Mandy Moore Says Her "This Is Us" Makeup "Wreaks Havoc" on Her Skin
By Sarah Kinonen. Photo by: Getty Images.
Four hours. In the grand scheme of things, four hours isn't really a significant chunk of time. It's only one-sixth of the day. In that time, you can binge-watch half a season of The Office on Netflix. You can read a novel. You can run a marathon. But for Mandy Moore, four hours is the exact amount of time she spends in the makeup chair transforming into her character, Rebecca Pearson, for her career-revitalizing role on NBC's This Is Us.
We recently sat down with Moore to chat while she was in New York City promoting her partnership with Her Life. Her Adventures., an educational campaign to help raise awareness and inspire women to know what their options are in the family-planning space, and asked the actress to walk us through her 33-year transformation. And, yes, it's as painstakingly rigorous as we'd imagined.
"They do this technique, called 'stretch and pull,' where [my makeup artists] stretch out different parts of my face and my neck, and they'll stretch it out and then they'll stipple on the ager, which is almost like a tacky glue," she tells Allure. "We dry [the glue] with a hair-dryer, and then bunch the skin back up, which is what gives it that sort of crepe-y texture." Then come the prosthetics.
"They put actual prosthetic pieces on me — I have two on my jaw, one on my neck, two nasolabial folds, and I have six different pieces around my eyes and on my eyelids," says Moore. "A lot of it is just like the painting, which the makeup artist does to paint everything in. I think they do such a remarkable job." The end result engenders an effect similar to the Insta-famous Hanacure mask, an anti-aging Korean beauty celebrities, like Drew Barrymore, swear by. But then again, maybe not, says the actress. "It sounds like a much easier process than what we go through," she says. "Maybe it wouldn't read as well on camera."
Following the face paint, Moore says she then gets her hair done, which is usually wrapped up in a wig cap during the prosthetics session and is taken down and styled, while her hands, along with her neck and chest, are given the same strippled treatment as her face. "It takes a long time," she says. (Again, f-o-u-r hours, people.)
The entire transformation process — makeup, prosthetics, the whole shebang — does a number on her skin, she says. "My poor little skin. It wreaks havoc on my skin," Moore tells Allure. "When I'm not working, I try to not put my skin through the rigamarole. I try to counter it with less is more. I don't wear makeup. I don't do my hair. I just keep it as natural and as easy as possible. I let them breathe."
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This story originally appeared on Allure.
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