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Oscar for Spain: Cantabria's Sergio López-Rivera nets award for 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom'
26/04/2021
LAST YEAR'S Oscars saw a tin of potato crisps from Galicia pick up four statuettes, although Spain's joint-biggest living Hollywood export Antonio Banderas – the other being Penélope Cruz – still went home empty-handed, having earned his first-ever nomination in a career that is now into its fifth decade.
But this year's Oscars did include one Spanish winner – Sevilla-born Sergio López-Rivera, 54, who grew up in Santander, Cantabria.
Attending the ceremony with his husband, López-Rivera said his triumph had only been possible thanks to his grandmother back in the far-northern coastal region of Spain.
Along with his colleagues Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson, Sergio won the Oscar for Best Hair and Makeup for the US jazz scene film Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, in which he rose eagerly to the challenge of 'disfiguring' the lead actress Viola Davis, who played the central character.
Viola Davis had personally requested her makeup artist for the rôle be Sergio López-Rivera, whom she had worked with before in How to Get Away With a Murder.
Of the original 'Ma Rainey', one of the first female artists to record her music accompanied by a band in 1920s' Chicago, only seven photos could be found and only one of these close-up enough to see her features in full detail, Sergio said.
“We discovered she was a woman who was very fat, who sweated excessively, who had lots of gold teeth and who was considered the ugliest person in the musical industry,” he reveals.
“She was said to have sweated so much under the spotlights on stage that she looked as though she was bathed in a gold sheen.”
Denzel Washington, producing the film for Netflix, admitted he was 'speechless' when he first saw Viola Davis in character, and though the makeup appeared 'too grotesque', something Sergio did not find out about until afterwards.
He took his inspiration for it from two sources: One, Bette Davis in her terrifying Baby Jane rôle, and two, his grandmother's own makeup style in the Civil War years – although this is not the only reason he says he owes her his Oscar.
“Generally, you have to look after an actor's vanity; but Viola insisted in being specific: If she has to be ugly and fat, she wants to be the ugliest and fattest possible,” Sergio reveals.
He is set to work with her again in three future projects, one of which centres on the former US First Lady, Michelle Obama.
Viola's high-profile rôles to date, as well as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and How to Get Away With a Murder, include playing Aibileen Clark in the film adaptation of Katherine Stockett's novel The Help.
And Sergio was only able to work with her this time around because the series he had committed to had been cancelled, so he rang Denzel Washington again and asked if there was still a place for him.
When Viola found out there was, indeed, a vacancy, she was said to be 'delighted'.
Also the winner of a BAFTA and a Syndicate of Makeup Artists' prize, Sergio remembers being about seven or eight years old and enjoying drawing pictures of and making up the faces of his sisters.
“Imagine, in 1970s' Spain, if you told your parents you wanted to be an artist,” he says.
“And a makeup artist to boot. They'd dump your suitcases outside the front door.”
As a teenager and young adult, Sergio was keener than ever and saw himself eventually living in Los Angeles – in fact, he did just that, and has now been residing in the city for over 30 years.
He was barely 20 when he arrived, chasing his dream, and made ends meet by scratching a living where he could find one – working as a chauffeur, in an ice-cream parlour and in a dry cleaner's, among other jobs that, in the US, have tended to be low-paid.
It was a female friend who told him he ought to go professional as a makeup artist, and he managed to get an assistant's position in the industry; before and during this time, in between his various casual jobs, Sergio carried out makeovers on his friends and gave them photo sessions.
He admits he was struggling to afford to eat, and eventually asked his grandmother in Cantabria to loan him some money to pay the fees to get into the best makeup artistry school in Los Angeles.
He graduated with the best grades in his year group, but did not have the courage to tell his father what he was doing for a living until he was 23.
The first film in which Sergio's name appears in the credits was The Opposite of Sex, starring The Addams' Family's Christina Ricci, in 1997, when Sergio was 30 – after this, another 20 or so would byline him under 'makeup', including series such as Felicity, Monk and Larry David.
Already tipped as the favourite for picking up the 2021 Oscar, Sergio is the first Spaniard to win one in this category since 2006 when David Martí and Montse Ribó took home a statuette for their work in Pan's Labyrinth.
