If you took in any horror or science fiction films over the past quarter century, you’re likely to have seen the handiwork of Stan Winston. The Richmond, Virginia native had studied drama, painting and sculpture at the University of Virginia-Charlottesville before coming to Hollywood in 1968 with the notion of being an actor.  Unable to find movie or TV roles, he turned his talents to stand-up comedy but it was his fine art background that wound up being his meal ticket. Winston was working as an apprentice in the make-up department of Walt Disney Studios where his gift for sculpture led to his first industry assignment – creating the look of the title creatures for Bill L. Norton’s classic TV horror film Gargoyles (1972).  Throughout the 1970s, Winston kept busy plying his trade on big budget studio fare (W. C. Fields and Me, The Wiz, The Island), grotty low budget shockers (The Bat People, Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde, Dracula’s Dog) and made-for-TV movies (The Diary of Miss Jane Pitman, Roots) alike.  Grateful for the work, he never discriminated between big and small projects.  ”Rightly or wrongly, I consider myself an artist and I consider the work that we do art,” Winston told writer Paul Fischer in 2003.  “I am not a technician – I am techno-ignorant.  But I love creating characters and telling wonderful stories…  It’s the job that’s important, the story is important… I don’t do special effects.  I do characters.” 

It was during the 1980s that Winston earned his reputation as a master craftsman, a make-up maestro and an effects wizard.  He had started the Stan Winston Studio out of the garage of his Northridge home and it grew over the years into one of the most influential and popular make-up and animatronic effects firms in the world.  In quick succession, Winston created historic make-up effects for such classic genre films as Oliver Stone’s The Hand (1981), John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and Starman (1984), James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984), Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Tobe Hooper’s Invaders from Mars (1986), Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1992), and Big Fish (2003), Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1994), Lost World: Jurassic Park II (1997),  AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001), Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire (1994), Jonathan Mostow’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) and Terry Gilliam’s Tideland (2005).  Winston also worked behind the scenes of such well-remembered films as Dead and Buried (1981), Friday the 13th Pt. III (1982), Predator (1987), The Monster Squad (1987), Predator 2 (1990), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), Mousehunt (1997), Small Soldiers (1998), Lake Placid (1999), Jurassic Park III (2000), Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor (2001) and the recent summer blockbuster Iron Man (2008). 

Late in his career, Winston also turned to writing, directing and producing.  The eerie backwoods supernatural horror tale  Pumpkinhead (1988) was his first effort as a writer-director (the original has since spawned three sequels) and Winston returned to the forest primeval for Wrong Turn (2004), which he produced (and which has itself led to one sequel to date).  Trim, neatly bearded and looking not unlike a busy Hollywood character actor, Stan Winston was a multiple Academy Award, Saturn Award, Emmy and BAFTA Film Award winner but his greatest joy was his family.  He was surrounded by them when he died of multiple myeloma yesterday in his Malibu home at the age of 62.   Although he is gone, the creations of Stan Winston live on in our dreams, where they continue to inspire equal proportions of nightmares and wonder. 

Donations in the memory of Stan Winston may be made to the following charities:

Institute for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research
9201 W. Sunset Blvd. Ste 300
West Hollywood, CA 90069

Free Arts for Abused Children
12095 W. Washington Blvd. #104
Los Angeles, CA 90066

United States Fund for UNICEF
333 East 38th Street
NY, NY 10016