Michèle Burke obit

 

Michèle Burke Dies: Oscar-winning ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ & Tom Cruise Makeup Artist Was 75

She was not on the list.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Interview with a Vampire and Cyrano de Bergerac makeup artist Michèle Burke, who was the first woman to win an Oscar for her craft, died on September 26 in L.A. at the age of 75.

Burke chalked up more than 50 feature film and TV credits across her career including Jean-Jacques Annaud’s prehistoric drama Quest for Fire, for which she became the first woman to win a Best Makeup Oscar alongside Sarah Monzani in 1983.

She shared a second Oscar with Greg Cannom and Matthew W. Mungle in 1993 for their work on Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Burke was also nominated for The Clan of the Cave Bear (1987), Cyrano de Bergerac (1991), Austin Powers: The Man Who Shagged Me (2000) and The Cell (2001).

The makeup artist had a longstanding working relationship with Tom Cruise, which began when she created his vampire look for the role of Lestat de Lioncour in Neil Jordan’s 1984 film Interview with a Vampire

She would go on to worked with Cruise on Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, Austin Powers in Goldmember, Mission: Impossible III, Knight and Day, Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Rock of Ages and Oblivion.

Talking about her regular work with Cruise and Mike Myers in an interview with the Irish Film and Television Network in 2008, Burke said. “Once someone trusts you and likes your work, they’ll call you again and again. It’s exciting to work with people like that, they’re very inspirational and masters of what they do and it’s fascinating to sit back and watch them.”

She also worked with Sharon Stone (Gloria), Penelope Cruz (Vanilla Sky) and Brad Pitt (Interview with a Vampire) among many stars.

Born in Dublin on December 29, 1949, Burke emigrated to Canada in the 1970s to escape recession back home, where she took a job as a fashion assistant which in turn introduced her to the profession of makeup artist.

Initially working as a demonstrator for Revlon in department stores, she then got a job at bespoke Toronto makeup boutique Electa and Corrado, which did makeovers and also provided services to fashion shoots.

She made a deliberate choice to pursue a career in film and TV after taking on unpaid work experience with makeup artist Mickey Hamilton in Montreal.

This in turn connected Burke to the movie business as the city’s tax breaks meant a raft of horror movies were shooting there at the time.

Her first solo credit was Roger Spottiswoode’s 1980 slasher film Terror Train, starring Jamie Lee Curtis, which shot mainly in and around Montreal.

The Oscar for Quest for Fire, which also partly shot in Canada, opened the door to Hollywood for the emerging makeup artist who decided to take the plunge and move to L.A.

Talking about her approach in an interview with the BBC in 2021, Burke said: “I look at the totality of the person, the hair, the skin tone, who’s this person going to be. It’s a subtlety and a slide of colors and details on a person’s face and body.”

Alongside a myriad of awards and nominations related to individual films and TV series, Burke was also honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the ninth annual The Make-Up & Hairstylists Guild Awards in 2022.