![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/New-spider-killing-worm-named-after-Jeff-Daniels.jpg\")
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(Credit: Montclair Film)<\/p>\n
Mon 29 September 2025 1:00, UK <\/p>\n
For the claustrophobic actors out there, signing up for a big fantasy or horror role comes with the dreaded make-up chair, as Jeff Daniels<\/a> once found out all too horribly.<\/p>\n In the digital age, transformations can largely be created in post well after photography is over. But for the best part of eighty years, since cinema\u2019s dawn, many stars would endure the hours-long process of applying thick coats of prosthetic to play whatever abomination was needed for the shoot, be it Lon Chaney\u2019s silent monsters of the 1920s, or Jeff Goldblum\u2019s rubbery mummification for the mutoid insect\u2019s deterioration in The Fly.<\/p>\n To specifically make moulds to fit on one\u2019s face, an actor has to spend some time with their head wrapped in hot plaster, with only their nostrils free to breathe for about ten minutes. The more Zen of Hollywood may well be able to ride such psychological duress; however, it has been known for people to panic and demand to rip off the hardening cast in a bout of anxiety.<\/p>\n Finding out the hard way, comedian Kevin Nealon was struck with such terror, preparing to impersonate The Tonight Show host Jay Leno for a Saturday Night Live<\/a> skit in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t think I\u2019d have a problem,\u201d Nealon confessed on the Whiskey Ginger podcast in 2021. \u201cI started panicking, getting lightheaded, and I told them \u2018take it off\u2019\u2026 the next thing I remember, he had smelling salts, and I woke up. He goes \u2018you\u2019re all right, yeah?\u2019\u2026 All was not lost. Keeping his hands outside the plastic and turning the radio way up so he wasn\u2019t entirely entombed in plaster, Nealon wavered on the cusp of anxiety once again but soldiered on, eventually managing that all-important Leno mould.<\/p>\n Not long after, it was Daniels\u2019 turn. Hosting October 1991, Daniels too was to play the cursed late-night talk personality, resulting in a make-up horror story on the Friday before the show. Going through the plaster cast process as normal, the hardening material stuck to his stubble, eyebrows, and eyelashes, with a frenzied SNL crew attempting to relieve the pain and discomfort by pouring in cold water, to no avail. Trapped with a plaster mask for an hour, had he vomited, he could have died.<\/p>\n