One of the most prominent actors in "The Social Network" -- this weekend's No. 1 film at the box office and an early favorite for next year's Academy Awards -- is a man named Josh Pence, a former Ralph Lauren model whose most prominent role before this movie was as a bartender in an episode of "CSI: NY." You can be forgiven if you don't remember his role in "The Social Network": You never once saw his face.
Two of the major characters in David Fincher's film are Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, identical twins who accuse Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for Facebook. Watching the movie, you'd think that they were played by real-life twins; the Winklevoss brothers -- or the "Winkelvi," as Zuckerberg's character memorably calls them -- are together onscreen throughout the film. But the brothers are in fact played by two unrelated actors: Armie Hammer, who plays Cameron, and the aforementioned Josh Pence, who plays Tyler. But thanks to the digital wizardy of Fincher, you only see the face of Hammer. Pence, essentially, had his face erased in post-production, explains The Washington Post.
The technique Fincher used is similar to how Brad Pitt was made to look two decades younger in Fincher's last movie, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Hammer and Pence prepared for the roles as if both their faces would be used, and Fincher filmed them both for each scene. Then Hammer went back and performed Tyler's lines, and Fincher and his computer imaging staff then scrubbed out Tyler's face and replaced it with Hammer's. The end result is seamless; unless you're specifically looking for it, you'll never be able to tell that there aren't two identical actors. Hammer, essentially, played one full Winklevoss brother, and the head and neck of the other.
That's all fine and good, but poor Pence went through all the trouble of playing his role only to have no one even know it. (He does have a cameo in the film, playing an entirely different character, early in the film.) He took it well, calling it "a no-brainer," but does note to The Post that in his next film, audiences will see his full face.
It's not the only bit of digital trickery in the film. At one point in the film, Bill Gates gives a speech to a class of Harvard students, including Zuckerberg. Even though the character both looks and talks like Gates, it's not him; it's actually a "professional Gates impersonator," according to Entertainment Weekly. But his voice was dubbed by a "24-year-old African American kid with dreadlocks," who just happened to sound like Gates.
From all accounts, though, that really is Justin Timberlake in the film, and not just a computer simulation of him.
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