Lou Diamond Phillips has lifted the lid on his extreme transformation for his role in The Night Stalker.
For those unaware, the 64-year-old American actor, director, and writer played the notorious serial killer, Richard Ramirez, in the 2016 American drama film. Ramirez was given the title of the Night Stalker by police and the press.
On the Thursday, August 24 episode of the Killer Thriller podcast, Phillips opened up about the dramatic transformation he went through for his role in The Night Stalker.
He explained, “I actually had the teeth made, because that was part of the trial as well, in that he had bitten other people and left marks. That was going to be some of the evidence against him. It was a deep dive in transformation.”
“I dropped like 25 pounds because I was playing him at the end of his life when he died of lymphoma,” the Stand and Deliver star said.
Phillips went on to gush over his wife, Yvonne Boismier, the commercial makeup artist, as she helped him achieve a perfect transformation.
He recalled, “My wife was also a makeup artist… we actually did pull my eyes back a little bit because he had that sort of coyote look. He had those narrow eyes, and I guess more like a coyote eye. And we did that, we did the thing where you pull them back and change the shape of my eye.”
It is pertinent to mention that Lou Diamond Phillips was on a weight-loss journey, which “changed the shape” of his “cheekbones and everything else” because “he had those really pronounced cheekbones.”
