updated: 03/03/2006
Lettice Knollys (Sienna Guillory) was a young lady-in-waiting to queen Elizabeth I who was banished from court for having the temerity to marry the duke of Leicester, the queen’s favorite. Decades later she may have encouraged her son, the duke of Essex, in his unsuccessful rebellion against the queen, possibly in revenge for her own treatment. Unlike her son, Lettice oulived the queen by thirty years to die at ninety five in 1634.
Neill Gorton was responsible for the prosthetic makeup. Karen Hartley-Thomas was makeup designer; Laura [Loz] Schiavo was makeup artist; Maureen McGill & Anna Morena were hair stylist/makeup artists.
At IMATS, where these prosthetics were on display, Neill was telling me about the problems with making the female age makeups from this mini-series work given the fashion for Elizabethan women to ‘whitewash’ their faces. He expands on this in theme his new Blog. He also has some images of Sienna’s makeup before ‘whitewashing’ and talks about working with Sienna:
She’s the only actress I know who sits in the chair at the begining of a major makeup with a huge grin on her face actually looking forward to having all this funny rubber stuff slapped on her face.