RIP : Dick Smith : Hollywood's Master of Special Effects. Dick Smith, who has died at the age of 92, was the special effects makeup artist behind Marlon Brando's jowls in The Godfather, Linda Blair's transformation, into a girl possessed by a demon in The Exorcist, and the Mohawk sported by Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. He also turned F Murray Abraham into a wizened octogenarian for his role as Mozart's rival, Antonio Salieri, in Amadeus. He broke new ground by transforming Dustin Hoffman, then in his early 30s, into a 120-year old for Little Big Man by doing away with a one-piece mask in favour of overlapping foam latex prostheses that could be controlled by the facial muscles, thus allowing actors to retain the full range of expression. Dick Smith was a perfectionist who loved a challenge and was known as the 'godfather of makeup'