They’re back! They’re toting guns, they’re kicking ass, and they’re old enough to draw a pension! Yes, the superannuated action hero is upon us, with the return of Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford and Sylvester Stallone in the action franchises that time forgot. Thanks to the unprecedented $150 million success of last year’s Rocky Balboa, all eyes are now on Ford’s resurrected Indiana Jones 4, Willis’s Die Hard 4.0 and, of course, the return of the ultimate 1980s action star – Stallone again as John Rambo in Rambo 4.

And yet, in a blockbuster world defined by sensitive New Man thirty-something stars such as Tobey Maguire ( Spider-Man) and Matt Damon ( The Bourne Identity), there is a danger that these elderly stars will seem like an anachronistic throw-back to a forgotten era – Ford is, after all, 65 this summer and hasn’t had a bona fide action smash in more than ten years (since Air Force One). More importantly, how do you take a bunch of middle-aged men (Willis is 52, Stallone is 60) with saggy skin, creaking bones, thinning hair, paunches and back problems, and make them seem like taut, high-kicking, death-defying action stars? How do you make Ford dodging spears and dashing through the jungle look credible? How do you put the wow factor into Willis leaping from a moving plane? And how do you shoot Stallone in a tight T-shirt and headband, waving an enormous gun around, without it seeming, well, silly?

The answer, of course, is that you hire the best make-up, stunts and fitness personnel in the business, and set them to work on the stars.

MAKE-UP

Never underestimate the magical power of haemorrhoid cream on a wrinkled old face, says the award-winning make-up artist Daniel Phillips. “Personally, it’s not something I’d advocate, but it’s still used within the industry. I know a lot of guys who use it – you put it under the eyelids and it has a tightening effect. It only lasts for a couple of hours, but it does the job.” Phillips, who has worked on mature male flesh for Venus (it starred Peter O’Toole), says that the faces of older stars need a “tightening balm” mixed in with their foundation cream. “A lot of the products I use also have a silicone base, which has a plumping effect on the screen. So, basically, I used the same cosmetics that I use on women – it’s all about tightening the skin and temporarily lifting out the wrinkles.”

As for the body? Well, that’s a more delicate area, he says. “I mostly airbrush the men with fake tan, which can make a huge difference on camera. But, really, there’s not a lot you can do about wrinkled body skin.” Although, he adds, if your movie revolves entirely around the unblemished perfection of your central macho middle-aged actor there is, of course, the miracle of “digital enhancement” – removing wrinkles digitally in a postproduction suite. “I know plenty of actors who’ve had this done, and plenty of editing suites that are doing it. It’s quite common now to simply lose the wrinkles in postproduction, especially on tight close-ups. A lot of actors now will be digitally enhanced.”

Phillips does have a final word of warning for our superannuated heroes. Avoid the surgeon’s knife, at all costs! “Some of these older guys look like they have had a lot of cosmetic surgery,” he says, and certainly Stallone is widely known, among scurrilous bloggers, as Rambotox. “But you get to a point where it all comes down to clever lighting and avoiding extreme close-ups. Once you start the whole face-lifting thing, it becomes a very dangerous game.”

STUNTS

Contrary to expectations, ageing action heroes are often more adept at stunt work than their younger counterparts, says the stunt co-ordinator Steen Young, who worked with Willis on The Fifth Element, Sean Connery on First Knight and Pierce Brosnan on Tomorrow Never Dies. “They have been in the industry long enough to know the pitfalls of certain stunts and how to do others properly,” says Young, who had his head split open while fighting Ralph Fiennes in The Avengers. “They know that they can break an ankle by falling off a kerb and yet jump from a 50ft building and walk away without even being winded. And they know how to avoid losing teeth in fight sequences. That’s definitely true for Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis.”

Instead, the most fundamental issue facing our heroes, claims [[ Young, is not one of physical ability but one of bottom-line constraints. “It’s all about insurance and health and safety,” he says. “The insurance people know that it’s a lot easier to replace a stunt double than it is to replace an actor. So the question is not: ‘Can they do the stunts?,’ but: ‘Should they be doing them?’”

Steen admits that the likes of Ford and Stallone won’t be going totally stunt crazy in their new movies. “They’re not going to be able to do stunts 12 hours a day,” he says. “There are always physical things, as you get older, that you’re just not able to do. And these guys know that some things aren’t worth taking the chance for any more. But they are still quite capable of riding a horse, duelling and doing their own fights. Those sorts of skills are never lost.”

FITNESS

There is no one fitness rule for the ageing action star, says the celebrity fitness trainer Ricardo Macedo, other than the fact that it’s going to be gruelling. “With these men, because of their age, their metabolism has slowed down, they’ve put on weight and their body fat percentage has increased,” he says. “So, they have to do a lot more training in the gym than the younger guys.”

It all depends, of course, on the shape of the actor, and what “look” he’s going for on screen, Macedo continues. “Stallone is obviously going for body mass and increased bulk, so he needs to do heavy weight training. But someone like Bruce Willis, who is a different shape to Stallone, needs to do more cardio work, just for general fitness and reduced body fat.”

The biggest fitness myth facing our stars, says Macedo, is that they have to work only on the body parts (say the six-pack) that’ll be exposed on camera. “Unfortunately, to have a six-pack you need a very low fat percentage,” he says. “And to achieve that you need a full workout.”

Macedo says that the quick fix approach is on the rise – Stallone was recently convicted for importing growth hormone drugs into Australia. Though the actor claimed that he was using the substance for an unnamed medical condition, Macedo says that growth hormone is being used increasingly as a short cut to that super-pumped appearance so desirable to body-builders and, well, action heroes. “It stimulates the growth of new cells – it’s on the open market and the results are fast and amazing,” he explains. “It’s up to the client to choose to go down that path or not, but unfortunately on these types of big jobs, where they are starting filming in three months, they need to have quick results and so they go down the short path.” Which, of course, isn’t very heroic. But at least it looks good.

Die Hard 4.0 is out on general release on July 4. Indiana Jones 4 and Rambo 4 are scheduled for release next year

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