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| Countdown to the 2010 Oscars: Royal Make-up |
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| ABOVE: Emily Blunt as Queen Victoria |
| Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment |
Posted: Thursday 04 March, 2010
Joe Nazzaro
Jenny Shircore vies for a second Oscar with The Young Victoria
Jenny Shircore is a bit of an expert at creating royalty. After winning Oscar and BAFTA awards for Elizabeth in 1998, the veteran British make-up designer recently picked up another BAFTA for her work on The Young Victoria, which recounts the early days of Queen Victoria (Emily Blunt), as well as her romance with Prince Albert (Rupert Friend). Shircore is an Oscar contender for this film as well.
"I suppose people are interested in royalty, aren’t they?" she said. "They know a little bit about Queen Victoria but they’ve never seen anything about the young Queen Victoria and her personality as a young girl. She starts off as a little girl (played by a different actress) and then we go from 18 to 25, so it covers those seven years. It's also a love story and a very  moving one, so I presume that’s what has interested people."
One of Shircore’s biggest responsibilities on the film was designing the make-up and hair for Blunt as Victoria. "It's a very simple look," she explained. "We kept it very simple and very sleek and everybody went for that. We were'’t told to change the eyebrows or give her lipstick, which can sometimes happen; I ran into that situation when I did Elizabeth where I was told to put eyelashes and more lipstick on Cate Blanchett—which I didn't do, because I knew Cate would not okay something like that, just as Heath Ledger wouldn't play Ned Kelly without a beard. In both of those examples, the actor wanted to be true to the person they were playing and nothing would have swayed them from that.
"If you look at some of the old paintings, Victoria never really made changes to her hair throughout her life. There was a fashion at the time, which was called the Apollo Knot, where women wore bows made out of their own hair on top of their heads, but Victoria kept the same hairstyle until the bitter end.
"In fact, one of the hardest things was when I showed Emily all the references as we started prepping the film, and she didn’t want to wear her hair the way Victoria had it for her coronation. It wasn’t the prettiest look in the world for a beautiful young actress, but she was a professional and went with it. Every hair style she wears in the film is authentic, as was her mother’s, and everybody else around her."
After finishing The Young Victoria, Shircore moved on to the big-budget fantasy epic Clash of the Titans, which she discusses in Issue 83 of Make-Up Artist magazine. She is working with Twilight’s Robert Pattinson on Bel Ami, based on the book by Guy de Maupassant. ("It's about a young man in the 1880s who climbs the society ladder by seducing the wives of influential men.")
 As for The Young Victoria, "I think you have to be true to the period," she said. "We didn't stretch the look one way or another, whereas with the Greek look of Clash of the Titans, you could play around with it. I suppose it was very straightforward to do, but hopefully we represented the period quite accurately. It was a great crew, a lovely group of actors, and while there were some long hours, I thoroughly enjoyed it!"
The Oscar broadcast happens this Sunday, March 7, on ABC. Check local listings for show times.
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Make-Up Artist Magazine Features Michael Jackson Retrospective - Monday 06 July, 2009 |
| Following the recent death of Michael Jackson, Make-Up Artist magazine’s next issue (#79) will feature a retrospective of the King of Pop,
featuring interviews with a number of make-up artists who worked with
Jackson over the past three decades, as well as some exclusive,
never-before-published photos. |
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Web Exclusive: Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Young Hellboy - Monday 04 August, 2008 |
| From a make-up perspective, the first major character to appear in Hellboy 2 is
a younger version of the hero, seen in a 1955 prologue with Professor
Broom (John Hurt). The Young Hellboy character was created by the
Barcelona-based company DDT Efectos Especiales and played in a
gender-bending twist by the company’s Montse Ribé. |
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Iranian Make-up Innovator Dies at 65 - Wednesday 14 May, 2008 |
| Iranian
movie make-up artist Farhang Moayyeri died May 10 in Tehran of cardiac arrest.
He was 65 and had already fought a long battle with lung cancer, the Iran State
News Agency reported.
Moayyeri
created several make-up designs and prosthetics for Iranian theater, television
and film. He is best known for creating make-up for the films of Bahram Beizai,
Mas'ud Kimiai and other well-known Iranian directors.
According
to the ISNA, Moayyeri was born in 1943 and began his career acting on The
Brick and the Mirror (1965), then tried directing before entering the make-up
industry in 1978. He created the make-up for Bashou, the Little Stranger (1986), Maybe Some Other Time (1988), Killing Mad Dogs (2001) and
other films.
Mohsen
Maleki, head of the Iranian Association of Make-Up Designers, expressed sorrow
over Moayyeri’s death and described him as the father of modern Iranian make-up
design. Moayyeri was honored by the association in 2006 for his efforts to train
new generations of artists in Iran's film industry.
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Wake Up to Make-up! - Thursday 11 December, 2008 |
Australian make-up artist Napoleon Perdis has his own schools, his own cosmetics line, and now, his own reality show: Get Your Face On.
The program, filmed at Perdis’ flagship L.A. store, follows 12 make-up
artists as they vie to become his protégé. The one-hour, 10-episode
show debuted Dec. 8 on the TLC network and is airing every weekday
morning through Dec. 19. We asked Perdis to tell us more.
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