Hair, Clothes, Makeup--Poof! Stylists Groom Selves for Soiree

Also on Monday, May 19: Hair, makeup and costume people decked themselves out for the Designing Hollywood Awards, distributed by New York Women in Film & Television during a ceremony held at the Time-Life Building.

Actress Bebe Neuwirth, of Cheers, Frasier and Broadway fame, told the audience that it was a makeup artist’s fabulous lipstick and lip-liner that “gave me my character” for The Paint Job, about a woman dating a serial killer. A “just disgusting” pair of boots inspired the dapper and dignified Pierce Brosnan, his costume designer revealed, “to let go of the ego” and adopt a sleazy strut for the hit-man comedy The Matador. And the legendary Faye Dunaway gushed in a video tribute that the wig and hairstylist who tends to her wavy golden tresses is “one of the very special people in my life.”

Costume designer Catherine Marie Thomas was honored for her work in movies such as Kill Bill and A Prairie Home Companion. Another honoree, makeup artist Patricia Regan, who appeared not to be wearing any cosmetics herself, allowed that actors are “not always” cooperative when she applies disturbing, macabre or weird face paint. (Surely not endearingly creepy Christopher Walken, who appeared on a screen while Ms. Regan spoke, as a vampire in the 1995 film The Addiction.)

After a softball Q&A led by InStyle managing editor Charla Lawhon, coiffeuse Colleen Callaghan noted that in the five decades that she’s been working, only one actor wanted a hairpiece as a souvenir: Dakota Fanning’s little sister, Elle, who sports long red locks as the child version of Cate Blanchett in the upcoming The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. “She loved her wig,” Ms. Callaghan said. “But she’s only about 8 years old.”