We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alli Elizabeth. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alli below.
Alli, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I’ve known I was going to pursue a creative/artistic career for as long as I can remember. Which direction I was going to go in has slightly changed, but I’ve always been a creative at heart. As a kid, I was always performing, whether on stage or in choir, or through my piano or voice lessons. I started performing specifically in theatre with the Birmingham Magic City Children’s Opera when I was in the 7th grade. But even before that I was performing solos in the choir in elementary school. And I was never NOT putting on some type of show for my family (much to my siblings dismay). By the time I reached high school, I had fallen in love with musical theater and I just knew I was going to be an actress. So I went on to get my degree in Theatre from Auburn, University. It was while I was studying my theatre degree that I had to take a stage makeup class as one of my prerequisites and that was basically it! I found something creative, that I was passionate about, I could express myself with paint and through creating characters. The best part for me, was that I didn’t have to audtion!! It didn’t matter how tall I was, or that I was blonde, or too big or too small. Makeup was a totally new experience for me then, as I didn’t grow up as a super girly girl and YouTube obviously didn’t exist back then, so the only ways I had ever learned anything about makeup prior to that point was from my local Clinique or MAC counter! But I was really lucky too, in that my parents always supported my creative endeavors, and they encouraged me to keep performing and creating always.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I got into makeup professionally 2 years after I graduated from college, when I went back to school at Joe Blasco Makeup Center to study their Journeyman program to learn everything there is to know about makeup for TV and Film. This was a dream come true learning about what it would take to work on sets and create iconic characters for the movies! However, my journey with this career was a long, round about path to that. I attended the Joe Blasco school in Orlando, FL due to financial constraints at the time and logistically it made more sense than moving all the way to Los Angeles or New York. But the career opportunities in FL are not exactly the same, so after school I would spend the next 8 years bouncing around central and south Florida trying to find my legs in this chosen career path. I started working at dinner shows and with Universal for their Halloween Horror Nights seasonal event in Orlando. I was the Wardrobe Head at Arabian Nights Dinner show for a little over a year where I was in charge of designing the makeup looks, styling and setting the wigs for each nights performance, and washing and setting the costumes for each night. And during the months of Sept and October I would leave there and go straight to Universal to work for Horror Nights. It was a fun, exhausting time, but I learned a lot!
After this, I relocated to the south Florida area where I would spend the next 6 years. I worked for MAC Cosmetics for 3 1/2 years before finally branching out on my own to work full-time as a freelance artist. I credit MAC with so much, and to any new artists I can’t recommend working for a cosmetics line enough. You’re basically getting paid to hone your craft, and paid to go to training in trends and products. You get to work on a huge variety of people and skin tones and textures, and you have to do it quickly so it really improves your speed overall. But retail has its drawbacks as well, and I was never much of a salesmen, so eventually I left the company to focus my energy on working as much as I could on set.
After leaving MAC, I began working on reality tv shows in the Miami market, as well as on print campaigns, commercials, music videos, and eventually films. It was on one of the last films that I Department Headed in Miami that I met my now, fiancé, who eventually convinced me that to really grow in my career, I needed to make the leap to Los Angeles. I would say I’m most proud of myself for finally taking that leap! There was definitely more of a ceiling working in a smaller market like Miami. You really do cut your teeth and become a much better, more knowledgable artist working in a city like Los Angeles. It’s been an honor learning from some of the best in the business. And I’m still learning today, constantly taking classes and workshops and just learning from other incredible artists on set. If I could give one piece of advice to newer artists it would be to never stop learning!! Never be too proud to accept constructive criticism and feedback from your mentors, your peers, or your clients. This industry is constantly evolving and so we have to adapt along with it as professional artists.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
I think as a whole, society can best support artists and creatives by recognizing that what we do is work. Even though most of us love what we do as artists, it is still a lot of a hard work, that most people will never see.
So to that end, society as a whole needs to be prepared to pay for the art that they consume, whether it’s through TV shows, movies, theatre, live events, editorial images, art pieces, makeup or hair for an event. It’s all the same… there is an artist (if not many artists) behind each of these things that most likely spent years training, studying, & perfecting their craft, and like any other career, they deserve to be compensated for that.
On average, to study to get your cosmetology license it costs between $15,000 (if you’re lucky) and $25,000 and that’s not including the cost of living, or surviving during that time. The cost of most professional makeup programs start at around $13,000 for roughly a 2-3 month course. And that’s barely scratching the surface. Not to mention, how much film school programs cost, or getting a degree in theatre or art. It’s the same, if not more than any other degree that people study for. So it frustrates me when people expect to get their entertainment and art for free or next to nothing. Part of this isn’t society’s fault, I think most people can agree that when streaming services came about it exacerbated this problem but I hope that now, especially, people are starting to take notice of what artists are expected to endure in our careers. If society wants to continue to consume art and content of any kind, then I hope they can rally around creatives now during these strikes especially.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I love being an artist. Sometimes, it’s an incredibly hard, frustrating journey that you find yourself questioning from time to time. But at the end of the day, I always come back to the joy I get from collaborating on an artistic project with other talented creatives. There’s nothing quite like that. Ultimately, I say to my friends in the industry all the time how lucky we are. To simplify it beyond belief, we are getting paid to play dress up!! Obviously, there is much more to it, and the countless hours we put in on jobs away from our families and friends can take its toll. But no one chooses this career path if they don’t love it. So for the most part, everyone you are working with is incredibly passionate about their craft as well, which fosters such an inspiring environment to work in everyday.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.AlliElizabeth.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allielizabeth_mua/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@allielizabeth_MUA?si=vTSzkd-iFTEt_wrG
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@allielizabeth_mua
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6818996/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
Image Credits
Lex Merico, Brandon Michael, Meiko Takechi Arquillos, Anastasiya Sazhina, Christopher Michael Martinez, Marcus Haney