- Height5′ 9″ (1.75 m)
- Robin Mathews, Academy Award Winning Make-up and Make-up Effects Artist
2014 Academy Award Winner for Best Makeup and Hairstyling and Hollywood Make-Up Artist and Hairstylist Guild Award Winner Robin Mathews received these honors for the film Dallas Buyers Club (2013) in which she showed actors, Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, physically progressing through the various stages of dying from AIDS. Mathews had previously worked with McConaughey as the makeup department head on Lee Daniels's The Paperboy (2012), where she gained international recognition for transforming the actor through use of facial prosthetics and was also praised for a stunning metamorphosis of Nicole Kidman, who earned Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for her performance.
Ms. Mathews most recently teamed again with Dallas Buyers Club (2013) director Jean-Marc Vallée to shoot the film adaptation of Wild (2014), the bestselling book and true story of author Cheryl Strayed's trek along the Pacific Crest Trail, starring Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed.
Ms. Mathews alternates working as a makeup department head on feature films - both studio and independent - with assignments as a personal make-up artist for actors, helping them to design looks that are true to their characters. She came to prominence in the film industry courtesy of director Sean Penn, who hired her as his makeup department head on Into the Wild (2007), starring Emile Hirsch and Academy Award nominated Hal Holbrook. The movie also featured Kristen Stewart, marking the beginning of an extensive collaboration with the actress, as Ms. Mathews was later brought on to redesign the iconic character of Bella Swan for the blockbuster Twilight films "The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)" and "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)". Her design work with Ms. Stewart continued as make-up department head on both Floria Sigismondi's The Runaways (2010), re-creating Stewart as Joan Jett, for which she also crafted the distinctive looks for actors Dakota Fanning and Michael Shannon, and Jake Scott's Welcome to the Rileys (2010)', for which she also created the character looks for actors Melissa Leo and James Gandolfini. Following The Runaways (2010), she was awarded a contract with the cosmetic line Make-up Forever.
Among her over 30 films as make-up department head have been Rob McKittrick's Waiting... (2005), starring Ryan Reynolds and Anna Faris; Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011), starring Jason Segel; David R. Ellis's The Final Destination (2009); and Thomas Carter's upcoming When the Game Stands Tall (2014), starring Jim Caviezel and Laura Dern. A key makeup artist on Frank Darabont's The Mist (2007), Ms. Mathews has also worked as a make-up artist on such movies as Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012); and on such television series as The Voice (2011), Rizzoli & Isles (2010), and Sons of Anarchy (2008), including the fall 2013 season of the latter show. Concurrently, she has been the personal make-up artist for Academy Award Winners Reese Witherspoon, Melissa Leo and Forest Whitaker; and Kristen Stewart among many other actors.
Ms. Mathews, a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, began her career as an actor. However, her aptitude for make-up and her affinity for prosthetics and special make-up effects work led to a career shift. She honed her skills for more than seven years creating over 30 full facial prosthetics daily for Six Flags Magic Mountain's annual Fright Fest. Work in film and television soon followed, as she expanded her expertise into beauty, grooming, and period detail.- IMDb Mini Biography By: MLC pr
- Her mother is "Coloratura Soprano" Opera Singer Vicki Fisk who was also "Miss Greater New Orleans" in the "Miss America Pageant".
- Her paternal grandmother was part of the famous Vaudeville duo "The Moore Sisters".
- Alumna of the AADA (American Academy of Dramatic Arts), Class of 1994.
- In the film and TV industry, the makeup needs are always changing. New HD cameras are coming out very quickly and they are constantly demanding changing MU techniques. I think it's so important to always be researching and trying out new products because what worked perfectly on your last film might look terrible on a new camera.
- If the audience notices the makeup on screen, then I've not done my job properly. If they notice the makeup, it's just taken them out of the story and brought them into current reality. It's not meant to be about the makeup; it's about the story, the actor on the screen. The makeup is just a film-making tool to help tell the story.
- The first two films that really made me pay attention and admire MUFX [makeup effects] were The Exorcist (1973) and Tom Berenger's scars in Platoon (1986). To bring things more current. I remember watching La Vie En Rose (2007) and being blown away by the makeup and hair. That became my goal, if I ever got the chance, to do such a hugely drastic transformation that looked so effortless and invisible on screen. Even though it was a totally different type of film, I modeled my makeup design for Dallas Buyers Club (2013) after my makeup inspiration from La Vie En Rose (2007).
- I've been acting since I was very little and after a year at Louisianan State University. I attended a wonderful acting conservatory in Los Angeles, The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. We were taught theatrical makeup class there and the makeup teacher, Scott Ramp of "The Scream Team", offered to teach his best students how to do full facial prosthetics and work for his company at Six Flags Magic Mountain Fright Fest every Halloween (a huge roller coaster park in Los Angeles). It was a great, busy training ground to learn prosthetics and MUFX [makeup effects] on about 30 actors a day. I loved learning specialised skills that the general public marvelled at. Of course I'd been doing makeup since high school for our theatre department, but the Magic Mountain experience was really when I thought about this being a career.
- Sean Penn taught me a very important lesson in the beginning of my career: When working on a film set, "Never question, never debate, just get it done now". Also, every good crew member on a set is a problem solver. That's the majority of what we have to do every day is solve new problems that arise. You've got to be a great problem solver.
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