Skip to content

Gorgeous or ghastly

Herman Groenewald can make you look like a gorgeous movie star — or a grisly accident victim.
Special effects makeup1 100515jer
Herman Groenewald applies the final touches to a slit throat effect on participant Danielle Perrault.


Herman Groenewald can make you look like a gorgeous movie star — or a grisly accident victim.

It’s all in a day’s work for the enthusiastic South African, who was in Red Deer this weekend teaching a crash course on beauty and special effects makeup for the benefit of an AIDS charity in his homeland.

Groenewald, an internationally qualified makeup artist with more than 30 years of experience, was teaching Marvel College students some of the same techniques he passed on to his most famous student — A Nightmare on Elm Street makeup artist Trefor Proud, who won an Oscar for the film Topsy-Turvy in 1999.

Using pots of greasepaint and imagination to transform people for the stage or films “is my passion,” said the elaborately mustachioed 63-year-old.

But he only stumbled into his calling after being a failed printer and commercial artist.

“I used to be a . . . lithographer — and I hated it. I still have nightmares about being in printing — I was just not mechanically inclined,” he admitted, with a chuckle.

One day, Groenewald accompanied his makeup artist friend, Paddy Crofton, to his job at a Cape Town opera house. Groenewald was to help out as a prompter, in case actors forgot their lines.

It was the mid-1970s, during the height of apartheid, and Crofton was actually hired to turn white actors into black characters for the musical Show Boat.

“I know it’s unbelievable (that this should happen) in a country full of blacks,” said Groenewald, referring to South Africa’s former law that kept black people from sharing the stage with whites.

“But that was apartheid.”

Crofton was kept very busy that day, and Groenewald noticed posted makeup instructions on the wall.

To pass the time, he decided to try his hand at doing one actor’s face.

It turned out the guy liked his makeup so much, he requested that Groenewald handle it for the rest of the operetta’s run.

Crofton noticed his friend’s natural flair and suggested he make makeup his career.

“I said, ‘You mean people pay you to do this? You don’t have to pay them?’” said Groenewald, who went on to work on other stage productions and films, including a ballet called Kami, for which he created his first special effect — a gaping bullet wound.

Groenewald didn’t have a clue how to start, so he turned to what he knew and painted a passable wound on the dancer, adding stage blood for realism.

The artist, who gained knowledge from books, eventually became something of a specialist in gory makeup effects and instructed at a number of Cape Town colleges.

His grisly resume photographs show realistic depictions of a knife-slashed throat, a hand impaled with a glass shard, a bashed open skull (complete with visible bone and brains), and a ripped-off arm.

Most of these effects are achieved with latex prosthetics, which Groenewald creates using moulds of the actors’ features or limbs.

But makeup artists always have to be imaginative about the materials they use, said Groenewald, who has created a skull fragment from a white rubber ball.

“I once had a Halloween party, where I put an eye down on my cheek.

“Whenever I went near the food table, everyone left,” he laughingly recalled.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that, while he’s squeamish about blood in real life, Groenewald’s a fan of horror movies, such as Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th.

“I tend to ruin them for my friends by saying ‘Oh look at that makeup, it’s not too badly done,’” said Groenewald, who recently retired from teaching at the College of Cape Town.

He couldn’t resist plying his skills, while visiting Canada, for the benefit of the South African AIDS charity Dibanani.

Students from Marvel College and a Stettler High School were among those who learned his makeup techniques after making a nominal donation.

Among his tips for “beauty makeup” is to use subtle colours that suit the individual’s colouring, and to let go of dated makeup looks.

“I still see some women wearing bright blue eyeshadow, heavy eyeliner, with pale lips, and I think please come and visit me, I’ll do your (make-over) for nothing!”

Groenewald was sponsored by Marvel College and Sutton Landmark Realty, as Sutton broker Neall Stevens volunteers with the Dibanani charity that helps African mothers infected with AIDS to survive with anti-viral drugs.

The charity was co-founded by Groenewald’s partner, Jaco Lourens.

For more information, or to make a donation, visit Dibanani.org.

lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com