Ancient pink curtains. Tattered magazines. Blow dryers tangled with countless electric rollers. If it weren`t for the extraordinary good looks of the people in the room and the almost endless lineup of makeup, you`d swear you were in a suburban beauty shop, circa 1960.
Instead, it`s the backstage nerve center of NBC`s daytime drama, ”Days Of Our Lives.” The ”makeup room” is the catchall phrase for a place devoted to external beauty.
Perhaps nowhere in the television medium is makeup so important as it is on a soap opera. By the very nature of its storytelling-focusing on intimate, personal feelings and interpersonal relationships-soap operas dictate an extraordinary number of close-ups.
Those fans might never know that the radiant facades of their favorite characters have been painstakingly created by a small army of makeup artists whose daily challenge is to sponge, powder and whisk away puffiness, dark circles, wrinkles (within limits), acne, scars, even accidental sunburn.
Real life boo-boos
”First thing I do every morning is run for the concealer stick,” said Charlotte Ross, a Winnetka native who plays Eve Donovan Deveraux.
”I blew it,” said Matthew Ashford, who plays newspaper editor Jack Deveraux, still peeling from a lobster-red facial sunburn. ”I went skiing for the first time and didn`t put enough goop on my face.”
These actors are probably more attractive without makeup than half the population. Unlike the rest of us, however, the pressure on them-aside from the quality of their performances-is to look almost perfect every day. Their faces, after all, are their fortune.
”When I first started this show, I came in very early in the morning and didn`t recognize these people,” said ”Days” executive supervising producer Al Rabin, a veteran of 17 years with the show. ”They`d come in all hunched over, no makeup, hair every which way.”
Carol`s posse
So the question is, how is this transformation achieved? Enter the
”Days” Emmy award-winning makeup department, headed by Carol Brown. The sophisticated, take-no-prisoners supervisor oversees five full-time makeup artists and two hairdressers within the windowless room lovingly referred to as the ”coal mine.”
Using a combination of iron will and kid gloves, Brown juggles her staff to fit a demanding, all-day rehearsal schedule and a widely varying number of actors who need to be ready for final taping by mid-afternoon.
Rush hour for hair and makeup begins at noon. Between noon and 3 p.m., as many as 25 actors or more will have to be completely made up, to say nothing of the touch-ups required during taping, and special party, costume or character makeups that generally take twice as long, and new makeup applications that must sometimes be done between scenes if the actor has been ”hurt” in a fight scene, or the makeup smeared by water, dirt, tears or another actor.
That`s a tough job when you consider that the men need at least 20 minutes to be fully made up; the women, closer to an hour, not including body makeup (to match facial tones to exposed body parts) and hairdressing. Given such unrelenting pressure and severe time constraints, it`s no wonder Brown stocks big jars of granular Vitamin C near her much-abused makeup chair. Actors are advised to leave their egos at the door.
Testimony from the troops
”We`ve tried to make it a family here,” she said. ”A lot of times, actors will come in, upset over personal problems. What we try to do is take their mind off of that for the time that they`re here, which will enable them to do the best performance that they can do. Everybody tries to do their job in such a way that the actors can concentrate on their performance.”
”By the time we`re ready for taping, we don`t even have to think about our makeup,” said Patsy Pease, who plays Kim Donovan, ”even when we know they`re on a close-up.”
”I`ve been on other shows where the actors are isolated from each other in their dressing rooms and the makeup artists seem bored with their jobs,”
said Michael Sabatino, who plays the cold and calculating new ”Days”
villain, Lawrence Alamain. ”They`ll just sort of slap the makeup on you like you`re a piece of meat. Here, there`s a lot of pride.”
And, a great deal of artistry. It begins with what Brown calls having a
”third eye,” or a sense of facial angles, proportion and potential. It`s a way of knowing beforehand how the camera will ”translate” certain colors and shadings under studio lights.
”I used to get into trouble by adding more lipstick,” said Ross.
”Sometimes, the actors think they don`t have enough makeup,” said Brown, ”and we`ll have to tell them, `That may look good to you, in here, but it will not look good on camera.` ”
From start to finish
What does look good is a rather astonishing array of sculpturing makeups. Layered like papier-mache, one over the other, they are used to make the planes of the face stand out from the overall ”flattening” effect of the camera and the dark shadows caused by overhead lights.
The sculpturing begins with yellow- or blue-toned concealer pencils used to cover imperfections-yellow for acne and birthmarks, blue for veins. That`s followed by an overall wash of sponge-applied pancake makeup base, followed by highlighter dotted under the eyes, on the bridge of the nose and around the mouth.
Shading with a darker base then goes under the cheekbones, along the jaws and the sides of the nose. Cream blush, for men and women, is applied to the cheekbones, forehead and chin, followed by an overall dusting of matte powder. Then comes the delicate work of bringing out the all-important eyes, using eyeliner, eyebrow pencils, eyeshadows and mascara. Men get some of that, too, because eyes virtually disappear under all that base and powder.
Lip coloring begins with lipliner, followed by special, non-smudge lipsticks that help prevent the color from rubbing off on skin and clothing during love scenes. Lip colors are applied, blotted, then applied again, and blotted again, and surprisingly, even after the most passionate scenes, most of it stays on the actress.
Finally, another pancake wash is applied under the eyes. What is truly remarkable about this lengthy, involved procedure is that the actors leave the makeup chairs not looking overly made up.
The last word
”The makeup should not get in the way of the characters` inner beauty,” said Rabin. ”It`s part of what I call, `the frosting.` But the cake is the performance. What we`re looking for in hair, makeup and wardrobe is a natural glamor, an understated elegance.”
Rabin, watching the monitors during dress rehearsals and show tapings, is the final arbiter on how well his staff has accomplished that goal. ”I don`t like long, dangly earrings,” he said, ”because they`re distracting. I don`t like anything distracting.”
More often, it`s a subtle change he`s looking for. With great good humor, Rabin admits he knows nothing about current fashion trends, but most definitely knows what he likes. ”I`m sort of old-fashioned about how I want our actors to look,” he said. ”When I say I don`t like this lipstick or that hairdo, my people will say, `Tell me what you don`t like about it,` and I`ll say, `I have no idea.` ”
What`s hot now
Brown, on the other hand, reads every magazine she can get her hands on-including foreign imports-and regularly attends makeup seminars. She then meets with her staff to advise them of new color trends and directions in overall style.
”Carol is a real stickler for detail, for knowing what`s happening in the rest of the world,” said Pease. ”Lately, she`s softened the look, making it softer and sexier.”
So what kind of palettes will we be seeing on a show now celebrating its 25th year on the air? ”Right now, the `60`s look is one look,” said Brown.
”But another very popular look is the earth tones-your browns and your beiges. It`s the makeup, no-makeup look.
”The trend now is not to use heavy eye shadow,” she said, adding that it isn`t always easy to talk an actress, who may have had great success with one particular look, out of changing her style. ”We try to let them know that even if they are comfortable with something, they have to stay up with the times. You cannot allow yourself to become dated.”
The anti-glamor look
There are also questions-and sometimes backstage skirmishes-over which makeups are appropriate for certain scenes. ”If a character is just waking up in bed, I don`t want them in eyelashes,” said Brown. ”Sometimes they have to look weather-beaten, windblown, or just plain tired. And that isn`t always easy on them.”
But the makeup artists seem to revel in these occasional, anti-glamor looks. ”The character stuff is fun,” said artist Gail Hopkins. ”We love doing scars and beards and stuff like that,” added artist Lucia Bianca. ”We do beauty all day long.”
