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Aimee Lou Wood has been one of the standout stars of the third series of The White Lotus, stealing almost every scene with her character’s wild one-liners and wide-eyed obsession with astrology. But the Bafta winner from Stockport has in recent weeks been getting as much attention for her teeth as for her winning turn in the hit show about a luxury resort. Vanity Fair and the New York Times have been notable fans of Wood’s natural look but there has also been a backlash, with beauty magazine Allure saying that “fawning over a rejection of perfection is misplaced”.
Gary Archer doesn’t know what the fuss is about. “They look all right to me,” he says of Wood’s teeth. He would know, because after working on 350 films and TV shows, plus 200 adverts, he is called the Godfather of FX Teeth in Hollywood and beyond. It was Archer who fashioned the unforgettable gnashers that Mike Myers sported in the Austin Powers films, a design that he feels actually led to the term “British teeth”.
“I’m asked for them all the time,” he says. “Manky, twisted, rotten, stained or with a gap – not what most Americans think of as perfect and blinding white, essentially. But I call them ‘character teeth’, and that’s what I specialise in.”
Born in Edgware, London, Archer was 11 when his mother died and his father, a noted dental technician, was intrigued when a cousin living in Los Angeles suggested they try their luck there. “For the first three or four years, I just wanted to go home,” says Archer, 60, who was the only British pupil at his new school. “I said I was mad keen on football, but then I was thrown this ball shaped like an egg. On seeing my reaction, the coach said, ‘Son, you’ve got some learnin’ to do.’”
Archer played soccer instead with kids from Central and South America, using “jumpers and coats for goalposts”. He also suffered the teeth-staining effects of an antibiotic called tetracycline and, when he later lost a tooth playing in goal, it prompted the filing down of part of his front row and their replacement with veneers and crowns.
He was thinking about college and a career in IT when his father had a heart attack and asked him to help out at his AA Dental Labs, which did dentures, partials, crowns and other restorations. “When he came back to work, he asked whether I might want to be a dental technician, so I apprenticed.”
In the early 1990s, they got a call. “My dad said he was too busy and handed the phone to me.” The caller was a dentist who had the great makeup artist Greg Cannom in his chair. Cannom asked how he might get a set of teeth that would fall out during a restaurant scene in a forthcoming comedy he was working on called Mrs Doubtfire.
They were able to oblige – and things snowballed. Archer gestures towards hundreds of small white boxes lining the walls of his workshop in Woodland Hills, north of Hollywood. They’re identical and unremarkable until you notice the names on each one – a who’s who of Hollywood stars: Kevin Bacon, Drew Barrymore, Adam Driver, Kathy Bates, Ralph Fiennes, Helen Mirren.
“Each box has the mould I made of their teeth,” says Archer, “plus their measurements and other data. I keep them because so many performers come back when they need character teeth for another role. I encourage them to keep the character teeth, because they’re specially made to fit them. No one else can ever use them.”
In the last few years, improvements in special effects and the rise of CGI have changed some practices Archer and his late father used. “We might create a set of teeth, but paint them green with the colouring you’d put on a birthday cake. It then becomes a green screen in the mouth – and characteristics, words, gold and diamonds can be added in post-production.”
Other improvements have meant that moulds can now set in the mouth in under a minute, the results lightweight but also rigid and tough. They have to be. “Actors can be very rough on them,” says Archer.
Digital dentistry has also become something Archer uses more frequently. “We have a device that’s about the size of a wand, lined with tiny cameras. It can be run slowly along the teeth, creating a picture that we can then produce in a mould, or via a 3D printer. Then we just ship it off to the set or location. Sometimes I never even meet the person I create character teeth for.”
We return to the subject of perfect teeth, in particular The White Lotus and the fact that Aimee Lou Wood and her onscreen partner-in-crime Charlotte Le Bon have been lauded as “inspiring”, “charming” and even regarded as trend trailblazers just for having teeth that look, well, just like millions of other people’s.
“Dental care wasn’t great in Britain from the 1930s to the 1960s,” says Archer. “There had been wartime shortages, plus a lack of awareness about vitamins. And the newly formed NHS focused more on purely practical needs, less on how you looked. British people often didn’t seem so bothered about their teeth. It was the luck of the draw. But in booming postwar America, white teeth were a symbol of success, so the use of braces, crowns and bridges was more advanced, more commercialised, and more common.”
He goes on: “In fact, to give Aimee Lou Wood a set of ‘perfect teeth’ would be really difficult – though I’d love to take it on, if she ever needed them for a role. From what I can tell, she has a slightly prominent lateral with a twist and rotation. So we would have to create veneers to go over that. Saying that, however, I think she looks lovely. She looks real.”
Gary Archer’s top 10 teeth
Charlie Evans in Leave the World Behind
“Archie, Charlie’s character, wakes up one morning and seems to be sick. He puts his fingers in his mouth and pulls out a loose tooth – then another and another. His mother, played by Julia Roberts, begs him to stop. I was on set for the shoot, with three sets of teeth for Charlie, who was being filmed from several angles. Julia was saying, ‘This is so disgusting! Can’t we stop?’ I was so proud that she and the crew were horrified by my work!”
Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street
“Jonah loved his teeth and he keeps them in a safe at his home. I’ve seen them in there!”
Anthony Hopkins in Nixon
“The eyes and teeth are the most distinctive parts of a face. You can really change someone’s appearance by changing them. Nixon’s awkward smile really affected how the public saw him.”
Robin Williams in Mrs Doubtfire
“An upper set of false teeth had to fall out into a glass of water, which is of course the opposite of what they’re usually designed to do. Robin came in for the fitting, the team liked what we did and word got around. Then everything changed.”
Mike Myers in Austin Powers
“Mike and I both loved talking about British humour. His parents were British and he moved to Canada when he was young, like I did to America. He said, ‘There is no one more English than an English person living abroad,’ and I still feel you can’t beat a McVitie’s chocolate digestive.”
Tom, Brad and Kirsten in Interview with the Vampire
“This was a huge deal, a huge movie. We did fangs for Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and the young Kirsten Dunst. We also did the fangs for Wesley Snipes in the Blade films, as well as the recent Deadpool & Wolverine. Nowadays, the monster and fang stuff is done by my colleague Dominic Mombrun (@bitemaker_international).”
Naomi Ackie in Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody
“I was flown to see Naomi, who was playing Whitney after the initial actress hadn’t worked out. When I gave her the teeth and she put them in, she was so thrilled she danced around the room singing Whitney songs.”
John C Reilly in Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty
“He was just a really lovely guy!”
Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed
“Creating the teeth for ‘Josie Grossie’ was a real hoot. Drew reprised this role some 20 years later on her talk show, wearing another set of fake braces I did for her.”
Alan Ritchson in Motor City
“Ritchson, who plays Jack Reacher in the Amazon series, stars in this upcoming revenge thriller. He has perhaps the best set of teeth I have ever seen!”
