In 20th Century’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” every frame looks lived-in. Jeremy Allen White’s Bruce, playing Springsteen in his soul-baring Nebraska-era, exists in a haze of sweat, shadow, and exhaustion. His hair is unkempt, his under-eye circles on display. 

Beauty department heads Jackie Risotto (makeup) and Jameson Eaton (hair), took an “invisible by design” approach: nothing polished, nothing ornamental. The brief on Scott Cooper’s film was all about subtraction. No prosthetics. No wigs if they could help it. No chasing a perfect likeness, but rather, chasing the wear. 

That wear, for the uninitiated, is when Springsteen found himself at his most conflicted, grappling with depression and self-doubt even as he stood on the brink of megastardom. He recorded the stark, homespun Nebraska on a four-track cassette deck in his bedroom while simultaneously crafting the arena anthems that would become “Born in the U.S.A..” This context guided every choice; Risotto and Eaton’s teams had to bridge the public man and the private one; the stadium icon and the sorrowful man in solitude.

As the (reluctant) Boss, Jeremy Allen White also had to read as the darker, rough-edged New Jerseyan without vanishing beneath the makeup. “Jeremy’s a blonde-haired, blue-eyed cutie,” Risotto says. “And we had to transform him into this gritty rock star from New Jersey.” Eaton’s team dyed White’s hair, under the watchful eye of New York City colorist Vicky Vidov. To find the right register, they “went one level at a time,” Eaton recalls. “You can always go darker, but you can’t take it back.” The final tone, Eaton adds, looked like he’d lived a few months on the boardwalk. Sun-worn, not salon.

The transformation continued in micro-adjustments. Risotto used MAC Face and Body Sheer Foundation to even the skin without masking it — its coverage light enough to keep pores and sweat alive under stage lights. “We wanted the grittiness,” she says. “You should see skin.” She tinted White’s lashes and brows each day with Skin Illustrator’s FX alcohol paints, brushing pigment through with a mascara wand so it never looked penciled in. “He’s so blonde that you have to be precise in your applications, otherwise it’s too blocked,” says Risotto. “I had to play around with the color so it didn’t go too ashy or too red.” (Luckily, White grows dark facial hair so that aspect of the artful dishevelment reads quite Boss-like.)

And then there were the eyes, where we see perhaps the biggest transitional element of Jeremy into Bruce — that “what did they do to really transform his appearance?” element here. To bridge the gap between White’s steely blue gaze and Springsteen’s brown, the team worked with contact-lens specialist Jessica Nelson at Veiled Optics to custom-tint lenses that wouldn’t feel costume-y. “Getting that color right, it’s tricky,” says Risotto. “But to make it look real [like Bruce], to make it look like the lenses aren’t popping out of your face, to make sure there’s enough depth but not too much depth — that’s the process.”

Eaton noticed how different Bruce can look from one day to another, depending on if he’s performing, if he’s at home, or out and about. Their ultimate reference photo became a 1981 Rolling Stone shoot: hair a little bit longer, grown-out his sideburns. Eaton used Davines mousse and Reuzel sea-salt spray to coax White’s natural curls, then diffused them to a soft edge to keep things loose and easy. “Jeremy likes to have his hands in it,” Eaton adds of White’s proclivities. “Obviously, when he’s performing it gets super sweaty. It was nice for him to be in a natural look that he could touch and get his hands in. It wasn’t precious in that way.”

Those concert sequences, especially the sweat-filled Stone Pony scenes, were endurance tests for both departments. “After every take, we’d go in and dump water on him,” Risotto says, laughing about the continuity shots.

Around White’s brooding Bruce, Odessa Young’s Faye became the counterpoint: bright, defiant, alive. Eaton bleached her hair to a striking platinum with Vidov handling the lift. “I was really drawn to Debbie Harry, so we went for that,” he says of the fictional-but-composite love interest. “It definitely gave Odessa an edge, as well.”  

