Interview with Kristen's Makeup Artist

I included one picture that was supplied by Robin from Behind the Scenes of New Moon, her with Peter and Kristen.  There are a lot more BTS pictures from all the movies she has work with Kristen on.

Robin Mathews Fan Question Interview

With over forty films to her name, including Welcome to the Rileys, The Mist, Waiting, Into the Wild, The Runaways, the currently shooting Catch .44, as well as The Twilight Saga Films, Robin Mathews has become a household name with Kristen Stewart Fans especially. Even with her very busy shooting schedule Robin took some time out to answer some questions from fans and also send some pictures from her personal photo collection which she captioned herself. 

When doing Kristen's make up for Welcome to the Rileys, had there always been a specific look you wanted to incorporate into the film?

   
     Jake is very visually creative. He’s also an artist. (It’s actually his hands you see when Lois is painting in the movie). He had this beautiful photograph of a young European girl he found. She was sad but had much depth in her eyes. I put it up on the wall of the make-up trailer as reference for what Mallory would look like. Of course the look of the character developed further as Kristen and I worked on it. She had to learn how to pole dance for the role and had been practicing every day before we started shooting, and as a result, was covered in huge bruises. Because that’s what really happened from her pole dancing, of course we wanted to keep it in the movie. People forget that we shoot movies “out of sequence” of real life, so I had to re-create the bruises everyday to make them look the same once they had faded.

    The other huge influence for Mallory’s look was the real strippers in New Orleans that worked at the club where Mallory was supposed to work. This was no high end club by any means. (It’s the real club that you see in the movie but we actually cleaned it up a bit for the shoot!) The girls that worked there are rough, really rough. They are real prostitutes, runaways, transvestites. Kristen and I (separately) both spent time with these girls researching them. I took my key make-up artist with me and we just hung out in those clubs for a few nights in a row. I had to tip the girls for most of them to talk to me at first because they were not giving anything up for free, even time just talking about themselves. After they got to know me, they told me their stories, told me about their pimps; they let me take photos of them, their tattoos, etc. It was amazing research, and it showed us just how far we had to go to make Mallory realistic, exactly how rough we had to make her look. As you can see we made her look as though she never ate properly, made her look dirty and as though she never washed her make-up off, just piled more on top. I added acne, a rash around her lips, circles under her eyes, old cutting scars on her arms, and of course those bruises.

How involved were Kristen and Jake and the other actors with the creation of the looks? 

     100% involved. For Mallory, Kristen came up with some of the ideas, Jake contributed some, and I came up with some, but we all bounced the ideas off one another other and decided upon the final look together.

The same goes for the other characters in the film. Melissa’s character of Lois really makes a life changing transition in the film and Jake really wanted that to show physically. Lois’ make-up in the film actually had a story line and character arc all of its own. It really did!

     During Make-up tests, we played around with Jim/ Doug having a moustache or a goatee. We tested different shapes, but in the end, decided to go without facial hair.

Source for full interview
xoxo
Carrie