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“I’ve always loved beauty—even as a child,” says TV and film makeup artist Rebecca Hickey on a video call from Chicago. “I would steal my sister’s magazines and hang photos of the models in my bedroom.” Laughing, she adds: “And it wasn’t like teenyboppers. It was Christy Turlington and Claudia Schiffer. I didn’t care about boys; I just wanted photos of these beautiful women on my walls.” In high school, Hickey was the friend doing everyone’s makeup. Then, at 19, she moved to New York City, where she studied liberal arts. But she had no idea what she wanted to do. “I just hated school,” she says. Hickey happened to be listening to the radio one day (“The radio,” she giggles. “That tells you it was 20 years ago.”) when she heard a commercial asking “Do you want to become a makeup artist?” That was all it took for everything to click. She promptly called her parents to let them know she’d be dropping out of school and moving to Los Angeles to go to makeup school. “The school was called Makeup Designory, and there was actually one in New York, too. My mom was like, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go to the one in New York?’ and I was like, ‘No, I need to go to Hollywood!’”
Hickey on set of The White Lotus with Michelle Monaghan. Photography courtesy of Rebecca Hickey
Hickey recalls, explaining that growing up in upstate New York, she was captivated by California-centric pop culture like Clueless and 90210. A few months later, Hickey was on a plane headed to the West Coast. Her first credited job in a makeup department was on the set of the 2007 film Lady Samurai. Since then, she’s led the makeup departments on TV shows like FBI, First Wives Club and The Sinner. But the role she’s most well known for? HBO’s megahit The White Lotus, where she’s been the lead makeup artist since the show began. “What I love about TV and film is that you’re creating a character,” says Hickey. “I don’t love or wear a lot of makeup myself, so that has never been the intriguing part. I’ve dabbled in jobs where I’ve done more fashiony editorial looks, which I find beautiful, but that part is easy to me. Working for seven months on a project and maintaining a sense of continuity and having to do a look in a really short time span… That’s so challenging and rewarding. I just love telling a bigger story.” Hickey was approached to do the makeup for The White Lotus’s first season in the height of the COVID pandemic. “A friend called and said the show was in need of a makeup artist to shoot for two months in Hawaii, even though we’d be stuck in the hotel the whole time because of the pandemic—but I feel like when Hawaii calls, you answer,” she laughs. “We didn’t know what the magnitude of this show would be. We had no idea! We were reading the script like, ‘Well, that’s interesting—a little odd.’”
Photography courtesy of HBO
In this past season, one makeup look in particular became the standout beauty moment of the show: Chelsea’s glittery purple eyeshadow at the full-moon party in episode five. “I wanted to do something really fun for the party and really play with the idea that Chelsea and Chloe’s older boyfriends weren’t there and they were finally among peers—people their own age,” says Hickey. “I wanted it to feel childlike, as if they were two teenagers looking in a mirror, doing their makeup and getting ready for a party. I don’t think that kind of look would have happened if Rick had been there with Chelsea.” Viewers of this show, where symbolism reigns supreme and creator Mike White drops Easter eggs as if he’s HBO’s Taylor Swift, have become obsessed with searching for clues anywhere they can find them—including picking up on tiny details about characters’ appearances—and Hickey is happy to partake in this. She recalls a particularly delightful detail about Laurie, played by Carrie Coon, in season three. “She has this really weird nail-polish colour all season. It’s like this bluish purple. It doesn’t really make sense because she’s this big New York City lawyer and it’s just odd,” explains Hickey of the muted, not-so-flattering choice for a vacation manicure. “It says that she is really excited about the girls trip and wants to fit in with the other ladies, but she just kind of misses the mark. It’s a strange choice. I think little things like that are fun because maybe the audience doesn’t quite pick up on them or while they’re watching, they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s weird’ but they don’t know the backstory. I love little thoughtful details like that.” [content_module id=”1″] This article first appeared in FASHION’s Summer 2025 issue. Find out more here. Continue Reading
