The makeup that Jessica Chastain wore in The Eyes Of Tammy Faye didn’t just accentuate her performance but literally transformed her appearance. Working with an award-winning makeup team top-lined by Chastain’s longtime makeup artist, three-time Emmy-winner, Linda Dowds, Chastain and The Eyes Of Tammy Faye director Michael Showalter spent months working on her look for the role and the results speak for themself. But what exactly did it take to truly transform Jessica Chastain into Tammy Faye Bakker onscreen?
Having nurtured The Eyes Of Tammy Faye as a producer since before she founded her production company, Freckle Films, in 2016, Chastain knew from the get-go that playing someone as iconic as Tammy Faye Bakker would require a huge commitment. She also knew that the makeup, which played such a pivotal role in the real-life Baker’s public persona, would be an essential part of her performance as well. So capturing Tammy Faye Bakker’s ever-evolving look onscreen was always going to be key.
Starting with Bakker’s early years as a fresh-faced brunette, The Eyes Of Tammy Faye’s makeup team used prosthetics to round out Chastain’s more angular cheekbones and fill in the dimple in her chin. Dowd and company also used a more muted, earth tone color palette during this time period which evolved over time, as Bakker’s makeup style did, into the more vibrant pink, red and blue hues that became Bakker’s trademark at the height of her fame in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Also key to perfecting Chastain’s look was her hair, which Dowd’s team transformed throughout the film with a series of decade-appropriate wigs ranging in style from sensible, minister’s wife chic to power mullet diva and beyond.
Even when Bakker and then-husband, disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker (played by former Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield) were at the top of their game financially, Bakker was a big fan of inexpensive drugstore cosmetics, particularly her signature L’Oreal Lash Out mascara. So when it came time to recreate Bakker’s look on Chastain, Dowd and her team went out of their way to source vintage drugstore cosmetics whenever possible. And though some of Bakker’s favorite products and hues have long since been discontinued, authentically recreating Tammy Faye Bakker’s makeup with similar drugstore finds became Dowd’s obsession and it paid off handsomely onscreen.
Striving to recreate Bakker’s signature mascara streaked tears Dowd also reused some of the fake eyelashes in the film to give Chastain’s Tammy Faye eyes a more lived-in, mascara-heavy look. That same attention to detail applied to the wigs, fake nails and wildly eccentric costumes worn by Chastain as well. And though Chastain’s makeup took four to seven hours to apply, it is definitely dazzling in its period authenticity. Despite the mixed critical response to The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, there's no doubt that the incredible make-up a fitting tribute to the real-life woman behind the movie.