‘Amsterdam’ Hair and Makeup Heads On Balancing Period and Quirky Characters

Amsterdam is an actor’s feast, and we are treated to an ensemble of kooky characters set against the backdrop of upcoming political turmoil. David O. Russell’s cast feels like an old-school acting troupe excited to lay into the material and work as a cohesive chorus of comedy. Makeup Department Head, Nana Fischer, worked tirelessly with Hair Department Heads Lori McCoy-Bell and Adruitha Lee to help accentuate the time periods and quirkiness of the characters.

There is a modernity to some elements of Amsterdam when it comes to the delivery of the comedy. Jumping back and forth from 1918 and the 1930’s gave these women a wide breadth of elements to play with. Is there anything that these artists would like to see come back into fashion?

“With makeup and the nails, the trend was the half moon cuticle on the nails in the ’30s,” Fischer said. “I really pushed for that for the film even though they weren’t so sure about it at first. At the moment, the trend is back. It’s actually very current.”

McCoy-Bell went further in hopes that she might see one look come back.

“We have beautiful ’30s hair with the waves and the romantic curls that we associate with the time,” she said. “David [O. Russell] painted everyone as such an outsider, and they had such individuality. For the hair, we needed the flavor of the time period but make sure we could have it anywhere.

For Beatrice, her look was textbook or right off the Hollywood screen, and she wanted to be known and to meet people. She was someone who was very trendy in that time period. Adruitha and I wanted her to scream 1930’s when some of the others didn’t like the character of Libby. Her braid is very Aryan-like. Her backstory on her hair was crazy, but it fit the personality of her character. It would be awesome to see some halo action come back. With Dorothy Lamour or Barbara Stanwyck, that gave Adruitha and I permission to do that underground society look. That would be cool to see people wearing that look of ours. ‘That is an Anya Taylor-Joy look for Amsterdam!’

That Aryan look was something David was wanting, and we wanted to keep it up for the gala. It was similar but it was twisted, and we added some pearls. I took a necklace from my mother from years ago, and I broke it up to create a crafting project with it. I strung some wire through it and added it to her hair.”

A lot of the actors don’t look like themselves in Amsterdam. I joked with the team that they somehow managed to lessen the handsome-ness of Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola–an impossible feat! They expressed such excitement to immerse themselves into Russell’s characterizations.

“With some of our actors, they were coming from New York or Europe, and we wouldn’t see them until the day or so before,” Fischer revealed. “With Matthias, he flew it from Belgium, and he was growing his hair out. I was talking to David talking about the story of his character–how he fought in the first World War and got injured–and we laughed that he could play Casanova since he’s so handsome. David asked me to give him some scars on his face to help him look different. I had prepped multiple silicone molds to create scars for his face, so I put some prosthetics on him and shaved his beard. He wanted to give himself over to this. I gave him a long scar on his face, and David wanted more. Since he has a strong nose, I decided to shade it to make it look like it was broken in a fight in the war maybe? We tried to make him look a little less handsome–even though he still looked quite good-looking. For Alessandro, he was very involved with his look, and he thought that his character was trying to prove that he was good enough. He thought he would be drinking all the time, so we thought about reddening his nose and making his skin blotchy.”

“Alessandro wanted to mimic Christian [Bale]’s character, Burt,” McCoy-Bell added. “There was a scene that didn’t make the film where he told Christian’s character, “Hey, my hair looks like yours!’ He was in the chair for about an hour with a little curling irons everywhere. His character has a lisp, so we never knew if he was drunk or not. David gives us so much room to be creative. He gives us his thoughts, and you have to take it all in to hone it into a strong device. For Michael [Shannon], he wanted his hair lower on his hairline. I pulled out a hairpiece that I had made to test for Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein, and it worked on him. David was excited. Adruitha and I were always pulling stuff out of our hats.”

“Everyone had changes to help them. It didn’t matter where they were on the call sheet,” Lee said, hitting home that every performer was given the detailed treatment. It didn’t matter if they were on screen for ten minutes or in every scene.

Margot Robbie’s Valerie feels like a rock star, and she feels so separated from Anya Taylor-Joy’s Libby or Andrea Riseborough’s Beatrice. She is fresher-faced in the flashbacks in Amsterdam, but the differences in her hair inform us a lot about her character. Lee, who won an Oscar for Bombshell, has worked with Robbie on several films including I, Tonya.

“When we see Valerie in the flashback to World War One, she is a nurse helping the wounded soldiers on the battlefield,” she explained. “This was not a glamorous job, but she had a softness and beauty about her. I reflected this in her hairstyle with the creation of a soft wave to frame her face but also made it practical and not forced or stylized. This was achieved by using “paper towel” rollers I made to try and duplicate a natural wave that did not look like a set. Although she was taking care of soldiers and trying to help them recover, you were drawn in by her natural beauty and passion. When having fun in the Amsterdam portion of the movie with Burt and Harold, you will see a lot of changes with her hair.

[Every time] I’ve worked with Margot, she’s always been blonde. The hairstyles I created to show off this playfulness were looks such as the very straight “shingle” bob haircut that was popular in the ’20s. This look was taken to another level when David showed me a photo of an artist from this era who had a similar look. Years later, we will see a very different Valerie, pale and disheveled; she was not the same person from Amsterdam. To best embody the feelings through this period, her hair was not controlled–probably not even combed–but it was soft and loose, still having some waves and more movement. It would be hard to say what period her look was during this time in her life because she was just trying to survive.

