Jane Royle, makeup artist, RIP (1932-2010)

[JamesM]

Jane Royle, widow of actor Derek Royle, passed away on 13th December 2010.

She began her in television (The Champions/Avengers/Armchair Theatre) and later in film, largely on fantasy / horror features such as Dracula (1979), Flash Gordon, (1980), The Company of Wolves (1984), Legend (1985), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Alien 3 (1992) and the first three Harry Potter films.

She worked on other high profile features including A Dry White Season (1989), Last of the Mohicans (1992), Schindler's List (1993) and two James Bond films.

[wellendcanons]

An impressive list of credits to her name.

Jane Royle.

wec

[whitstablejim]

I am very sad to hear that Jane Royle has passed away, worked with her on the film "Dragonslayer" 1981. plus other films and TV series, she was such a nice lady, a good worker, and also very good looking, Jane Royal R. I. P.

[Nick Dando]

From the Guardian.

Jane Royle obituary | Film | The Guardian

Nick

Jane Royle obituary
TV and film make-up artist with a gift for applying prosthetics

Anthony Hayward
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 March 2011 19.16 GMT

The television and film make-up artist Jane Royle, who has died aged 78, was admired by fellow professionals for her all-round ability to bring a look to the screen that was as important as that contributed by the director of photography or production designer. She could go from ensuring Izabella Scorupco looked stunningly beautiful as a Bond girl in GoldenEye (1995) to making actors appear hideous, old, scarred, bruised, bearded or bald. Royle particularly enjoyed applying prosthetics – to which she referred as "the stickies".

For the 1979 Sherlock Holmes film Murder By Decree, she simulated the wrenched-out innards of prostitutes killed by Jack the Ripper. One of her most memorable transformations was the complete prosthetic makeover – wrinkled face, bulbous nose, pointy ears and flowing hair and whiskers – she gave Billy Barty for his cowardly dwarf character, Screwball, in the fantasy film Legend (1985).

Later, she worked on the first three Harry Potter pictures, The Philosopher's Stone (2001), The Chamber of Secrets (2002) and The Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), making up Rupert Grint and Maggie Smith, as well as Alan Rickman, whom she not only aged, but helped to appear more alarming in each successive film. She was known for the sense of fun she brought to film sets – as well as an apparently bottomless bag of sweets.

She was born Irene Jane Buchan Shortt in London and spent seven years with her parents in India, where her civil engineer father helped to build the country's railway system. Witnessing the hunting of animals there, of snakes to make handbags and lions and tigers for sport, led her to develop a lifelong concern for injustices perpetrated on both animals and humans. She was sent back to Britain in 1939 to board at Kingsdene school, Worthing, West Sussex, later becoming a day pupil when her parents returned. On leaving, she worked as a waitress in a local restaurant and acted with the town's youth drama group.

Her theatrical break came when she joined the professional repertory company in Yeovil, Somerset. There she met the actor Derek Royle, once described by the critic Michael Coveney as "simply one of the funniest men on the English stage". They married in 1953 and, after giving birth to their first daughter, Carol, a year later, she retrained as a make-up artist. While her husband spent several years with the repertory company at the Alexandra theatre, Birmingham, she found freelance work at ATV, the newly launched ITV's Midlands contractor. This included making up Noele Gordon, who was presenting regional magazine programmes before going on to star in the soap opera Crossroads.

Royle later worked between 1965 and 1969 with Diana Rigg and Linda Thorson during their time in The Avengers and from 1968 until 1969 with Alexandra Bastedo on The Champions. She also made up the prime minister Harold Wilson for television interviews, saying he had "come-to-bed eyes".

After being hired as assistant make-up artist for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Royle worked almost entirely in films, as make-up artist or supervisor on productions such as Dracula (1979), Flash Gordon (1980) and Dragonslayer (1981). She was nominated for a Bafta best make-up artist award for her work as make-up supervisor on the horror film The Company of Wolves (1984).

Her application of prosthetics for Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) brought Royle to the attention of Hollywood, resulting in work on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, with the director Steven Spielberg) and Alien 3 (1992). While on location for The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Royle rescued an abandoned blue tick hound from a North Carolina forest and brought it back to Britain as a pet. Her other films included Schindler's List (1993, with Spielberg again), First Knight (1995, starring Sean Connery and Richard Gere), The Jackal (1997, with Gere and Bruce Willis), Lost in Space (1998), the Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999) and Batman Begins (2005).

Royle's husband died in 1990. She is survived by their two daughters, Carol and Amanda, who are both actors.

• Jane Royle, screen make-up artist, born 20 October 1932; died 13 December 2010