Training the Eyes
"There are two kinds of beauty Eastern and Western." This is the first sentence I hear out of a pair of perfectly glossed lips the day Thanksgiving.
A friend of mine from New York connected me with a professional make-up artist, Renee, who also works with a headshot photographer here in Los Angeles, in an attempt to enhance my own make-up skills for on camera auditioning.
"You have more the Eastern look, which isn't necessarily about being Asian," Renee continues. "It just means your features are more round, soft and youthful; as opposed to Western features, which are harsh, sharp and angular."
Make-up. Some girls are born knowing how to play with it, how to highlight and change the natural contours of their own face with a little powder here and a lot of concealer there. Not me.
I'm more the 'slap it on in five minutes' and head out the door in a t-shirt and jeans kind of gal, and pray it doesn't shine.
But when it comes to auditioning, particularly for film and television, the way a person's face looks on camera has a lot to do with how their performance is received by the eye of the audience.