Faye is modeled on several women from Springsteen’s life, and instead of a receiving specific framework for her aesthetic, the beauty departments had strict guidelines for who not to emulate. (To avoid comparison to any actual Springsteen love interests from the time.) 

Risotto leaned into that Blondie inspiration with Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow lipstick, a hit of vivid red she calls timeless. “Like the coolest chick in the room,” Risotto says of both Young and the composite Faye. “Her vibe was where she was in her life: single mom, working at a diner, loves rock and roll. It was fun to play around with her looks because she does have quite a few, when she's home, when they're going on dates, when she's out at the Stone Pony. Period-piece beauty-wise, that was fun.”

Jeremy Strong, playing producer Jon Landau, went the opposite route, as the two men bare little resemblance in reality. “We actually shaved back his hairline to give him the look of Jon Landau,” Eaton says. “Jeremy’s totally game. He’ll go there.” This was one rare instance where they went against the original “no wigs” preference, ditto for some old-age prosthetics that they built for Stephen Graham, portraying Bruce’s father Douglas “Dutch” Springsteen at multiple stages of life.

Strong’s wig was handcrafted in New York by Jennifer Mullins of Studio Paige, who also built several pieces for the film’s E Street Band stand-ins. One reason they did have to opt in for some wigs is because of how many men in the late 70s/early 80s had long, feathered hair (as did many women, same with perms).

Across both departments, the teams avoided glamour, leaning into evidence of fatigue, weather, and emotion instead. Under-eye depth suggested sleepless nights; the soft droop of curls showed psychic weight. The closer the film moved to Bruce’s isolation, the paler the skin tone, the dimmer the sheen. “I feel like I used a lighter hand than I normally would,” Eaton says, adding that the early 80s were more natural than the back half of the decade, which became more about colors and pomp. 

The direction to keep everything quiet, raw, and minimal could have made the aesthetic invisible. Instead, it made things felt. Every perceptible pore and strayed strand becomes a lyric in this ode. Addition by omission, let’s call it, and a defining direction from Cooper at the top, alongside Springsteen himself, who consulted on set. “Scott really trusted me to go my route,” Risotto says. “We did an initial ‘this is what I want’ and I just ran with it. As an artist, it was amazing. You don’t have someone nitpicking everything you do.”

In a movie about a man stripping everything back (from music, to ego and identity), the hair and makeup did the same. What remains is the physical truth: worn, weathered, and laid bare in the U.S.A..

The "Deliver Me From Nowhere" Grooming & Beauty Kit

MAC Studio Radiance Face and Body Radiant Sheer Foundation

Gives enough coverage without looking like makeup, withstanding sweat and water, especially all the performance scenes.

MAC

buy for $44

Reuzel Clay Matte Pomade

Just enough hold to keep shape, but a still-touchable final touch with each styling session.

Reuzel

buy for $20.95

Davines This is a Curl Moisturizing Mousse

Combined with Reuzel Surf Tonic, this was Eaton’s go-to texture duo for movement and grit without shine. They wanted the looseness of late-’70s Bruce; nothing over-styled.

Davines

buy for $37

Reuzel Surf Tonic

Reuzel

buy for $17.95

Hair Illustrator Scalp Palette


Used to tint lashes, brows, and sideburns. Risotto would brush it on with a mascara wand (painted, not penciled) so it stayed subtle and real.

Premiere Products Inc.

buy for $108

Revlon Super Lustrous Creme Lipstick in Cherries in the Snow

Risotto’s nod to vintage Jersey cool, and the perfect stage red for Young’’s Debbie Harry-esque Faye: “It’s timeless. Like the coolest chick in the room.”

Walmart

buy for $6.87

K18 Leave-in Molecular Repair Hair Mask

Used on Odessa Young’s bleached hair to keep it healthy, to save the integrity of the blonde dye.

K18

buy for $75