I expect you were as surprised as I was when the 100-year-old woman in last week's Ace of Wands turned out to be a middle-aged man.
This part of the plot caused problems for Meinir Jones-Lewis and Hazel Young, who work in the Thames Television make-up department.
"Making wrinkles is always difficult," explained Meinir. "But James Bree, the actor who was playing the old woman, made things worse because he has such a good skin. There wasn't a natural wrinkle anywhere."
"Artificial
wrinkles are made from paper tissues split into wafer-thin strands," says
Meinir. "Layers of them are glued to the actor's face, and all the time
you have to push the 'wrinkles' into place, making them go the way wrinkles
would form."
The process is intricate and takes a long time to do properly. Meinir and Hazel eventually managed to do the complete make-up in two hours. "You are always working to a strict time schedule for television," she said. "But if we were doing this kind of make-up for a film we would be able to spend much more time on it."
The girls were helped by James Bree. "Each wrinkle had to be blow-dried with a hand drier," Meinir explained. At first I would do the wrinkles and Hazel would dry them. As the time got nearer to the studio call, James offered to hold the drier to make life easier for us."
Fortunately the wardrobe department had provided a dress that had a very high collar. This meant that James Bree's neck didn't have to be specially made up. Hands were another difficulty, but here again, the wardrobe department helped out by providing Bree with mittens.
A grey wig with a bun gave the finishing touches to the facial overhaul. "We had to do the make-up five times in all," said Meinir.
Can you imagine how many tissues that must have involved?