All the Secrets Behind Claire Foy’s Radical Transformation for The Girl in the Spider’s Web
A quintessential English rose, Vogue’s November cover girl, Claire Foy, was a preternatural fit to play Queen Elizabeth in The Crown, slipping into her long white evening gloves and diamond tiara while serving up Her Majesty’s patent stoicism with ease. Her turn as Lisbeth Salander in next month’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web? A proverbial curveball for those who’ve grown accustomed to Foy in royal regalia.
Nonetheless, as evidenced in the film’s thrill-inducing trailer, Foy carries off the dragon-tattooed heroine—otherwise known as “the righter of wrongs, the girl who hurts men who hurts women”—with chilling aplomb. Not to mention, she recalibrates her signature elegant beauty with a shape-shifting bowl cut, an abundance of piercings, and flames inked on the back of her neck up to her left ear to striking effect.
“For this interpretation of the character [most recently portrayed by actress Rooney Mara], we wanted to simplify her look a bit more—radical and intriguing, but not overdone,” explains Heike Merker, the film’s lead hair-and-makeup artist, who admits to using Photoshop to conceptualize different styles before settling on Foy’s radical mushroom-topped coif with a strategic under-cut. “We needed a short, versatile style that was buzzed in the back to showcase the tattoo,” she explains, adding that she dyed Foy’s natural brunette hair two shades darker for a grittier, almost-black hue. And in a few scenes, the actress’s directional crop skews even more extreme when spiked into a mohawk, Merker having blasted it with Fudge Cement Hairspray behind the scenes to keep it in place from under the veil of Salander’s leather hood out in full force.
Underneath her curtain of fringe, Foy often appears barefaced as she avenges. “We wanted her to look as pure as possible and not to [obscure] her emotions with too much makeup,” explains Merker. To play up her porcelain skin, Merker prepped the face with a hydrating Sisley Paris moisturizer before applying Giorgio Armani Luminous Silk Foundation and occasionally adding a wash of Benefit’s Benetint ruby red liquid stain blush to the cheeks to mimic blood rushing to the face. She also darkened Foy’s eyebrows, using a palette from special effects favorite Skin Illustrator to custom-mix pigment before administering feather-light strokes to make them appear fuller, as well as rimmed the waterlines with kohl eyeliner pencil. And the final touch every day on set was always a slick of Rosebud Salve Balm. “It has a slight pinky-ness to it, but not so much that the lip color changes,” she says. During a few pivotal scenes, however, Merker upped the ante on Foy’s pared-back beauty. “Whenever she goes into her warrior mode, she puts on her mask,” she says of the milky veil that encases Foy’s gaze and haphazardly drips down her face as if she’s “done it herself in a hurry.” For a soft-focus finish, Merker mixed white, water-based Kryolan paint with Bioderma micellar makeup remover, then painted it around the eyes and on the brows before using a cotton swab to dabble it down the cheeks like tears. “It’s symbolic and gets her in the mood to do what she does,” adds Merker. And from full-on battle mode to hacking behind a computer screen au naturel, Foy’s chameleonic beauty is proving to be as nuanced as her portrayal of the Nordic noir character.
Watch Claire Foy Get in Touch With Her Wild Side:
