Originally Alien Trilogy Blog was meant and written for uber fans who know it all, study the film for decades, own laserdiscs etc. But as time went on, I noticed a new generation of fans appeared, and also, that not all big time fans of the films were know-it-all diehards. Not everyone have read all the books ever written or watched all the documentaries ever produced countless times. So the FAQ or Facts For New Fans section will be for those who haven't gotten beyond the movies or have very surface production information.
Let's take a look at all the people who portrayed the titular creature in the Alien Trilogy (1979-1992).
There's an interesting myth that was born over time about who portrayed the original Alien. Once in a while I'll see a comment on some group attributing the success of the original to being played by an 6'10, very slender African, Bolaji Badejo. Bolaji did play the creature, but what some may not know is that he was just one of the 3 people who did, and only appeared in the last quarter of he film. He didn't even have more scenes than other performers! That fact alone only proves how well Ridley Scott shot the Alien, to the point where a regular height and build people couldn't be told apart from a nearly 7 foot slender man and even today people can't tell. Here are the 3 performers as they appear chronologically in the film
EDDIE POWELL
The first time we meet the original adult version of the Alien, it's Eddie Powell. Eddie Powell was a British actor and stunt performer with a very large list of credits (although he largely went uncredited on many). It is he who we see when we first see the Alien, when he kills Brett and gets revealed in the movie.
Originally the scene was suppose to show much more of the Alien, who was first in a crucified pose, then curled up, and then dives down, crushes Brett's head and takes him up.
Him "landing" and taking Brett are the only moments that made the movie, although the curled up Alien shot has been restored in the Director's Cut of the film. If you're watching the Director's Cut then, it is the first shot revealing the Alien, and the only alien pose that was practiced in movement tests.
The reason why I'm mentioning this is to dispel any claims that Powell was just a stuntman who was suppose to do stunts in quick cuts. He was also an actor and performed an entire scene by himself only. There was no other actor involved in the entire sequence or on the set, it's not just a regular stunt job where he's the one taking a fall. He was performing as the Alien in its big reveal, originally in multiple poses and longer shots.
Now the reason why Bolaji Badejo, the most known actor to portray the original, didn't play Alien in this scene is because Bolaji was just a student, not an actor or performer. The suit was too restrictive for him and he declined to perform those scenes, which were just too hard for him.
Eddie Powell was not happy that he wasn't credited as the Alien since he didn't do just stunts and performed as Alien instead of Badejo more than the credited Badejo did. He only started getting his due around the turn of the century
Movie Collector's Magazine 1996: “Finally, Eddie Powell receives his due credit for having played the title role monster in the first Alien film which he, for years, felt cheated out of.”
Locus Magazine 1999: “One of the most enthralling interviews was with the stunt man Eddie Powell. Name a SF film, indeed any film, made in England between 1946 and 1985 and it is almost certain that Eddie was involved in the stunt work. In fact Eddie was the original Alien in Alien, and not as cited in the credits: that stuntman apparently found the Alien costume too constraining and left the set. Eddie was called to take his place but even Eddie asked for modifications to be made to Giger’s original design so as to ensure better stability and mobility.”
Eddie Powell: "The other sci-fi film I’m known for is a film that Ridley Scott did – Alien, and I was brought in to play the Alien. The original person pulled out right at the very beginning -didn’t want to know about it- so I took over. I said to the producer three-quarters of the way through the film, ‘I hope I’m going to get the main credit for this.’ I just got it for the action for the Alien, which really upset me.” (Dalekmania 1995)
The next time we see the Alien is in Dallas's death scene in the vents. And in this scene, the Alien is also played by - you guessed it, Eddie Powell. Out of 4 scenes involving the Alien (Brett's demise, Dallas' demise, Lamber and Parker's demise and Shuttle ending), Powell did two which make him the prominent actor portraying the Alien.
Again, Badejo could not perform in the restrictive suit and could barely fit in the duct so Eddie Powell yet again took the role. So it's the second time the Alien appears in the movie to snatch his second victim and it's yet again Eddie Powell
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And here's a kicker - Eddie Powell actually played one of the Alien Warriors in Aliens! So the same guy who played the original Alien for its first two scenes played an alien in the first sequel as well.
BOLAJI BADEJO
Bolaji Badejo is of course the most known figure to play the original Alien (and the only one credited as the Alien in the credits), or any Alien for that matter. Found in a pub, an intelligent Nigerian student was chosen to play the Alien due to his enormous height (6'10) and extremely slender silhouette. It was around his body cast that the Alien costume was sculpted by H.R. Giger, and he portrayed the alien in the promotional photoshoot
However, since Bolaji wasn't an actor or a performer, he couldn't do most of the scenes in the film, and was replaced by two other actors and performers. Some may actually be surprised that he only appeared as an Alien in a scene and a half! I remember I was many, many years ago when I started reading on the making of the films. I always assumed he played the Alien throughout the film, because the others were never mentioned in the press back in the days. Nowadays, the popular myth of course tends to be the one from the 90's - some may think he did indeed portrays the Alien in the entire movie, when in fact he played it in less scenes than Eddie Powell.
Badejo performed the Alien during the demise of Lamber and Parker. he is the one uncurling from the floor into full height in front of Lambert and then grabbing and headbiting Parker.
It is he who Ripley sees when she tries to enter the shuttle for the first time, although those are just 3 flash fast cuts showing a glimpse of his torso, piece of Alien's head, then his face
The reason why we never actually even see the Alien taking a single step in the original movie is that even with Bolaji's silhouette and mime training and testing, seeing anyone walk in this suit reveals the man-in-the-suit trick. They tried crab walk, slow, controlled walk, but everything was eventually cut and the only movement of the Alien we see is of his upper body proceeding forward for a brief moment. It proved to be a great call because everyone is recalling the Alien's graceful, eerie movements while we actually don't see it in the movie. But the movie makes enough of an impression of the creature that we kind of imagine it this way rather than see a hokey version, which is a credit to how Scott edited the movie. Those were different times and the rubber suit didn't allow for much
The next scene in which Bolaji Badejo appears as an alien is of course in the shuttle - he is the Alien nested between the pipes and machinery of the shuttle, and he is the one getting out of the spot
Even that scene proved incredibly difficult for Bolaji who was suffocating trying to get out of that spot and the costume kept breaking. Once the Alien gets out of his corner, someone else takes over the role of the Alien till the end of the film. Bolaji Badejo played the Alien in one and a half scenes (Lambert and Parker's death, half of the shuttle ending). The reason why I'm pointing this out is not because I want to discredit Bolaji, but I want to shed the light on the fact that other actors played the original Alien just as much if not more and they don't get enough credit among generic movie fans
ROY SCAMMELL
Roy Scammell is the third man to portray the Alien in the original film.
He was a stuntman who first appears as the Alien when Ripley notices it standing next to her after singing a song to herself.
All the subsequent scenes with Alien are Scammell - getting shot by a harpoon, sucked out of the shuttle, trying to get back and being blasted by (as it was in the script and storyboards or, retroactively just pushed away according to Romulus) the engines.
Scammell took over since Bolaji, who again, wasn't a professional performer, had a hard time just getting out of a resting position to the floor, never mind all the other more physical scenes and also stunts, so stuntman Scammell took the costume from here on. It's a significant scene because it is the one that fully reveals the entire Alien at the end of the movie, and surprisingly, it's not Bolaji as one would think.
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Aliens tackled the problem of the rubber suit differently. Since the suit restricted nearly all the planned movements of the original and caused the main actor playing the Alien to step aside for most of the film for stunt people to take over, the Alien suits were made out of leotards with plastic pieces on them. Identical to the original (See HERE) but made out of different, simple materials to allow complete mobility. Now the aliens could do what the original was suppose to but couldn't do due to the restrictions posed by the rubber suit - run around upside down, on the walls etc. In Aliens, it was always the intent never to show the aliens other than as shadows, silhouettes and in very, very fast cuts
Also, Aliens basically took the approach of the original - in the original Alien, the Alien was mostly played by stunt people, and for very few shots a nearly 7 feet tall Bolaji Badejo was utilized for his inhuman height and skinny physique. Aliens would also use stuntmen mostly, and went further up trying to achieve the inhuman look by making an animatronic and posable puppets that were inhumanely skinny and 8 feet tall! A whole foot taller than Bolaji was. James Cameron noticed that basically the original Alien cheated the alien height for most of the film when the alien was played by regularly built people
James Cameron: For 'Alien', they went out of their way to find a very tall person to be inside the suit - Bolaji Badejo was something like seven feet tall. We knew right off that we weren't going to be able to find ten people who were seven feet tall. On the other hand, in studying 'Alien' we found that there was really only one shot in the entire film that shows a direct scale between the creature and a human being. In all other shots, it exists separately in the frame. So we decided that rather than go for height, we'd go for people who had the right physique to be in the suits - the thinnest people we could find that had the strength to do the kinds of movements we wanted, such as hanging on wires and crawling upside down and that sort of thing. In the end, they averaged six-feet tall, but by putting them on footstools or doing low angles on the creatures and high angles on the people looking at them we were able to create impression that the warriors were much taller than they actually were" (Cinefex magazine 1986)
James Cameron: I went more for motion as opposed to design. We kept the design more or less the same as [Alien] ... We spent most of our R&D time on motion (...) people need very few pixels of information to identify a human figure, and most of that identification is through motion. The way we walk is so ingrained in us mentally that you can see it just like that. So what we did was we actually re-designed the suit and made it simpler and less sophisticated and basically freed it so that it was much more flexible (Don Shay Int 1986)
Stan Winston: Whenever we could, we used one of the puppets because they were about eight feet tall and very thin - there was no way they could have been humans in the suits" (Cinefex magazine 1986)
The production used gymnasts, stuntmen and dancers to portray the creatures. Here's a list of some performers who portrayed the Alien Warriors: Chris Webb, Carl Toop, Eddie Powell, Malcolm Weaver, Sean McCabe, Steve Dent, Jason White, Stuart Fell, Jazzer Jeyes, Bill Weston. Picture below from Stan Winston Studios, published in Making of Aliens book, captured as portraying background Warriors only meant to be seen in the shadows or the background.
As mentioned before, a fact that may surprise some, is that one of the actors who portrayed the original Alien in its first two appearances returned for the role in Aliens - Eddie Powell. However, Powell was part of the wave of aliens rather than having stand alone scenes.
The more notable performer was a dancer Carl Toop, whose Warrior suit was auctioned years ago with his name tag inside.
Toop was chosen for his ability to contort and twist his body, and he actually studied Bolaji Badejo’s movement test from the original movie for the performance reference (AvPGalaxy Interview with Carl Toop). He was the Warrior who grabbed Dietrich, the Warrior who killed Ferro therefore crashes the dropship, the one that rises from the water behind Newt and the one in the hive that leaps from wall to wall towards Ripley.
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With Alien 3, a then-newly formed makeup and creature effects company, ADI, took over the Alien franchise up until it went back to Scott. What I mean by that is that they designed and built every alien in between, and one of the two founders, Tom Woodruff Jr would also portray alien in every movie in that time period
TOM WOODRUFF JR
Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis were former Stan Winston employees who left him to start their own effects company and since Stan Winston wasn’t available to do Alien 3, he recommended the duo for their big break. They were young and it was their chance to break into the big league so they tried to be all over it, taking over the design from H.R Giger and wanting to perform in the suit themselves. Tom Woodruff took it upon himself to portray the Runner.
Woodruff wanted to be the guy in the suit for 2 reasons. One was that he felt he can do better than what was done on Aliens (he worked in creature department shop), even though the creatures in the second film are only shown on quick cuts and fleeting glimpses.
Tom Woodruff: “ On Aliens, it bothered me when we’re setting up the suits on the stuntmen up in the ceiling of the of the Med Lab. All these stuntmen are all on their wires and stuntmen are not the skinniest guys. Some of them are very muscular some of them are just kind of fit in the middle. (...) When I saw that I thought “Wow if I get a chance to do this, I’m going to come up with some really cool moves.” I wanted to be able to about to see the alien in more of a longer shot even if it’s just a few seconds longer to capture what that thing looks like on screen.“(AvPGalaxy interview)
But the primary reason was so that the suit holds up and their lack of experience doesn't show. They went back to the approach of detailed suit made for longer shots, and the rubber and foam latex suit was uncomfortable and hard to move in. Again, it was their first gig and their chance and they were willing to do anything not to waste it
Tom Woodruff: “ [Another reason was] not wanting to reveal that ADI built something uncomfortable, or they built something that a stunt man would want in and out several times a day. I told Alec we’d just glue it in, and I’ll stay in, and I don’t care. It preserves the glove; it preserves the wrist. Part of that was allowing us to build things fast and inexpensively because we didn’t have to have multiples and we didn’t need to make it all comfy. “(AvPGalaxy interview)
Woodruff introduced a pose in Alien 3 that he would use in all subsequent movies, which is leaning forward with the spread arms. You don't really see it in the movie as it was cut, but it will be vastly dominant pose in the subsequent films.
Tom Woodruff: “ I was doing things where I would lean way over to try to move and just make it as non-human. I was just going for a non-human and I was also a big fan of Ray Harryhausen and I used to think of all of his creatures. Even if they’re standing, they have just a little bit of movement to him, and I would do that. If Fincher said “Walk down this hall. Stop on this mark.” I would walk down the hall and as I get to the mark, I’m trying to picture what’s the cool pose of the alien because that to me, it’s like a frame of the comic book. So, I have to go from page one to page two and as I’m approaching page two, I know it wants to be this. So, I would come up to that kind of a movement at the end. (AvPGalaxy interview)
