Wig- makerisheadsabovecompetition
Butterworth’s wigs can be seen in most local productions — but she’s happiest when they go unnoticed
ive me a ball of hair
or fur and I can make
it into just about anything,” laughs Vancouver wig- maker to the stars Stacey Butterworth.
Back in 1989, Butterworth was a hairdresser-in-training at Raymond’s Salon on Robson Street when the stage production of Les Miserables came to town.
The wigmaster for the show called the school looking for a student assistant.
“So basically, I was given the high-profile job of sweeping the floors,” she jokes, “ an apprenticeship. It was amazing, it opened me up to a lot of different people.”
From there, she was hired by Garth Drabinsky’s Live Entertainment, where she worked for several years and toured with their show, Phantom of the Opera.
“I just kind of learned on the job. I was pretty much thrown into the fire and had to survive.”
Butterworth’s reputation grew by word of mouth. Back in Vancouver in 1995, she began working in local theatre.
Then the film world discovered her. Her first big movie break came in 1997 with The 13th Warrior, a Viking flick starring Antonio Banderas, shot in the Campbell River area.
But she couldn’t get her hands on his luxurious locks.
“ Antonio refuses to wear wigs,” says Butterworth, who also made wigs for Banderas’ Zorro movies.
And with that exposure, her company, Stacey Butterworth Wig Creations, Inc., started up.
But it was a bit scary at first.
‘G“I can remember having $12 in my bank account, driving around, going, ‘ What am I going to do — I have no money.’ But I didn’t know how to do anything else, so I thought I may as just give it a shot.”
She enjoys the extremely meticulous work that theatrical wig-making demands and calculates that 80 per cent of her work is in film and television, with the other 20 per cent for The Vancouver Opera and The Playhouse, where she’s just finished up work for Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.
Not all of Butterworth’s work is locally based — “I find when you work with an actor and they like you, it doesn’t matter where in the world they are, they’ll always contact you to do something for their show.”
In fact, she’s just returned from New York from work on Kevin Spacey’s film, Bernard and Doris, the true story of heiress Doris Duke and her gay butler, to whom she left her entire fortune.
Susan Sarandon is playing Duke; Ralph Fiennes, the butler.
Butterworth made several wigs for Sarandon’s character, including glamourous and natural looks.
“But the most challenging wig was for when she’s dying,” admits Butterworth.
“We basically made a wig that made it look like she’d been in the hospital for six months, so she had grey roots grown out, then her natural kind of blonde- y highlighted look on the bottom. It was great.”
Butterworth’s love of designing hair began early.
“I cut everything up, starting at about six,” she jokes. “ I was styling stuff — dolls, brothers, dad. And my dog had a Mohawk when I was nine!”
At the age of 34, she’s now one of a handful, maybe seven in total in North America, of classically trained wigmakers.
And in her Lions Bay home where she lives with her husband and baby boy, Cooper, Butterworth keeps her shop and has an entire room dedicated to her life head casts.
“ I call it the morgue,” she chuckles, “ I’ve got rows and rows of heads. I can just pick out — Susan Sarandon — or whomever ....”
It was a risk to move her shop from Kitsilano to LB, but she’s told clients — “If it’s too far to come, go to Los Angeles!”
Now, Butterworth’s work can be seen on 85 per cent of the movies shot here, including the Scooby Doo flicks and Scary Movies 2, 3 and 4. She usually has about seven contract workers on staff, but in 2003, her busiest year ever, she brought on 12 for Chronicles of Riddick.
For the Wayans Brothers film Little Man, now shooting in Vancouver, she was asked to make short, cropped Afro wigs for both actors and puppets.
“We used real Afro hair, I have sources for hair everywhere from Africa to Russia to Spain.”
In fact, most of her hair comes from Russia — “it’s the most virgin [ untreated], silky hair. So when you get it in that state, you can turn it into anything you want.”
And hair isn’t cheap, averaging about $75 US per ounce.
“People might complain about how expensive wigs are. But it takes at least 48 hours to make a wig, and materials are astronomical.”
A full custom-made wig costs from a minimum of $4,000 up to $8,000.
“ Having the experience to know what to use to make it work, make it work on film — that costs money,” says Butterworth. “‘ Cause that’s years of expertise. How many times have you seen a show and you’ve seen a wig and it looks s----y? And it ruins the whole show. So I always say if no one comments and no one says anything about my work, I know my job is done because no one has noticed it.”