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LAST YEAR'S Oscars saw a tin of potato crisps from Galicia pick up four statuettes, although Spain's joint-biggest living Hollywood export Antonio Banderas – the other being Penélope Cruz – still went home empty-handed, having earned his first-ever nomination in a career that is now into its fifth decade.
But this year's Oscars did include one Spanish winner – Sevilla-born Sergio López-Rivera, 54, who grew up in Santander, Cantabria.
Attending the ceremony with his husband, López-Rivera said his triumph had only been possible thanks to his grandmother back in the far-northern coastal region of Spain.
Along with his colleagues Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson, Sergio won the Oscar for Best Hair and Makeup for the US jazz scene film Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, in which he rose eagerly to the challenge of 'disfiguring' the lead actress Viola Davis, who played the central character.
Viola Davis had personally requested her makeup artist for the rôle be Sergio López-Rivera, whom she had worked with before in How to Get Away With a Murder.
Of the original 'Ma Rainey', one of the first female artists to record her music accompanied by a band in 1920s' Chicago, only seven photos could be found and only one of these close-up enough to see her features in full detail, Sergio said.
“We discovered she was a woman who was very fat, who sweated excessively, who had lots of gold teeth and who was considered the ugliest person in the musical industry,” he reveals.
“She was said to have sweated so much under the spotlights on stage that she looked as though she was bathed in a gold sheen.”
Denzel Washington, producing the film for Netflix, admitted he was 'speechless' when he first saw Viola Davis in character, and though the makeup appeared 'too grotesque', something Sergio did not find out about until afterwards.
He took his inspiration for it from two sources: One, Bette Davis in her terrifying Baby Jane rôle, and two, his grandmother's own makeup style in the Civil War years – although this is not the only reason he says he owes her his Oscar.
“Generally, you have to look after an actor's vanity; but Viola insisted in being specific: If she has to be ugly and fat, she wants to be the ugliest and fattest possible,” Sergio reveals.
He is set to work with her again in three future projects, one of which centres on the former US First Lady, Michelle Obama.
Viola's high-profile rôles to date, as well as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and How to Get Away With a Murder, include playing Aibileen Clark in the film adaptation of Katherine Stockett's novel The Help.
And Sergio was only able to work with her this time around because the series he had committed to had been cancelled, so he rang Denzel Washington again and asked if there was still a place for him.
When Viola found out there was, indeed, a vacancy, she was said to be 'delighted'.
Also the winner of a BAFTA and a Syndicate of Makeup Artists' prize, Sergio remembers being about seven or eight years old and enjoying drawing pictures of and making up the faces of his sisters.
“Imagine, in 1970s' Spain, if you told your parents you wanted to be an artist,” he says.
“And a makeup artist to boot. They'd dump your suitcases outside the front door.”
As a teenager and young adult, Sergio was keener than ever and saw himself eventually living in Los Angeles – in fact, he did just that, and has now been residing in the city for over 30 years.
He was barely 20 when he arrived, chasing his dream, and made ends meet by scratching a living where he could find one – working as a chauffeur, in an ice-cream parlour and in a dry cleaner's, among other jobs that, in the US, have tended to be low-paid.
It was a female friend who told him he ought to go professional as a makeup artist, and he managed to get an assistant's position in the industry; before and during this time, in between his various casual jobs, Sergio carried out makeovers on his friends and gave them photo sessions.
He admits he was struggling to afford to eat, and eventually asked his grandmother in Cantabria to loan him some money to pay the fees to get into the best makeup artistry school in Los Angeles.
He graduated with the best grades in his year group, but did not have the courage to tell his father what he was doing for a living until he was 23.
The first film in which Sergio's name appears in the credits was The Opposite of Sex, starring The Addams' Family's Christina Ricci, in 1997, when Sergio was 30 – after this, another 20 or so would byline him under 'makeup', including series such as Felicity, Monk and Larry David.
Already tipped as the favourite for picking up the 2021 Oscar, Sergio is the first Spaniard to win one in this category since 2006 when David Martí and Montse Ribó took home a statuette for their work in Pan's Labyrinth.
Related Topics
You may also be interested in ...
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