APPEARANCES

Two-Faced Woman

With Cate Blanchett's help, the makeup artist Jeanine Lobell contrasts the old Hollywood look with the new. Mary Tannen takes notes.
By MARY TANNEN

Movie stars! There's something kitschy in the term -- actors and actresses appearing as constellations in the firmament. Only, unlike Perseus and Cassiopeia, movie stars do not have places assured for millenniums.

Each year an Oort Cloud of starlets streaks across our consciousness and fades without a trace. Some faces still shine, however, across tens, if not thousands, of years. These are the ones whose images are archetypes: Katharine Hepburn, the independent woman; Jean Harlow, the platinum seductress; Joan Crawford, the manipulative schemer.

More often than not, their looks, and even their personalities, were forged at Max Factor's makeup factory and dream shop near the corner of Hollywood and Highland. This was where Harlow was made platinum, where the brunette Rita Cansino was reinvented as the fiery redhead Rita Hayworth, and where Joan Crawford's mouth was painted with aloof indifference to the line of her lips. Through a depression and a world war, movie stars fed a public hungry for fantasies of romance and luxury.

Today, we again look to our celebrities, snapping up the magazine with the actress of the moment on the cover. We flip through it avidly, hoping to discover the face behind the role, although the image we encounter is as much an invention as any apparition from Max Factor's studio. For every movie shoot, for every awards ceremony, today's star collaborates with editors, stylists and photographers to tweak her image and take it somewhere new.

In a Culver City studio called SmashBox, founded coincidentally by descendants of Max Factor, Cate Blanchett is meeting with a photographer and stylists to create her persona du jour, and also to conjure up the star she would have been in old Hollywood.

At 30, Cate is no Hollywood ingenue. She comes from Australia and lives in London. Besides the title role in "Elizabeth," for which she received a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination last year, she has acted in seven movies, is scheduled to work on three more and can currently be seen in "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

She has also appeared on enough magazine covers to make a supermodel seethe with envy.
But you would not mistake Cate for a model. Her face is too interesting to be conventionally pretty. Broad through the forehead and cheekbones, it tapers to a long, narrow chin. Her lips are full, and her smile is boyish and wide. It is the instrument of an actress who makes herself over to inhabit each character.

This morning, Cate's first role is herself. Her hair is getting star treatment from Danilo, a specialist in celebrated scalps, whose own hair is shaved, with a clump in the back left longish and dyed apricot.

There is no gold dust for Cate (the secret to the shine in Marlene Dietrich's hair), although there is J. F. Lazartigue Disentangling Instant Silk Protein Spray, Phytomist instant hydrator and also the new Contouring Lotion from Physique.

Danilo puts Cate's hair through a hand-held BaByliss flat iron, which he likes because it straightens Cate's natural wave, leaving it with the slightest curve. For reasons no one has tried to fathom, straight is modern, the word we use now for glamorous. (Glamorous means overdone, in the manner of old-time Hollywood actresses.)

"You can get away with anything as long as you say it's modern," says Jeanine Lobell, the makeup artist, who is waiting for Danilo to finish before she begins. Jeanine is a star in her own right. Her handiwork has been showing up on cinematic faces for the covers of Vanity Fair, In Style, Elle, Mademoiselle and Jane. Not only that, Stila, the makeup line she developed about four years ago, has been growing exponentially and recently came under the Estée Lauder umbrella.

Jeanine uses mostly Stila on Cate, with some exceptions. There's Elizabeth Arden Visible Difference Eight Hour Cream for dry spots. "This is something everyone uses," Jeanine says. "We call it 'voodoo cream.' It's like Vaseline." Then comes Stila Liquid Makeup, which doesn't require powder afterward, and All Over Shimmer on eyelids and cheekbones. Convertible Color in Camellia -- cream blush in a compact for lips -- goes on the cheeks.

Cate's lips get color from Lip Gloss in a tube called Taupe Shine. Jeanine fills in her brows with Sephora Private Label pencil 041 -- a brown she likes because it's ashy, not red -- and gives Cate's lashes a light touch of black mascara.

In the interstitial moments, Cate is looking in the mirror: seeing how her hair goes when she moves her head, how the light catches her cheek. She is rehearsing the character she will become for the camera -- the international film star doing something ordinary, because instead of wanting our stars to inhabit a rarefied world, as we did in the 30's, we love them to be just like us, or the way we like to think we could be.

To Aretha Franklin turned up loud, and wearing her own loose-fitting, low-riding jeans and soft boots, Cate shimmies for the camera, transcending her surroundings, becoming a carefree soul letting breezes play through her hair. (Danilo is working the fan.)

If Cate had been a star in the 30's, her hair would have tumbled in soft curls around her face. Danilo takes strips of real hair and glues them to her scalp, adding six inches. He squirts in colored mousses to blend the shades. While he blow-dries, Jeanine glues on individual eyelashes. Danilo irons to further blend the hair extensions, then sets with a row of steam rollers.

In the 30's, makeup had just become acceptable for women to wear, and they wanted to see their stars with a full arsenal deployed. For velvet skin, Jeanine uses Stila Complete Coverage Makeup, then pats in Illuminating Powder Foundation. Camellia Convertible Color goes in the cheek hollows to give a sculptured look.

On Cate's brows, which Danilo has bleached to light blond, Jeanine uses the Sephora pencil to draw a line that is pure invention. After the powder comes Stila Eye Shadow, in the shade Puppy, to slim the sides of the nose and give a sharper definition to the chin. Cheek Color, a powder blush in Tint, goes on the cheeks and in the crease of the eye. Chinois, an off-white eye shadow, goes on the lids and under the brows. You can't have 30's glamour without red lips; hence, Gala, a shade Jeanine named after Dali's wife.

By this time, Cate has changed into white leather pants, high-heeled sandals and a top with sequins around the neck. Before the camera, instead of exuding energy, she draws it into herself, creating a force field sharp and contained.

In the publicity shots of old Hollywood, there is a stillness. The camera captures the subject, not in a typical real-life moment (no one actually believing that she reclines on a satin divan when she isn't busy acting), but at the height of her art. She transformed herself only once: from ordinary to star. Today, mesmerized by change, we worship the masters of shape-shifting. Maybe we feel that adaptability is the key to survival, and we are looking to the stars to lead us in the crazy dance through time.

The New York Times. February 20, 2000.

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