Fangs for the memories! Hollywood’s go-to man for false teeth reveals all about the art of creating the best not-so-pearly whites for the big screen (and yes he's British!) 

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If you've been to the movies in the past 20 years, chances are you've seen the work of Hollywood's go-to guy for molding prosthetic teeth. 

Gary Archer, a Los Angeles-based British expat, is a dental technician known for creating the smiles of some of the silver screen's most memorable characters - including Austin Powers's gnarly grin and Blade's fantastic fangs.

Archer moved from London to the US in 1976 with his father, where they ended up working in a dental lab together as technicians, he told Little White Lies. 

His dad was a master dental technician and lab owner in England and the US, Archer said.

When Archer's dad became ill in the early 1980s he left college and came to work in the lab.

Gary Archer has been Hollywood's go-to guy for prosthetic teeth for more than 20 years 

Archer stayed on and was trained as a dental technician once his dad's health improved. 

They started creating prosthetic teeth for movies in the mid-1990s after special effects makeup legend Greg Cannom commissioned them to make a set of teeth that would fall out of somebody's mouth and into a glass of water.

It was for the 1993 comedy Mrs Doubtfire.  

The gag turned into an iconic movie moment, and solidified Archer's place in the upper echelons of the special effects world.  

'They liked what we did, they told someone else, who told someone else. 

'I don’t really have to advertise because my name is out there. It’s been out there for many, many years, and people just sort of find me', Archer said.  

Here, Archer shares the story behind some of his most memorable creations. 

Mrs Doubtfire

Archer created the upper denture worn over Robin Williams's front teeth for the 1993 movie Mrs Doubtfire. This was his first Hollywood dental prosthetic commission

Within weeks of making the upper denture worn by Robin Williams Archer and his dad started getting inquiries about other dental prosthetics.

No one else specialized in this at the time, Archer said. And for the longest time it was just him and his dad who were doing it.    

Blade

The marker of good fake fangs is that the person wearing them can speak comfortably, Archer says. The British expat has made sets for the movies Blade and Interview With The Vampire  

Archer's fangs have been on point for more than two decades. 

Creating them for Wesley Snipes in Blade and for all of the major characters in Interview With The Vampire wasn't that different to making normal prosthetic teeth, he said.

The biggest thing is the actor has to be able to speak comfortably while wearing them, Archer added. 

'The key is making teeth that are comfortable and that they can work with. They mustn’t suddenly have a speech impediment', Archer said.  

Austin Powers

Archer modeled Austin Powers's gnarly grin on some of his English expat drinking buddies

Archer may be responsible for propagating the myth about bad British teeth. 

When Mike Myers approached him for the Austin Powers movie he was adamant that the character have 'bad British 1960s teeth'. 

'There’s an English pub out here where I live in the Valley and a lot of English expats are in there. And so I basically looked at a lot of the smiles from the clientele there', Archer said.

Austin Powers's teeth were modeled after two or three of those people, Archer said. 

He took photos, made sketches and then came up with the teeth design, which Myers loved. 

'[Myers] that I’d absolutely nailed it. So we ran with it. He made those teeth famous', Archer said.

Archer's crowning achievement are the dentures worn by Anthony Hopkins in the 1995 movie Nixon. 

'Making those was interesting. We used pictures of Nixon himself as inspiration. 

'Hopkins, along with the make-up people who designed the prosthetics, described to me what his teeth looked like. His four front teeth were fairly white, his side teeth were fairly yellow', Archer said. 

Hopkins liked the teeth so much he would forget he was wearing them, eat with them in and they'd shatter.

He'd then bring them back to Archer and say: '"I’m terribly sorry Gary, I’ve broken the teeth", in that lovely Welsh accent of his. And he’s a lovely man. A lovely, lovely man', Archer said.

Spring Breakers

Spring Breakers featured a set of 'gold' grills created by Archer, who said the production didn't want to spend thousands on real gold, so he used a metal casting instead

James Franco's gold grills were actually a metal casting, Archer said.

Usually real gold is used, but Archer said the production didn't want to shell out thousands.

So, instead, Archer used non-precious gold. 

'It’s a gold coloured alloy, but when it’s cast and polished it looked almost identical to gold. It just doesn’t have the properties of real gold', he said.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Jonah Hill's blindingly white prosthetics in The Wolf of Wall Street are made from the same material and colors found in the dental industry, Archer says 

Jonah Hill doesn't particularly have straight or white teeth, Archer said, but the actor insisted on having perfect white veneers for the movie.

The acrylics used for Hill's blindingly white prosthetics are the same material and colors found in the dental industry, Archer said.

'We try to stay away from paint and things like that because that type of stuff is not necessarily health-safe', he said.

The Free State of Jones

For the Civil War drama, Matthew McConaughey traded in his Hollywood smile for a set of yellowed prosthetic teeth. 

'That’s one of the problems: all the Hollywood A-listers have got absolutely perfect teeth and they look way, way too perfect to be believable. 

'Especially if they’re playing a Civil War officer in the 1860s. So what we have to do is make the teeth look regular, make them look 1860s. 

'If you look at the pictures, you can see that they look very un-Matthew McConaughey', Archer said.