Thomas Vincent Savini (born November 3, 1946) is an American prosthetic makeup artist, actor, stunt performer, and film director. He is best known for his makeup and special effects work on films directed by George A. Romero, including Martin (1977), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Creepshow (1982), Day of the Dead (1985), and Monkey Shines (1988). He also created the special effects and makeup for cult films such as Friday the 13th (Parts I and IV), Maniac (1980), The Burning, The Prowler (both 1981), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986).
Savini directed Night of the Living Dead, the 1990 remake of Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. His other directing credits include three episodes of the television series Tales from the Darkside and a segment in The Theatre Bizarre.
As an actor and stunt performer, he has appeared in films such as Martin (1977), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Knightriders (1981), From Dusk till Dawn (1996), Planet Terror (2007), Machete (2010), Django Unchained (2012), and Machete Kills (2013).
Tom has a son and two daughters. In mid August 2026, he lost his home and 2 pets, both cats, in an electrical fire, alongside many of his work and props. He and his wife were reported as both surviving the fire. A $50,000 fundraiser was started to help in reconstruction and replacement efforts.
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Early life
Thomas Vincent Savini was born on November 3, 1946, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is of Italian descent. He was raised Catholic and graduated from Central Catholic High School. As a boy, his inspiration was actor Lon Chaney: Savini attributes his earliest desires to create makeup effects to Chaney and the film Man of a Thousand Faces (1957).
Experimenting with whatever medium he could find, the young Savini practiced creating makeup effects on himself, later convincing his friends to let him practice his craft on them. He also discovered another passion: acting. Combining his makeup applications and homemade costumes, he especially enjoyed scaring his friends.
Savini practiced fencing and gymnastics. He is also accomplished with a bullwhip and can do motorcycle stunts. Many of his characters would be bikers or madmen who are hardened and eerily evil.
Savini attended Point Park University for three years before enlisting in the United States Army.
Savini served as a combat photographer during the Vietnam War. In a 2002 interview, he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "When I was in Vietnam, I was a combat photographer. My job was to shoot images of damage to machines and to people. Through my lens, I saw some hideous [stuff]. To cope with it, I guess I tried to think of it as special effects. Now, as an artist, I just think of creating the effect within the limitations we have to deal with." He continued to practice with makeup in Vietnam, often frightening locals by appearing to suddenly transform into a "monster".
Using the lens of his camera, Savini separated himself from the real-life horrors of war, although the images still haunted his mind. Savini said his wartime experiences influenced his eventual style of gory effects: "I hated that when I watched a war movie and someone dies. Some people die with one eye open and one eye half-closed, sometimes people die with smiles on their faces because the jaw is always slack. I incorporated the feeling of the stuff I saw in Vietnam into my work."
In 1969, while on guard duty on Cantho Airfield, a flare was triggered in the jungle area Savini was watching. Against military protocol, Savini fired into the bush without informing his superiors. Other soldiers likewise began firing until a duck wandered from the bush completely unharmed. Due to his failure to follow orders, Savini was taken off guard duty from his bunker on the following evening. That same evening, the bunker came under attack and several soldiers were wounded or killed. As a result of this incident, Savini earned the nickname "Duck Slayer" and to this day will not eat duck.
Career
Savini is primarily known for his groundbreaking work in the special make-up effects known as prosthetic makeup. His signature style and techniques bring vivid realism to genre films.
Early in Savini's career, Dick Smith—known for his groundbreaking work in The Exorcist (1973)—became an inspiration and a guide, and later an associate at Savini's Special Make-up Effects Program.
Savini got his breakthrough working with Pittsburgh filmmaker George A. Romero, providing a convincing wrist-slashing effect in the opening scenes of Martin (1977). The following year, working with a larger budget on Dawn of the Dead, Savini created his signature palette of severed limbs and bite-marks. In the 1980 slasher film Friday the 13th, Savini expanded his repertoire of blood and gore. He continued to perfect those techniques in 1980's Maniac. and 1981's The Burning and The Prowler.
Savini earned the nickname "The Sultan of Splatter". In 1982, he created more traditional horror effects in Creepshow, a movie directed by Romero from a script written by Stephen King. In 1984, he agreed to work on Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, where he killed his creation Jason Voorhees. Returning to the zombie genre in 1985, Savini won the year's Saturn Award for Best Makeup Effects for his work on the Romero's Day of the Dead. In 1986, Savini worked with director Tobe Hooper on the film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. In 1998 he was the Media Guest of Honor for the World Horror Convention.
Savini has also worked on films by Italian director Dario Argento: 1990's Two Evil Eyes and 1993's Trauma. In the 1991 film Heartstopper, he created special effects for director John A. Russo. In 2011, he supervised the effects for the Australian film Redd Inc.
Savini has also acted in many of the same films he created effects for. His first appearance was a relatively straight, innocuous character in Martin in 1978. He then played Blades, a menacing biker, in Dawn of the Dead, a role he reprised in zombie form with a cameo appearance in the 2005 continuation of the series, Land of the Dead. In Maniac, he briefly appeared before facing the maniac's shotgun and having his head blown off in a spectacular display. Savini had a more prominent role as biker and antagonist Morgan, the Black Knight, in Romero's Knightriders (1981). Savini played the whip-wielding, vampire-fighting biker "Sex Machine" in the 1996 Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez film From Dusk till Dawn.
FX education
Savini runs the Tom Savini's Special Make-Up Effects Program at the Douglas Education Center in Monessen, Pennsylvania. Savini says he refers offers he receives for movie make-up effects projects to his students and graduates of his school.
Savini is the author of several books on special effects, including Grande Illusions I and II (1983, 1994), which detail the production and mechanical workings of many of his famous film effects. In Horror F/X, a 1989 direct-to-video interview conducted by frequent collaborator Russo, Savini explains many of his effects techniques, illustrated by film clips and behind-the-scenes video footage. He is also associated with other books in the horror genre including Book of the Dead and Horror 101 for which he wrote the foreword. Savini has also appeared in public demonstrating his effects, including appearances in the 1980s on Late Night With David Letterman in which he demonstrated such effects as "fire gel" and a gunshot to the head on Letterman himself.
Filmography
As an actor
Films
Television
Video game
