Today's Out Spotlight is American make-up artist and photographer Kevyn Aucoin.
Born in 1962 in Louisanna, he was adopted as an infant by Thelma and Isidore Aucoin along with his three siblings.
Growing up in Louisanna, at age 11, he'd made up and pose his 6-year-old sister Carla, with near-professional results, always want to make people feel special. his mother let him explore his creativity and led him to getting a job doing make over in a department store.
When he first arrived in New York,started out by doing pro bono makeup on models for test shoots (one of his early canvasses was Paulina Porizkova), hoping to get noticed and was lucky enough to be discovered by Vogue. He struggled his way to the top of the professional make-up industry by emphasizing the beauty within. His motto was that it was far more important to help a woman feel beautiful no matter what, and that makeup was simply his tool for helping her discover herself. A proponent of the philosophy that every woman is beautiful within. He became one of the best-paid celebrity make-up artists in history.
In September 2001, Aucoin was diagnosed with a rare pituitary tumor. He had been suffering from acromegaly resulting from the tumor for much of his life, but it had gone undiagnosed. He died on May 7, 2002 of kidney and liver failure due to Tylenol toxicity, caused by an addiction to prescription painkillers used to treat the extreme pain from his condition.
Thelma and Isidore Aucoin started the Lafayette chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and have been working with the organization for fifteen years. "I never missed a meeting," Isidore says proudly. "Marriage is between a man and a woman, according to Webster's dictionary, but I feel that there should be a law so that same-sex people could make a commitment recognized by the government." But they didn't think that of his Jeremy Antunes. And after his death they felt that Antunes had abandoned their son at the end of his life. While former partner Eric Sakas still remained loyal. Antunes has said on record that he need to show that Aucoin had to choose between his addiction to pain killers because of his rare condition and him. He left for Paris and days later Aucoin hospitalized and died shortly after when his liver and then his kidneys failed because of Tylenol toxicity.
Aucoin lived with his partner, Jeremy Antunes, whom he married in an unofficial ceremony in Hawaii in 2000 and thereafter referred to as his husband. He had also previously been romantically involved with Eric Sakas, who after their breakup remained close friends with him and became president and creative director of Kevyn Aucoin Beauty. After Aucoin's death his family locked the doors and closed Antunes out of anything in their home without being legally married he had no rights.
He worked with hundreds of A-list celebrities like Cher, Janet Jackson, Tina Turner, Gwyneth Paltrow, Courtney Love and Vanessa L. Williams. He became a highly in-demand makeup artist, often acquiring $10,000 per session for photo shoots or award shows.
He wrote three books about make up The Art of Makeup, Making Faces, and Face Forward. He was fond of taking celebrities and various other men & women, including his mother) and using makeup and costume and sometimes prosthetics to make them look like other celebrities, or like other people entirely.
Calista Flockhart as Audrey Hepburn - Gwyneth Paltrow as James Dean
Isabella Rosillini as Barbra Streisand
Lisa Marie Presley as Marilyn Monroe
Martha Stewart as Veronica Lake
Drew Barrymore as Joan Crawford
Demi Moore as Clara Bow
Courtney Love as Jean Harlow
Christina Ricci as Edith Piaf
Winona Ryder - Elizabeth Taylor Gina Gershon - Sophia Loren
Tomi Amos as Pocahontas"My favorite Kevyn memory is of him giving makeup tips to these 16-year-old drag queens," says Bari Mattes, the board chair at the Hetrick-Martin Institute, which aids homeless gay youth, "telling them how beautiful they were."
Official Website
Make Up Break Up
Beauty Inside
Reminder the OMG Polls are still open until tomorrow morning and we are still taking suggestions for movie club.
