Actor Jude Law was forced to shove a teat from a baby's bottle up his nostril for his new film Dom Hemingway because budget restrictions didn't allow him to wear a prosthetic broken nose.

The Sherlock Holmes star, who plays a criminal fresh out of prison in the gritty drama, gained 20 pounds (nine kilograms) for the role and donned fake teeth, but he had to get creative when it came to making it look like he had a smashed nose.

He tells U.S. late night Tv host Jimmy Fallon, "We had to make a face of someone who has seen a lot of life... He's just a low-life crook, he's not a gangster, he's just a criminal... We wanted to make a face that told a million stories.

"So we wanted to make a broken nose, but the budget wasn't great and we couldn't find the right prosthetic. So I worked out this way, if you get a teat off a baby's bottle and you cut it and you shove it up your nostril, it makes your nose look huge. If you do it on one side only, it makes it look broken. So I was doing that every night."

Law admits he didn't want memories of his violent thug character lingering after the movie wrapped, so he buried all the props from the film.

He adds, "Living as Dom for three or four months, I loved him and I hope other people love him too, but I had enough and so I put him in a box... and buried him, just sort of to banish his spirit out of my system."