By the time Mandy Moore leaves the makeup chair ready to play Rebecca Pearson, age 66, on This Is Us, enough hours have elapsed that you could have cooked a 14-pound turkey, watched Gone With The Wind, or pronounced the longest word in the English dictionary. "It takes about three and a half hours," the 33-year-old actress tells Refinery29, adding that removing the stuff requires just as much elbow grease — both theoretically and, as we learned, literally.
"You wrap for the day and everyone's like, 'Bye!' but you still have an hourlong process of taking off the makeup," Moore says. (That's the face-cleansing equivalent of forever, by the way, considering most people don't dedicate more than five minutes.)
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"It's a lot of chemicals," Moore explains. "You have to put on a greasy remover lotion in order to remove the prosthetic pieces and the ager, which goes on like a glue that you have to dry with a hair dryer. It makes the skin look crepey and older. Then, I have to wrap my face in hot towels, and we just keep doing that over and over again."
In case you were wondering, this "ruins" her skin, she says. (And here you thought using face wipes in bed when you're too drunk to stand over a sink was a chore.) Luckily for Moore, and her sensitive skin, producers make it a point to schedule days off between her older Rebecca Pearson scenes. "They're usually pretty good about [that]," she says. "They'll make it so I have a day on and a day off from that makeup. It gives my skin a chance to breathe and acclimate."
Maybe next time you stumble in at 2 AM, you'll feel lucky taking yours off only requires soap and a few splashes of water.