six-year-old daughter did realize who she was looking at, but Carell said she still wanted little to do with the unfamiliar version of her father. After hours in the makeup chair, seven stages of facial hair and several custom wigs, the disguise had apparently worked a little too well.
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