How much does a film’s director impact your work as a makeup and hairstylist? What were each of your Oscar-winning or Oscar-nominated directors like to work with? What made you want to get into the film and television business? Was there a film you saw that inspired you to go into this field?
These were some of the secrets revealed by seven of today’s top hair and makeup artists when they joined Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&A event with 2023/2024 awards contenders: Karen Hartley-Thomas (“Golda”), Thomas Nellen (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Lori McCoy-Bell (“Maestro”), Jana Carboni and Francesco Pegoretti (“Napoleon”) and Luisa Abel and Jaime Leigh McIntosh (“Oppenheimer”). Watch our captivating group discussion above and click on each name to view their solo chat.
“After about three weeks of shooting I put the question out there, ‘Does Marty like everything that we’re doing? Is he happy?’ because I hadn’t heard anything,” says Nellen while recalling his time on set with Martin Scorsese. “The line producer looked at me with a weird face and said, ‘Are you serious?’ And I said, ‘I just want to make sure that everybody’s happy and everybody’s on the same page.’ He said, ‘Look, the reason why you’re here, there’s a reason for that. If Marty wasn’t happy with what you’re doing, you would have heard it three or four weeks ago. There’s nobody here that’s not supposed to be here.’ No news is good news.”
Carboni calls 86-year old Ridley Scott “the youngest director in the business.” She credits his bold and brave personality for the reason she references him that way. “He’s very visual,” she explains. “He’s a painter. He talks in terms of colors and shade and tones. It’s very intriguing. There’s a lot of freedom. You can always push yourself outside your comfort zone and do something different. He’s very happy with that.”
“Golda” director Guy Nattiv is less experienced than the others, but an Oscar winner for his short film “Skin” (2018). “Guy was literally a driving force, there’s no question about that,” says Hartley-Thomas. “He was the one that pushed for us to go for the prosthetics. He was so enthusiastic in every department. He definitely brings the crew together to feel your part of a team. He’s very keen on the artistic and creative element of it. Not all directors are. Guy is one of the best directors I’ve worked with.”
McCoy-Bell talks about the evolution she’s seen in Bradley Cooper through the years. “He is very collaborative,” she explains. “He expects 100 percent honesty and we speak in those terms. He knows every shot he wants to get. He’s already cutting it in his mind so we don’t shoot an unnecessary amount of takes. He knows what he wants. I’ve never worked with someone that was so organized, so focused and so 100 percent in. It’s easy to work with him.”
While recalling the film that impacted his decision to get into the film business, Pegoretti says, “Probably ‘Moulin Rouge.’ When I saw the movie the first time I was 18 years old and I said, ‘This is beautiful. I would like to be part of this world.’ My mother is a hair designer too and so I started to play with hair when I was very young.”
Abel recalls loving old MGM movies. “Knowing that whatever you do actually does matter, that it really does get seen and being able to tell stories. With films you get to do that.” McIntosh adds, “I started at the salon and I knew that was going to bore me to death. I watched a behind-the-scenes film ‘Full Tilt Boogie,’ which was the making of ‘From Dusk Till Dawn. I just thought it looked like so much fun.”
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