Charles Laughton rarely attempts disguise, but he is a master of make-up for all that. He goes to immense pains to adapt his own very individual appearance to that of the part he is to play. In two pictures that he made for London films, particularly, this thoroughness is seen. The beard he wore as Henry VIII owed its effectiveness to the fact that he grew every hair of it himself. So also with the moustache that he wears in this portrait as Rembrandt. Notice how the actor has trained this straggling growth so that it exactly suggests the devil-may-care character of the great painter.
