Historical Hair and Makeup Design Interview
Ever Wonder How Makeup Artists Create the Looks For Period Films? We Asked 3 of Them
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For head hair and makeup artist Jenny Shircore, bringing an Elizabethan look into modern day cinema was a challenge — especially when transforming Margot Robbie into Queen Elizabeth. "Women plucked away their eyebrows and the front of their hairlines because it was beautiful to have a high forehead and almost no eyebrows," she told POPSUGAR in an interview. Queen Elizabeth already had a high forehead, and she set the trends during her reign. "Of course, her features were very, very different from Margot's, and that was a bit of a challenge. When you're working with a modern actress who's got thick, beautifully shaped eyebrows, we've got to try and get rid of that in order to achieve the feel of the period."
In addition to eyebrow erasing and forehead expanding, Shircore had to resist making the actresses (Robbie and Saoirse Ronan) look like the "modern" versions of themselves. "You could be so tempted to use eyeliner and mascara because we're so used to that pretty definition, but you have to resist that because otherwise you just don't get the period feel," she said.