The only brief director Nikhil Advani gave 28-year-old makeup artiste Mallika Bhat was 'make my lead actress look Chinese'. The fact that doe-eyed Deepika Padukone was the lead actress did not help Bhat's case. She says, "They had been through makeup artistes who decided to stick tapes on Deepika's face to pull her features back. But when we were done Nikhil asked if we had used tapes and I said no and he gave us the thumps up."
Bhat did away with the tapes and instead researched heavily on the look. They watched the movie Memoirs of a Geisha to get a few ideas.
For Meow Meow's character Bhatr had to flatten Deepika's sharp features and also add a tinge of yellow to resemble the Chinese skin tone. Nothing a few layers of foundation could not do. Moving on to the eyes, a base of pearly white eye shadow was applied and the inside of the eyes was lined with white pencil. But it was the eyeliner that did the actual trick. It started thin at the beginning of the eye and then became thicker and stopped just before the eye ended. Below and very close to the lower lash line, Bhatt used foundation to make the eyes look smaller, a faux pas she committed while at makeup school. The eyes were complete with grey lenses to give her a cold look.
Lips were pinched with a lot of reds used. For the hair, a wig was rebounded and thinned to appear similar to the reed thin hair that those in the orient have. Sharp asymmetrical bangs gave the edgy look that Deepika's character has.
For Sakhi's part that is of the modern Indian girl, there was not much Bhatt had to work on. She used shades of pink as that's what the character is mostly dressed in. The skin tone was a few shades darker than the Chinese and the hair was styled to have a lock of curls at the end and side bangs that were constantly falling over one eye.
"Surprisingly this look took an hour and a half to put together while the Chinese look was complete in 25 minutes! Deepika was very professional. She knew we were working against the odds. She only told me not to use tapes," laughs Bhatt. She says that a lot of the ladies are asking for a hair cut similar to Meow Meow's and well, she only hopes it's a trickle down effect of her hard work.
Make-up Artist Mallika Bhatt on Deepika in CC2C