After Valerie meets up with her friends some 10 or 12 years later, she begins to heal, and this becomes more apparent in her appearance. By the time we get to the gala, she is a very well-put-together woman on a mission and a renewed passion for life. The hair for this final look is reminiscent of the actress Myrna Loy; this also was another photo that David had shared with me on numerous occasions. This look was achieved by using a very old method which is an oven and manual irons to wave the hair. My goal was to make it sophisticated and soft, not a forced wave.”

In order to show differences from the fresher-faced youth to a more mature look, Fischer added that a proper skincare routine is essential.

“I warmed up her skin and gave her some freckles,” Fischer said. “A bit of mascara helps and bushier eyebrows can trick the eyes into looking younger. I contoured her face, so it was sharp on the jawline. I would give people an oxygen facial in the trailer, and people starting lining up for it. It penetrates into the skin. The whole movie, they are all wearing quite a bit makeup for the Old Hollywood look. There’s a lot of base and shading. Skincare is very important, and who doesn’t love a spa?”

Any time a period piece is released, there is the inevitable discussion of what is accurate when it comes to costumes or hair and makeup. Everyone on this team was floored by how willing everyone was to go the extra mile for their looks. It’s clear that Russell has assembled a group who wants to service the story.

“Some of the actors were very game with being very accurate,” Fischer revealed. “For example, for Andrea’s character, she was someone whose eyebrows would’ve been overplucked. If you look work by George Hurley or Marlene Dietrich, there is a lot of work with the shape and the color and the texture of the makeup. That character was accurate as possible for the time period. The skin was really pale. Chivo [Emmanuel Lubezki], our DP, wanted the faces to be illuminated, so I would go about three shades lighter with the tone. We did that with her and Margot [Robbie]. Andrea is so daring, and she was so game to do anything. Sometimes she would look less glamorous, because she wanted her character to be accurate. In 1918, she is a bit mousy, because she is there with her parents. David gave us the freedom to tweak. With Margot, there are two dots in the corners of her eyes, and that is something that I found in my research about the art deco and it was in a painting I came across. Since Valerie is an artist, I thought we could push it into the avantgarde with her makeup.”

Turning to the men, Christian Bale always grounds himself in character–it almost feels like a religion. In 1918, he is trying to appeal more to Beatrice’s family, but he is wilier when he is alone with Valerie and John David Washington’s Harold.

“Christian Bale is quite a chameleon for any roles we all have seen him in,” McCoy-Bell began. “Our thought between he and I was to always have a huge amount of unruly hair for Burt to try to keep tame but not quite get there. I used styling products to give it thickness, and that hair had a mind of its own! Once we decided on the tightness of the curl, I chemically changed it [by using] an acid perm solution and pink rods. We permed it only once through principal photography, ensuring it was consistent for the different eras. The schedule allowed us to cut his hair shorter for the 1918 time period, so that made an easy transition. I also wanted to tell a story of time passage, so I used the color mousse stain and darkened his hair ever so slightly. Just enough to cover any gray and add lots of shine for a younger, vibrant, and youthful appearance. For the 1930’s we added some white hair to his left side or head as a little nuance–I also didn’t use color mousse so his natural grays showed through. Burt has suffered a war injury from a blast and therefore damaged his hair follicle, which took the pigment away and turned it white. It’s the little touches that are put into each character that makes it so special.”

“The first hair test with Christian was trying to come up with the hair that was, as Lori described it, “unruly” at best and the shock of white hair that David wanted and Christian was willing to do. Lori did a great job interpreting looks for David and giving them to Christian. The journey that Burt’s hair took throughout the movie helped tell his character’s story,” Lee added.

How do we talk about Amsterdam without mentioning Taylor Swift (let’s be honest, we are always talking about her at all times)? The megastar only shares a few scenes with Bale and Washington, but her look is very striking and appropriate for the period. I could honestly see her donning that look on an album cover.

“When designing Taylor’s hair, I had several decisions and strategies to think about before moving forward,” McCoy-Bell stated. “Was her hair color period correct? Can the cut of her hair be set to do the beautiful waves of the ’30s? Is her length short enough to hide for the shorter looks in hair length ladies wore in the day? What really helped my decision to use her own hair was her bangs or fringe. Being able to incorporate her own hair was being able to use those as part of the design to show off soft curls on the forehead. I was able to manipulate her hair for a beautiful ’30s style.”

“I wanted to go really matte with her with a dreamy eye, but I wanted to pop her lips,” Fischer said. “I wanted to create some texture with the matte and the gloss–her lips are glossier than anyone else’s. She told me that I could pluck her eyebrows into that distinct shape. Because Taylor is known for her singing, popping her lips was something I was drawn to. If you look at Marilyn Monroe, her eyes were really matte, but her lips were glossy. I was influenced by that, and David loved Faye Dunaway in Chinatown, and I did some intensive research of colors from the ’30s. I would then match it to a current color since you can’t use the old makeup that I got from eBay. It gave me such a good guideline. I would make mood boards, and I would show them to Chivo. He wanted the lips to be saturated, and we wanted Taylor’s lips to almost look like glass to go against her skin and her eyes.”

Amsterdam is available to stream.