Conversations In A Burning Room, an excerpt

By Karen Black

My eyes:

I have small eyes. Their smallness upsets the balance of my features. Good nose. Good lips. (“Oh let me just interrupt myself: -------once met with me for ------- , in the sixties when I was playing a 15 year old in a broadway show. Faye Dunaway got the part. But I remember that this eminent fabulous man liked my lips. He said that no one has commented on them and he is surprised that they’re so nice. If only they’d been nice enough for him to cast me!”)

My eyes are also close set and somewhat deep set. Here is how I do my eye make-up which is fabulous, absolutely fabulous.

I put mascara on my bottom lashes, but not starting at the eye. About the middle of the lower lash down so that I don’t close the eye. I put mascara only on the middle part of my upper lashes because I am going to glue lashes to my lashes. I put eyelashes exactly where the lid meets the eye, the usual place, close to the nose. But on the outer edges of the lashes, I raise the lash about 1/8^TH of an inch ABOVE where my actual eyelid meets the eye and extend that eyelash out beyond the natural ending of the outside of the eye. Now I glue the outside part of the false lashes UP to the outside part of the natural eyelash. This makes the eye open. And when I draw a line above my eye which extends outward on each side well past thee actual outside of my eye, it makes my eye appear much bigger. Now I shade below my eye EXACTLY where a shadow would fall from a light, making the eye seem to end THERE , where that shadow is drawn. I then create using the water color technique of making the depth of a shadow darker and then lightening and lightening as I paint away from the depth of shadow. It is a fake upper eyelid and no one can see that it is a painting and never has. I can’t tell, myself.

In this way I take small uneventful eyes and make them large and impressive. I was only going for graphics, but I have had comment all of my life about my eyes and simply tell people now that they are drawings, which no one understands of course, so it is a kind of joke with myself.

In my life as an actress, this particular capability of mine, this astounding difference between my actual eyes and the eyes that I create, has been a terrible albatross around my neck! Because I and only I can do my eyes; we’re talking, I know in micro inches which line above thee eye to make wider by a millionth of an inch so that the eyes, when finished will be the same shape. Otherwise without this micro-addomatdation, my left eye will seem smaller than my right! Stuff like that!! And I can’t do these things that I so wish I could do that so many actresses can do which are:

1)Let someone else do my make up. If it were just a mater someone putting lines and shadow and having nice big eyes that really look good even without make- up—then one could do that. But if one is CREATING the eye, which is hardly THERE without make-up, then I can’t just be lovable and lie back and let someone else earn their living.

2)Go without make up on my eyes. It’s so grooooooovy, isn’t it, the way actresses look without make-up: it’s real now, she’s been crying, she’s lost her husband. And now! We see her with no make up. Or, she’s really just being herself in this role, she’s given up all glamour, gosh jeez let’s nominate her!

I did a movie once with no eye make-up. I played a blind, gay, psychiatrist (the kind of part to die for). As an aside – I went to a coffee brunch with blind people and was amazed at their behavior. This staring “blindly” into the space before one in order to look “blind” is pure hogwash. The blind people at the coffee get-together leaned well toward me, bending their bodies toward me. The woman I took to the washroom cheerfully took my arm, and directed me to lead her to the washroom, and said she knew where to turn toward the bathroom door as she could see the change of light. People who saw this movie which I also wrote from the book by Margaret Diehl, called “Men”, asked me what they had done to achieve that look! I really looked blind! Well, I really looked as if I had sort of no eyes! Well and that is because I simply took my make –up off to achieve this astounding skill with make up!

So. Here I am. I did my own eyes for the Hitchcock movie. No problem. I did my own eyes for Dan Curtis’s movies, and also wore NO base as the skin on my face used to be flawless. I did my own eyes for airport 75 – you name it, I somehow got away with doing or creating, or painting into existence, my own eyes.