Lights! Camera! Makeup! How a RI teen ended up doing makeup for celebrities

Paul Edward Parker, Providence Journal
·4 min read

WESTERLY – It was only last school year when Emmalee Bettez started doing makeup as part of her cosmetology class at Westerly High School, but she was hooked almost immediately.

So, as the school year wound down, she approached teacher Shelby Worsham, looking to learn more.

"I asked her whether there was anything I could do over the summer," said Bettez, now a 17-year-old senior.

Worsham reached out to Marianne Shows, a professional hair stylist and makeup artist affiliated with the school.

Little did Bettez know what was in store for her.

"I thought I was going to be doing bridal [makeup] over the summer," she said.

But Shows took Bettez to a movie set, where she applied makeup to actors in "My Acting Coach Nightmare," a movie from Rhode Island producers Paul Luba, Andre Relis and Chad A. Verdi Jr. that is slated to air on Lifetime late this month or early next month.

Classmate Eliza Gencarella models for makeup artist Emmalee Bettez. In her work on the film "My Acting Coach Nightmare," Bettez said, she learned that a movie makeup job involves "a lot of waiting, but once you're needed, you have to be very quick about it."
Classmate Eliza Gencarella models for makeup artist Emmalee Bettez. In her work on the film "My Acting Coach Nightmare," Bettez said, she learned that a movie makeup job involves "a lot of waiting, but once you're needed, you have to be very quick about it."

Emmalee Bettez hadn't planned on working in movies

"Movies was a shock. It was definitely a scary thing," said Bettez. "I had no clue what I was doing at the beginning. The first day was such a learning curve."

It also meant a lot of long days, typically from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. "There was one where we went to 3 a.m.," Bettez said, speaking in a high-school classroom recently.

But, she said, it didn't take long to settle in.

"I really got comfortable," she said, adding that the cast and crew she worked with were very welcoming. "You grow a family pretty quick."

On her second movie (details about which it's too soon for Bettez to share), she had to learn special-effects makeup, including injuries, such as road rash and stab wounds, which took her beyond her classroom experience.

Emmalee Bettez does makeup on classmate Eliza Gencarella. It was only last school year that Bettez started doing makeup as part of her cosmetology class at Westerly High School, but the now-17-year-old senior was hooked almost immediately.
Emmalee Bettez does makeup on classmate Eliza Gencarella. It was only last school year that Bettez started doing makeup as part of her cosmetology class at Westerly High School, but the now-17-year-old senior was hooked almost immediately.

"It's not something we explore here [at school], but it definitely is one of my interests," she said.

Most of her movie work was pretty standard. "I did the basics, like touch-up," she said.

Movie scenes are shot over and over to get both the performances the director wants, and from multiple angles. That included a scene in which an actor cried, and the makeup team had to get her ready to start the scene all over, looking as if she hadn't just cried during the previous take.

Often, scenes are not shot in the order in which they'll appear in the movie, so the makeup artists will have to work from photographs to make sure an actor looks the same in one continuous scene, even if it was shot on different days.

Bettez's job required long periods of standing around while scenes were set up or playing out, followed by frantic moments getting the actors' makeup right. "It takes a lot of waiting, but once you're needed, you have to be very quick about it," she said.

For makeup artists, the pace of a movie can be a challenge

That pace can be challenging, especially in her second movie, when they would work through the night, until 5 or 6 a.m., and Bettez sometimes struggled to stay awake. "You stand there and just kind of zone out," she said.

But it also had its exciting moments. One of her favorite movies when she was younger was 2001's "The Princess Diaries," starring Anne Hathaway. An actor who played one of Hathaway's character's crushes, Erik von Detten, is also in "My Acting Coach Nightmare." It was tough for Bettez not to go total fan girl on him.

"I was kind of freaking out silently," she said.

Cosmetology class at Westerly High School.
Cosmetology class at Westerly High School.

Brushing elbows with celebrities is only one attraction of her unpaid internship last summer.

She thinks of it as having been "paid in experience and connections," she said. "It was such a great opportunity since I was only 16."

What does the future hold for Emmalee Bettez?

No. 1 is graduating from high school, on June 14. Then, she hopes to work with Marianne Shows again this summer. After that, maybe school in New York to hone her craft further before starting her career in earnest.

"I want to be working on film as full-time as possible," she said. "I would like to go to Los Angeles or New York."

Meanwhile, she'll grab whatever Rhode Island movie work she can fit into her schedule.

And, she's mindful that Disney is said to be at work planning "Hocus Pocus 3" and that Rhode Island hopes the production will return to the Ocean State, where the second installment in the franchise was filmed in 2021. Bettez would love to work on that.

"I grew up watching 'Hocus Pocus' with my mom."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: How a Westerly High School student ended up doing makeup for the stars