Actors are confronted every day by people whose aim is to make them look bad: paparazzi, trying to catch them leaving a club with a hooker...or dirty slacks; fellow actors, trying to show them up in a scene; directors, trying to make them do things that will cause them to look foolish onscreen; late-night talk-show hosts, trying to besmirch their reputations by mocking their peccadilloes. But there’s at least one person in each actor’s life who has no purpose other than to make him look good — not his agent, nor his manager, nor his lawyer nor his publicist nor even, in some cases, his mom: the one person an actor can always count on to show him to his best advantage is his makeup artist. Which may be why so many actors end up married to makeup artists.
This isn’t a new trend. Stars married (or formerly married) to makeup artists (or former makeup artists) include Anthony “ER” Edwards, Noah “ER” Wyle, Rob “The West Wing” Lowe, Johnny “Pirates of the Caribbean” Depp, Sam “Jurassic Park” Neill, and Robert “The Full Monty” Carlyle. Jason Priestley recently announced his engagement to makeup artist Naomi Lowde, a makeup artist. His first wife, Ashlee Petersen? Also a makeup artist.
Much as the rock stars of the ’80s tended to pair up with models, TV and movie actors these days can often be found paired up with makeup artists — which is appropriate, when you think about it; every successful marriage is fundamentally a partnership, so it stands to reason that there would be a great deal of compatibility between men who are professionally vain, and women who are skilled at serving the vanity of others.
Several theories as to how these hook-ups keep hooking up would seem to present themselves. Consider symbiosis. In the wild, a symbiotic relationship may evolve between the huge and seemingly invulnerable rhinoceros, and the oxpecker bird that eats ticks off its leathery hide, feeding itself and relieving the rhinoceros of potentially injurious pests.
On the set, the actor is the rhino and the makeup artist his attentive oxpecker. Like the oxpecker, the makeup artist’s sole purpose is to keep the actor’s (leathery?) hide blemish-free and looking its best; the actor depends on her to maintain his professional image.
“You’re always there to take care of their needs during the day — get them something to drink if they need it, just make sure they’re okay,” says Lynda McCormack, a Toronto-based makeup artist who’s been in the business 23 years. “You’re always in their eyeline. So I think that’s a big attraction.”
Mutually beneficial relationship
McCormack has some first-hand experience in having an actor dependent on her: she spent three years as the personal makeup artist to Jeff Fahey (“Wyatt Earp,” “The Lawnmower Man”). After meeting on the set of “Darkman,” McCormack and Fahey found they had a lot in common, and soon she was travelling with Fahey and serving as “his full-time hair and makeup artist as well as his assistant,” even preparing lunches for him in his trailer. Though she and Fahey weren’t romantically involved, McCormack says they naturally became close: “You end up being their mother and their sister and their caregiver; you end up becoming all of those things to them. You can see where that attraction can come from, spending all that time together.”
And, of course, the relationship wouldn’t be entirely symbiotic if the makeup artist wasn’t also reaping some benefit from it. McCormack says that when she reads about a makeup artist marrying an actor, “I immediately think, ‘Well, she’s going to be working for a while.’”
Then there’s the simple fact of access: whenever an actor’s on the set, a makeup artist is there too. McCormack points out, “The makeup artist is the first person that they see at the beginning of the day, probably the last person they see before they go home.” Not only that, but the nature of film production is such that a production may be produced far from the actor’s home base, so that he is isolated from his family and makes friends with people on the set. “If it’s an actor from out of town, and you are working in town, you end up being somebody who shows them around and, you know, takes them out and does things with them,” says McCormack. “So, before you know it, I’m sure that attraction can happen.”
Intimate moments
In addition, makeup artist/actor interaction is necessarily intimate. The actor arrives on the set when it’s still dark out, fresh from the shower (or still drunk from the night before), and makes himself vulnerable under the makeup artist’s hands. She gets in close, he feels her penetrate his bubble of personal space, and barriers are broken down. “There’s something that happens in a makeup artist’s chair,” says McCormack. “People sit down and start telling you stories of their life, and you’re like, ‘Did I really need to know all that information? I just met you!’ But there’s something about the fact that you are very tactile with them...it's intimate. So you discuss things: you discuss your personal lives, you discuss who he’s seeing or she’s seeing; it all becomes quite intimate between the two of you.” Who wouldn’t want to keep that feeling long after the shoot is over?
Finally, there’s the notion that the actor comes to feel close to the makeup artist after giving up to her his most valuable asset: his face. “That makeup person — particularly if it’s their personal makeup person — usually has a say on [the actor’s] hair and their wardrobe as well,” says McCormack. “That actor ends up becoming very reliant on that person for that information, and being his eyes at all time.” If he already knows the makeup artist has demonstrated conscientious stewardship over his outward appearance, it stands to reason that the actor would trust her to take on the same authority over all the other less important elements of his life, too.
Says McCormack, “You find out about how funny they are; you find out all of those things when [an actor is] sitting in your chair. I can see where a makeup person could end up marrying an actor, very easily.” But the affection naturally runs in the opposite direction, too: at the end of their time together each day, the makeup artist has transformed the actor from a run-of-the-mill schlub into a matinee idol worthy of the cover of “People.” It’s entirely logical that the actor could become ensorcelled by the person whose professional standing depends on her ability to perform that kind of magic on demand.