How Sarah Craig Fine-Tuned Leo Woodall for The Female Gaze In 'Vladimir
Beauty
TSS Creative
Sarah Craig
Beauty
TSS Creative
Sarah Craig
Leo Woodall’s Vladimir balances rugged masculinity with clean-cut polish, embodying the ultimate female fantasy. The show's makeup department head shares how she styled the actor and her grooming non-negotiables.
For decades, a familiar power dynamic has shaped desire on screen but “Vladimir,” flips the script—or rather, the gaze—by positioning a younger man as its female protagonist’s object of desire. Adapted from Julia May Jonas’ best-selling novel of the same name, the Netflix miniseries follows a middle-aged professor’s infatuation with the newest addition to her department. At its center is Leo Woodall’s Vlad, a promising young novelist whose look combines rugged masculinity with cleancut polish. Filtered through the unreliable narration of M (Rachel Weisz), whose obsession with her colleague sharpens as the rest of her world falls apart, Vlad is not just a love interest but a consciously constructed female fantasy shaped by makeup artist Sarah Craig.
While every straight woman has a different male fantasy, Craig recognized the throughlines. In her pursuit to personify the female gaze, she modeled Vladimir’s look after a combination of real-life professors at her nearest university and archetypal attractive men in Hollywood, citing Brad Pitt as an example. “I wanted to keep [Woodall’s grooming] very clean-kempt and nicely chiseled, but not too overboard where you'd be distracted and [it] looks like ‘90s boy band facial hair. So it's walking that fine line of like, he keeps it together but not too overdone that you're going, ‘Wow, where does he get his eyebrows done?’” says Craig.
To balance out Vladimir’s “scruffy rugged” edge with a more “clean-cut” notion of masculinity, Craig focused on facial precision and symmetry. She achieved the character’s chiseled intellectual look by filling in sparse areas of Woodall’s beard with an alcohol-free pigment palette. “With men, it’s all about the small details,” she says. In the case of Woodall, the details meant deepening the tone of his eyebrows to emphasise his signature, piercing blue eyes.
According to Craig, whose worked with everyone from Alicia Silverstone to Kevin Hart, grooming male movie stars is not very different from doing makeup on female leads. “Most actors don't want to be in the chair longer than 20 minutes,” she says. “They want to get in and get out.” Accordingly, Craig eliminates any unnecessary beauty steps, focusing instead on skincare.
Leo Woodall on the set of "Vladimir".
Sarah Craig
Woodall’s time in the makeup chair always began with a facial massage and shave. His beard was meticulously adjusted to a precise, recorded length, ensuring continuity across the show’s three month shooting schedule. Craig then focused her attention to the finer details that get picked up on camera, trimming his brows, nose, and ear hair. She finished with a “little wash of a tan tone” to even out his skin tone and lend a summery sun-kissed glow.
Rachel Weisz and Leo Woodall in "Vladimir".
Netflix
Leo Woodall in "Vladimir".
Netflix
Rachel Weisz and Leo Woodall in "Vladimir".
Netflix
Leo Woodall in "Vladimir".
Netflix
Craig applies the same skincare and tanning products to all actors, opting for the lightest shade of Westman Atelier’s tanning drops to subtly warm Woodall’s naturally pale, British complexion. “Ingredients are ingredients,” Craig says, explaining how she layers her careful-curation of gender-neutral tanners in a “watercolor style” so that “everything is working in washes.” For “Vladimir,” Craig opted for a face tan that was “super sheer and light,” allowing her to layer the product while still allowing the actor’s skin to show through. In a series of extreme closeups, Vlad is often filmed shirtless or with several buttons undone, necessitating an additional layer of waterproof body tan that Craig achieved through Vita Liberata.
At the end of every shoot day, Craig put it upon herself to remove all of the makeup and bronzer from Woodall’s face. “If I put it on, I'm taking it off,” Craig says, recognizing that not all actors have an active skincare regimen and may just end up crawling into bed without so much a splash of water to the face. Ideally, though, she says the best practise—even for men who aren’t wearing makeup on set across grueling 12-hour shoots—is to wash your face with cleanser twice a day, no exceptions.
“Grooming is massive for men, whether it's a quick trim of the brows or a little bit of skincare, it goes a long way," she says, advising that the best thing a man can do is adhere to the following:
- Regular brow trims, scanning for long wiry brows that grow to the mid-forehead
- Clean up stray hairs, paying special attention to the nose and ears
- Ditch the bar of soap and 3-in-1 shampoo; good grooming requires multiple, distinct products
- Apply sunscreen and moisturize daily as “a little bit of skincare goes a long way”
- If you opt for a self-tan, mix it into your moisturizer on the palm of your hand before applying to the face
