Who will win the 2022 Oscar in the "Best Makeup and Hairstyling" category?

The Academy Awards 2022 will take place on 27 March at 5pm PT. The anticipation for this edition and the return in attendance is high, as is the curiosity linked not only to the winners, but also to the looks that the various actors will sport on the red carpet. For now, we can only fantasize about the creations and beauties that we will see live from the Dolby Theatre at the Hollywood & Highland Center, while we can already peek at the nominations. Who knows if Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes, co-hosts of the event, will be inspired by the films in competition? Will anyone dare to wear dramatic make-up like Emma Stone in Cruella or Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye? Both titles will be battling it out for the 2022 Oscar in the Best Makeup and Hairstyling category. If you want to know the other nominees, read on.

Cruella

Revisiting an iconic character from our childhood, made even more memorable by the extraordinary performance of an actress like Glenn Close, is not easy. Nadia Stacey, Naomi Donne e Julia Vernon, the team of make-up and hairstyle artists behind Emma Stone's transformation into Estella de Mon and Cruella De Vil, started with the famous black & white hair, this time curly and fluffy, using a wig. Emma's villain is a fashion-addicted punk, at times intentionally clownish, with scarlet lips and dramatic, dark eye make-up reminiscent of a young Vivienne Westwood. The inspiration for her beauty comes, in fact, from the London punk scene of the 1970s, which blends with the baroque imagery and rococo style of Dior by John Galliano. The cult make-up moment of the Disney film remains the one chosen by Estella to announce to the world her new life as Cruella and overshadow the Baroness: the "the future" look. The black lettering on her eyes was obtained with a stencil and reproduces the same font as the graphics on the cover of the Sex Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks album. To balance the dramatic, "bad", almost stiff effect of this choice, which is also a mirror of the confidence the character is gaining, Stacey & co. opted for a red lipstick covered in crystals.

Coming 2 America

Coming 2 America, is the sequel to Coming to America, the 1988 cult comedy directed by John Landis. The story sees the same protagonists, Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, reprise their roles as Akeem, Prince of Zamunda and his friend and servant Semmi. Akeem, now king, returns to the States to find the son he has just discovered he has, and in the meantime must keep the peace with his twin nation Nextdoria. On the one hand, there is the challenge of following the film's storyline, and on the other the beauty team's challenge of bringing the two characters back to life over 30 years after they first appeared on the screen. In order to achieve the right aging effect, make-up artist Mike Marino had to resort to the use of many prostheses and recreate with brushes and skin illustrator palettes an interplay of shades that perfectly reproduced the natural textures and discolorations of aged skin. Hairstylists Carla Farmer and Stacey Morris, on the other hand, worked extensively with wigs and braids to complete the Afro-punk mood introduced by Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth Carter. Fun fact: Wesley Snipes aka General Izzy's hairstyle was inspired by the mountains and valleys of the Rwandan Amasunzu tribe.

House of Gucci

As you might imagine, a key part of House of Gucci is the costumes, designed by Janty Yates, which are so eagerly awaited and imitated that they have led to a significant increase in searches and purchases for vintage Gucci and other items from the period covered by the film. An equally important role in helping the actors get into their roles is that of hairstyles and make-up. Behind Lady Gaga's transformation into Patrizia Reggiani are hairstylist Frederic Aspiras and Lady Gaga's long-time personal make-up artist Sarah Tanno, who worked as a team to show the evolution of the woman and her passage through different eras. The main inspirations were Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Lauren from whom came the double line of thin eyeliner, specially designed to lengthen the eye which became the iconic feature for the young Patrizia. To show off the excessive 80s kohl eyeliner was key to achieving a softer, more blurred, 'lived-in' eye look. This was combined with satin lipsticks or glosses to redefine the lips so that they looked more like the real Patrizia's. Finally, for the nineties the look needed to be more aged and "desperate", so, Tanno altered the shape of the eyes by moving the smudged black shade under the lower rima instead of inside and created an ashy look on the skin by using contouring and illuminants to give the skin an uneven and tired texture and appearance. As for the hairstyles, the actors used wigs (Lady Gaga changed 10!).

The character of Paolo Gucci required Jared Leto long make-up sessions of almost 8 hours. For him, Göran Lundström made several prostheses and pieces of silicone, applied in areas such as the nose, neck, cheeks, jaw and even the cap used to reproduce baldness. 

Dune

Dune was one of the movies of the year and helped establish both Zendaya and Timotheé Chalamet as planetary stars. The story of an intergalactic battle between House Atreides, House Harkonnen and the Fremen required a constant alternation of natural and alien looks in terms of make-up and hair. Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson and Oscar Isaac all sported minimal make-up that went well with the explorer warrior mood of Jacqueline West's costumes. The hair is also deliberately unstructured and casual, with Donald Mowat giving Zendaya's hair a messy, windswept effect using only a sea salt spray. Much more complex, however, was Stellan Skarsgård's transformation into the evil Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. The actor had to endure heavy prosthetics weighing around 20-25 pounds and a make-up session that took seven hours for each application. The inspirations for his look? The bone structure of the gorilla, Marlon Brando's facial expressions and the colours of Doctor Moreau. 

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

The Eyes of Tammy Faye follows the rise and fall of the Bakkers, a family of television evangelists who enjoyed great popularity in the US in the 1960s and 1990s. One of the things that his wife, Tammy Faye, was known for was her excessive, caricatured use of make-up.  The film's head make-up artist, Linda Dowds, wanted to recreate the same effect to perfection, so she opted for dramatic eye make-up and a deliberately obvious, almost clownish lip contour that made Jessica Chastain a believable copy of Faye. Eyeshadow, eye-liner, mascara, lipstick, blush and nail art were complemented by the use of prostheses, particularly on the cheeks, nose and a full neckband, to make the actress's physiognomy resemble that of the preacher and, at the same time, highlight her aging over several decades. The make-up thus also follows the trends and fashions of the various eras, while the color development, from very soft colors to darker shades, follows the character's downward parabola that leads to the final fall of her media and economic empire.