He spent up to 5 hours a day putting on makeup for the role of Gimli in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was discovered early on that he was allergic to the prosthetics, so he could only put them on and work about every third day. The first week, it burned off the skin under his eyes. After filming was completed he was given the appliance used and told to do what he wanted with it. One of the makeup artists claimed they had never seen him move so fast as he threw it into a nearby fire.