Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Ford.
Heather, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
It’s been quite a journey actually. I started out after graduating from college as an elementary school teacher. Even though I loved all kinds of art when I was growing up, being an artist was never something I even considered as a career. I grew up in a very conservative family in suburban Detroit, so I didn’t meet people who were artists and I wasn’t exposed to the art world in any capacity. After I graduated from college, I got a job, got married, and my husband and I bought a house a few months later. I was completely settled by the time I was about 25-26. Then about five years in we moved to Rochester, NY. I had gotten my Master’s by that time but was becoming increasingly unhappy as a teacher. So when we moved, I didn’t get a teaching job and decided to take some time off to figure out what was next. And then, to make a long story short, I essentially had a total identity crisis. I didn’t have any friends and I didn’t have a job and I was forced to look inward. And in a nutshell, with a lot of time spent reflecting and soul-searching, I slowly became aware that I was unhappy because I had made all the “right” decisions, but for all the wrong reasons. I realized I desperately craved and needed a creative outlet and to do something that was fun and brought me joy. I was honest with myself for the first time in my life and admitted that I had never really wanted to live in the suburbs and be a house-wife, among many other things…
Something that I now find quite serendipitous when looking back is that we had moved to Rochester for my (now ex) husband’s job and because of that, his company offered career counseling for the spouses of their employees. I signed up and the first thing my counselor had me do was take a Myers-Briggs test. And to my surprise, the results suggested that because of my personality type, I would be happiest as possibly and esthetician, or a hairstylist, or a makeup artist, etc., somehow working in that world. Coincidentally, while miserable as a teacher, I had often fantasized over the years about working in a salon or spa and somehow being in the world of beauty & skincare. Makeup was always something that I loved and fascinated me. I loved watching people transform as they did their makeup, I loved all of the colors and textures. I had done some of my friend’s makeup for their weddings and even for some of the dances when I was in high school. So getting those results propelled me towards a long journey of discovering what career possibilities were out there. After a lot of research and even more soul-searching, I made the decision to leave my life in Rochester and start over. I wanted to give myself the chance to see what could happen this time if I made all the right decisions for the right reasons. So I moved to LA, went to school at Makeup Designory and almost 15 years later, here I am!
Has it been a smooth road?
I moved to LA just about two years before The Great Recession. I moved out here with some savings, but from about the Fall of 2008 to Summer 2009, I maybe worked a total of six days! And this was the very beginning of my career, so I was lucky if I was making $100 for 12+ hours a day on set. Needless to say, I went into significant credit card debt, questioned EVERYTHING and cried a lot. I started considering going back to the teaching world. I looked for jobs in educational policy, curriculum development and even at publishing companies that make textbooks and materials for teachers because going back into the classroom was the absolute last option, but it was an option.
And for the first oh almost ten years of my career, I worked almost exclusively in low-budget comedy which means very long hours, an incredibly fast-pace, and notoriously low-pay. However, despite these seemingly unattractive qualities, I can’t say that I honestly have any complaints. I had the best time ever, learned SO much, became part of an amazing, loving, supportive community full of the some of the most talented and creative people on the planet, and made some of my best friends.
And now here we are in the midst of this pandemic and I haven’t worked a day in over five months! So the struggles seem to persist no matter how much time you’ve put in or how much experience you have. You try, but you just don’t always know what’s coming.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I work mostly in tv and specifically in comedy. My first big job was comedy web series that was the first to get picked up by a network and made into an actual tv show, so I’ve made most of my contacts in that world and I love it. It was never a specific goal of mine to work in comedy, but I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Most people that I’ve worked with in the genre don’t take themselves or what they do too seriously. They create amazing content and are very passionate about it, but they also know that it’s supposed to be fun. It’s the perfect balance. I don’t mind working in other genres, I’ve done musicals, period pieces, dramas, etc., but I always come back to comedy and I never want to leave.
The position I get hired for the majority of the time is a department head. The way I see it, at the core of what I do is storytelling, which is also one of the main reasons why I love doing it so much. I help create and bring to life the characters in the story that’s being told on screen. I take direction from producers, directors and the actors themselves, add in my own thoughts, ideas & expertise, and oftentimes work with hairstylists and costume designers to help the actors transform into the characters and feel as confident and secure as possible, so they are able to perform to the best of their ability. The process is incredibly collaborative, which is another reason I love what I do so much.
Currently, because of the pandemic, I’m not focused on anything that I would consider official work. As many people already know our industry was completely shut down in March and has only started up again in mid-June. But there’s so much prep that goes into a show that it usually takes months before we’re actually on set shooting anything. Although I have been trying other little creative projects to keep that muscle activated, specifically cross-stitching, which has unexpectedly been very fun and satisfying, as well as time-consuming, which might even be the best part. However I will be starting a show in October – Season 2 of The Unicorn, a sitcom on CBS. It’s a cute story about a widower who’s new to the current dating scene and also raising two daughters, all with the help of two other couples who are his best friends. It’s hilarious and heart-warming and features some of the most talented actors out there, comedic and beyond. I cannot wait to get back to it!
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I love Los Angeles. This is a city FULL of artists with endless ideas who are dying to create. If you are willing to put in the time, effort and sacrifice, I truly believe you can make it happen. In my opinion, as a makeup artist, it doesn’t have as much to do with the infrastructure here and is mostly about your community – the people with whom you choose to associate and work. When I first came to LA, I didn’t plan on staying. I was only familiar with how the media portrayed this city – one where the only kind of people who lived here were obsessed with fame. And let’s be real, that definitely exists here, and probably more than in most cities. So I wanted to come to LA and go to makeup school and maybe see what working on set was like, but I thought I was going to hate it and my plan was to move to New York City after maybe a year and get into makeup for fashion and print. However, my experience here was nothing like what I initially expected.
Right from the start, I met and worked with some of the most authentic, independent thinking, creative, funny, and insanely talented individuals I’ve ever encountered. They never pretended to be anything other than who they were to their core and not only that, they were warm and welcoming and so open about sharing their ideas and experiences. It made me feel so… at home. I definitely came across creeps from time to time, but I’m lucky in the sense that I have a very strong, very accurate intuition, so as soon as any red flags went up, I turned in the opposite direction, even if it meant having to pass on a nice paycheck. I also felt a lot of pressure to “network” and pay tons of money to go to those events, but again, there was something about that approach that didn’t feel real to me. I had been told that this business is all about relationships, but I very quickly learned that those relationships have to be genuine and based on shared values and experiences. In my opinion, success has a lot to do with seeking out, surrounding yourself and creating with a community of people that truly understand the value of integrity within relationships and I’ve never experienced that like I have here. It’s entirely possible that I could’ve experienced that in New York or any other city and maybe the fact that I didn’t expect it to happen here influenced why I love Los Angeles so much, Regardless, I found it and when I did, the rest fell into place.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: IG @heathermary
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