Unusual look for Dame Edna and Doctor Who in The Hobbit

Two Hampstead actors are set to hit cinema screens across the country tomorrow – but not as you know them.

Film fans will have to mentally peel back the layers of prosthetics and peer through lashings of special effects to recognise Barry Humphries and Sylvester McCoy in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

For most of his career Mr Humphries has delighted and outraged audiences around the globe as the vainglorious, lilac-haired diva Dame Edna Everage.

But in the eagerly-anticipated fantasy epic, the West Hampstead resident appears as the Goblin King, an evil leader who dwells in the Misty Mountains.

Hampstead actor Mr McCoy, who was the seventh incarnation of the much-loved Dr Who, donned his wizard’s cloak and the necessary bulbous nose to play Gandalf’s ally Radagast The Brown.

It might well be the biggest franchise that either has been involved in, so don’t blink or you’ll miss them.