After doing makeup on about a thousand of them over three decades, they're my favourite creatives to work with. Don't get me wrong, I like working with all creatives in the film industry - cinematographers, writers, producers, directors - but it's with actors that I've spent the most time.
My job for years was in helping them create a character, them uncovering the inner and me assisting on the outer. I've always enjoyed watching them perform and learned something from each one I worked with. From Rodney Saulsberry (see VIOLET, below), I learned how to do makeup for black actors so their headshots would land where they wanted with casting directors. From Tim Russ, I learned how an actor memorizes huge chunks of dialogue the night before a shoot. In recent years I've focused on screenwriting instead of makeup and have found that the best input I get on characters is from actors. Not writers, surprisingly. Writers tend to be too in love with their own work, or prefer a particular writing style, film genre, or subject. Their evaluations get framed by those prejudices - plus they usually fucking hate to read another writer's work. An actor will read a script and might think: Why is character X doing that? How might I throw a twist on entering this scene? What does X really want here? In what ways could I play that subtext?
Right before the pandemic, a friend helped pass a script of mine to actress Joelle Carter to consider playing the lead role. She loved the script and the character. We emailed a few times and set up a time to talk. I made sure to re-examine everything about that character's psychology ahead of the call; I wanted to be ready for anything Joelle might ask. When we got on the phone, I asked if she had any questions about her character. She replied, "Actually, I've got a question about her husband..." This took me completely by surprise. I don't recall the question, but do remember it was insightful and perceptive. That Joelle's first inclination was to examine a facet of another character which impacted hers really impressed me.
Didi Conn
My first film job - March of 1980 - was doing beauty makeup and scars on Didi Conn for an American Film Institute (AFI) short, VIOLET. Didi had recently starred in GREASE and YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE. In VIOLET, she played a girl who travels by bus from North Carolina to Tulsa to have her scars healed by a TV preacher. Aside from a facial scar required throughout filming, there was a love scene that revealed scars on her neck and upper chest.
My only experience at the time was self-makeups I had done on myself as a 13-year old so I didn't have much of a portfolio when I interviewed with the producer and director. Luckily I had brought in a plaster face of my girlfriend; the producer told me later he felt if I could do that I could handle the scar makeup for the film. Didi was really sweet to work with - and more than understanding when I burned her face during our first makeup test. She told me she had sensitive skin but said to go ahead and try my first approach for the scar - using collodion. This material was a liquid plastic you painted on and as it evaporated it would draw and suck the skin inward. Unfortunately, collodion contained ether and acetone. I should never have tried it on her but I was young and inexperienced. Within 20 minutes, Didi had a burning red welt across the side of her face.
Instead of overreacting, she gave me the number of her friend Dan Striepeke, a veteran makeup artist whose work I knew from PLANET OF THE APES, PATTON, and THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. I phoned Dan who suggested I try Duo eyelash adhesive, a very mild material. I ended up using Duo for the three weeks of filming. Today I cringe when I see the scar - coloured far too deeply. But I did take great take pains to make it look exactly the same each day.
Since VIOLET was a student film, none of the crew were getting paid. In order to work on it, I asked my boss at my day job for a three-week leave of absence. He promptly fired me. When the producer of VIOLET found out, he offered to pay me $250 (about $850 in today's currency). I was the only paid crew member, a fact which I had to keep secret so others wouldn't get upset. I never had any regrets losing my stupid day job to do VIOLET. It was my start in the film industry and I'm still close friends with several people I met on that film.
VIOLET won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film at the 54th Academy Awards in March of 1982. To let my parents living in India know the news, I sent them a cable. Back then, you had to pay per letter and cables to India were pretty expensive. Something got lost in translation along the way... and my Mom and Dad mistakenly thought I had won an Oscar.
I have been looking for a copy of VIOLET for years and just by chance, someone posted it one YouTube ten days ago. It's a beautiful little film with great performances by Didi, Rodney Saulsberry, and Patrick Dollaghan. Definitely worth a watch.
Ronny Cox
Another early project was the film COURAGE in 1983. Actor Ronny Cox wrote the script along with his wife Mary. It was about marathon runners in the desert pursued by weekend warriors intent on killing them. The idea for the story was sparked by an experience Ronny had.
The makeup progressions were central to the story and proved challenging in the New Mexico summer heat. We shot for six weeks, primarily in the deserts and mountains. Bart Mixon came on board and helped me for the entire film. We did every actor’s makeup, all the injuries and some bloodletting, even beauty makeup for the women and some hair cutting.
The physical ravages the three runners faced were the tasks of Bart and I each morning. It was tricky to maintain continuity but fortunately the film progressed in a logical shooting fashion from place to place - they were running remember - and this made our work a bit easier. Each day we put Ronny, Art Hindle and Tim Maier in full body makeup with PAX wash sunburns, 355 scabs, scrapes, cuts, peeled lips, scraped knees, dried acrylic blood, liquid dirt, greasy hair and lots of sweat before each take.
It was on this film that I learned an actor sometimes has more on his mind than getting the makeup on. Since Ronny was the writer he often had conferences with the director as I was making him up. Unlike some actors who would be un-cooperative, Ronny was the opposite, as kind and considerate as possible. He spoiled me because I thought at the time all actors were like that. Even if Ronny was in the middle of a discussion with the director, I knew I could feel free to interrupt or simply grab his leg and twist his body so I could work on the area I needed to. He never complained about time or discomfort, in fact he was patient beyond words. When it came time for him to work, I extended the same courtesy. If Ronny preferred not to be wetted down with glycerine sweat but to instead ‘run it,’ I would let him do that, at risk of seeing my makeup wear off. Ronny let me do my thing, I would allow him to do his. So sometimes before a take, instead of spraying him with sweat, Ronny would run off a quarter mile and return - sweating the real stuff profusely - as cameras rolled and I rushed in to touch up anything I could.
I guess I got lucky working early on with an actor who also had a stake as the film’s writer. It was clear Ronny cared deeply about the end product and would bend over backwards to make it better in every respect. Ronny set the bar for me as far as professionalism in acting and the actor/makeup artist relationship. Indeed, he spoiled me because he was the penultimate professional. I am still in touch with him 38 years after this film.
Ronny wrote his biography, DUELING BANJOS: THE DELIVERANCE OF DREW. Terrific stories, well told. It is available on Amazon. He also has a Facebook page.
PHOTO AT TOP: Actor Rio Dewanto in JAVA HEAT. No, I did not put tattoos on him--those are his. My job was to put three bullet hole prosthetics on him and cover the tattoos, back, sides and front. Time elapsed for bullet holes: ten minutes. Time for tattoo covering: three hours. (Makeup technical notes: I used a layer of orangey PAX first, followed by a thinner neutral tone PAX layer. I did most of my colouring with a Ben Nye Olive Palette, which worked beautifully on his skin tones.)