A
lthough his good looks might seem effortless, it can take The
Actor®
statuette nearly a month to get ready for his big night.
41 SAG -AF TR A
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Special Issue 2016
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SAGAFTRA.org
Preparations begin at Burbank's American
Fine Arts Foundry, where a group of expert
craftsmen work to mold the figures from
scratch. Making the iconic statuettes is a
laborious task — a team of 10 artisans spend
three to four weeks creating the statues using
an ancient metalworking technique known as
the lost-wax method, which dates back as far
as 3700 BCE. In order to make the statues,
the foundry uses 95 pounds of wax, 225 pounds
of ceramic and 750 pounds of bronze.
The process itself is also complex: The
Actor starts out as a hollow silicone mold
of the statuette's body, with the arms molded
separately and attached later, so they won't
break off. From there, boiling wax is poured
inside the molds to create the statuette's
first casting. Once the wax has hardened,
the arms are attached to the body and the
cast is then used to make a ceramic
mold, which is filled with molten bronze
and cooled.
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