I cross-dress for Guillermo Del Toro

It's the first major horror movie of the year. It earned 28 million dollars on opening weekend, thwarting Arnold Schwarzenegger's comeback movie The Last Stand and ruling the box office. But who is this mysterious monster? The question everyone's been dying to know is, "Who is Mama?" Well, I have your answer:

Me, baby!

Rraaaagh!!!

Well, kind of. A few months back I booked a gig to model for this movie's poster. See, the way the creative process works for a poster is as follows: The studios hire a team of artists, who then think up dozens of different possible ideas. They hire a model (Me) and photograph me doing all of them. They then present the photos to the studios, who shoot the idea they like the best with the actor from the movie.

In the studio, between shots.

I'll tell ya... I thought I had prosthetic make up experience after my zombie PSA, that's nothing compared to what I went through for this experience. First thing they did was put those gigantic nightmare claws on my hands, so after that point I couldn't touch or pick up anything. Then they put me in a dress and shaved my body. Let me remind you again that I couldn't hold anything, so some poor girl got stuck with the honor of shaving my legs, chest, and armpits for me. (And yes, she was cute. Which somehow made it a bit more embarrassing.)

They did a bunch of shots before putting my face on, during which time I got to meet my "daughters." The girls couldn't decide whether I was funny or terrifying, but I think the latter won out when the photographer told me to start hugging on them and stroking their faces WITH MY THREE INCH CLAWS.

After that it was lunch time, in which time my arm pit shaving buddy now fed me like a baby. Thankfully, at no point did she ever say "Here comes the choo choo!"

Am I beautiful yet?!

After that came the face. Now, if you think those eyelids look like they'd be hard to see through, you'd be wrong. They were impossible to see through. They were basically just pieces of plastic with blue paint over them. So at this point in my day I was blind AND unable to touch things. I immediately regretted every Hellen Keller joke I'd ever made.

It was still hours left to go in my day after I was blinded, but thankfully my make up artist was really good about joking around with me and keeping me from getting too bored. It was a pretty fun challenge posing for photographs without being able to see, really. People pretty much just grabbed me and posed me like an action figure. I was told that my pay was being doubled because I guess they felt sorry for me.

When my daughters saw me all decked out, I couldn't resist saying "COME TO MAMA!" (They didn't.)

After the shoot, I still had many many hours left in which I was doused with all kinds of strange-smelling liquids to get the prosthetics off. Every time a piece would fall off (especially the eyes) it was like being born again. Even after they let me go, I still had little chunks of make up stuck on me that would fall off piece by piece in the shower for many weeks to come.

Total time being photographed: 2 hours.
Total time getting in and out of make up: 12 hours.

Hubba. Hubba.

A few weeks later, they called me in for MORE (ack!) because apparently the actor didn't pose the way they wanted, and they wanted to photoshop my arm into it as a cheap fix. So thankfully this time only my arm/hand was made up. 

Despite the tedium of the make up process, there's still something so appealing to me about becoming completely unrecognizable through prosthetics. I guess that's why we become actors in the first place: to become other people for awhile. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

I don't know if that's my arm on the poster or not. I'm inclined to think perhaps not, since they tried to call me in a third time and I had to decline because I was in Kentucky. But when people ask me, I always say "Yup. That's me alright!"

I kinda feel like I've earned that little lie.