Hoffman grad does sickly makeup for beautiful 'Contagion' stars

So, your job is to take the radiantly beautiful, Oscar-winning actresses Kate Winslet and Gwyneth Paltrow and make them look as if they've contracted a deadly, unknown disease.

How do you do it?

Hoffman Estates High School graduate Suzi Ostos knows. She did it.

“You've got to bring up the veins to the surface of the skin,” she said. “You've got to pale out the skin. Blood isn't flowing as it should, so you're painting the skin and painting the veins so that the skin looks really thin from lack of blood, looking very sallow.”

When you catch the new thriller “Contagion” (opening Sept. 9), you'll see Ostos' work up there on the silver screen in all its sickly splendor.

“That's the fun part for me,” she said. “Taking someone who's naturally gorgeous and making them look horribly, horribly bad.”

Ostos, 45, has worked for 25 years as a Hollywood makeup artist. She's provided makeup for an impressive list of Chicago-area movies: “Colombiana” (opening Friday), “Source Code,” “The Dilemma,” “Little Fockers,” “The Unborn,” “The Breakup” and others.

Right now, she's working somewhere near Plano on the highly secretive production of the new “Superman” adventure, “Man of Steel.”

But how did a nice girl attending St. Hubert's Catholic School through eighth grade wind up in a profession like this?

“There was a TV show in the '70s called ‘That's Entertainment,' a half-hour program on Saturday,” she said. “It was a behind-the-scenes of film production, narrated by Tom Bosley. I didn't care where I was, I would leave my friends, come home and watch this show. Never knowing why.

“When I went to college at Southern Illinois University, I didn't really know what I wanted to do, so I went into film production. I left school feeling lost.”

She called a friend who worked as a makeup artist. The woman took Ostos on a job. The next day, Ostos got to apply a full-torso, fake suntan on a man for a movie.

Twenty-five years later, she's still applying makeup on film sets.

“I really think this was my path,” Ostos said. “It was in me. It took me a little while.”

The makeup business has its ups and downs. It's a nomadic existence, traveling from job to job, for Ostos, who now lives on the North Side of Chicago.

Sometimes, the worst part of the job has to do with the location of a shoot.

Take the Joliet Prison where Ostos worked on a production of the Fox TV series “Prison Break.” The prison closed a few years before the series began filming there, yet the building and its history took its toll.

“Every day I would wake up and say, ‘My God, how am I going to do this?'” she said. “If you've ever been in Joliet Prison, it's not a happy place to be. Being in that place made it difficult not just for me but for other departments. A lot of stuff went down. You have to get through that.”

The atmosphere or the violence?

“Both. Absolutely both. Once I was walking through the yard to leave, and I was completely alone but felt like someone was watching me. Later, they told me that this is where everybody dies. This is where everybody gets ‘shanked,' as they call it. I just felt like I wasn't alone. It's a very scary place to work.”

Ostos has had happier experiences, such as on the set of “Contagion,” shot in Elgin last year.

“The cast was wonderful,” she reported. “Matt Damon's a wonderful guy. Laurence Fishburne is fantastic. He's going to be in ‘Man of Steel,' too. Steven Soderbergh is a wonderful director to work with. I don't say this very often, but I am extremely proud to have worked on ‘Contagion.'”

Lest you think Ostos is merely shilling for her latest movie, she has a solid sense of standards.

She resigned from the Northwest suburban production of a remake of the horror film “Nightmare on Elm Street.” She cited personal reasons based on the film's subject matter.

“This wasn't for me,” she said. “I need to sleep at night. Every day, if I do a job or walk away, I do it with integrity. I'm very proud of my rep in this town. If I quit this business, it will be on integrity. I swear and breathe by it.”

Blame it on her Catholic education and her retired parents, Ed and Sarita Ostos, who still live in Hoffman Estates.

“Yes, she does have a lot of integrity,” Sarita Ostos said. “It was her dream to become a makeup artist, and she was going to be a very good one. I think she always wanted to be in makeup, based on the childhood dolls that had all kinds of haircuts.”

Suzi Ostos' high school experience didn't hurt, either.

“I had a great time in high school,” she said. “I still have great friends from high school, and I get together with them. It was a great school. I had great teachers! I really did.

“I saw ‘Footloose' the other day, and it took me back to 1982 with the jukebox in the school cafeteria. I remember wearing those clothes! I had such a great time in high school.”

And if she had it to do all over again?

“If I had it to do over again, I would do theater and those other things I was too fearful to do when I was a kid.”

Ÿ Dann Gire and Jamie Sotonoff are always looking for suburban people in showbiz. If you know of someone, send a note to dgire@dailyherald.com and jsotonoff@dailyherald.com.

The greatest compliment that Hoffman Estates High School graduate Suzi Ostos ever received for her work as a makeup artist came on the set of “Boss,” a STARZ original series shot in Chicago and premiering in October. In one episode, Ostos made an actress look as if she'd been severely beaten, with her nose broken and face swollen.

“An extra came up to me and asked if I'd done the makeup,” Ostos said. “She told me, 'I'm an ER nurse, and that's exactly what it looks like.' That is the biggest compliment I can ever get paid.”