I had a shoot on a cold, November morning where I had to be on-set at 5:30am. Holy cow. I can get up and be somewhere at that time of day, but to show up “camera-ready” as they requested? This was going to be tough…
I got up at 4:15, showered, washed, dried, and styled my hair and then began with the make-up routine. I had a bottle of moisturizer and my small container of liquid foundation and was going to mix a little, just like a make-up artist had showed me how to do. Each of them were no more than a few years old (I could still remember purchasing them) and I kept them in a cool, dark drawer of my dressing table. I rarely wore the liquid foundation… it was in my collection for on-camera auditions and gigs. As I smoothed the concoction on my face, it got tight and began to feel hot and itchy. At 4:45 in the morning, I did NOT have time for this. My face became increasingly, visibly red beneath the foundation. I washed it off and found my face to have, in mere minutes, turned from healthy and dewy into dry, scratched, and feeling BURNED! It was horrible! I showed up to the set without any face make-up on an incredibly sensitive. It was mind-over-matter the whole day to keep from clawing at my face and the make-up artist did an amazing job hiding my redness. Every time we took a break, I would press my face up against any cool surface I could find and it was almost a month before my skin returned to normal.
This was not a container of ancient or cheap cosmetics… these were professional grade, high quality products that were months past their prime, but they totally did me in and could have made for an embarrassing shoot. I kept thinking of Buddy Epson, the man who was first hired to play the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz and had a reaction to the silver make-up and had to be hospitalized… I could’ve lost a gig in my attempt to be thrifty.
I’m not one to be wasteful, but when my Beauty Alert labels tell me that time is up, I don’t mess around…
-Alyssa
