A simple, cheerful and energetic person, she shared with me her career as a make-up artiste spanning for more than 17 years where she has created a stamp of class in the advertisement and feature film industries.
Banu was born and brought up in Chennai, she finished her graduation and established her own beauty parlour for women, ‘Hasinis’ in the year 1990 at T. Nagar. She then pursued a six month course on make-up in the United States of America under Bob Kelly. It was providence that at the same time the crew led by renowned director, Priyadarshan was shooting for a Malayalam feature film in USA. She was called for help and that became the turning point of her career. Subsequently, she got acquainted with ace cinematographer, P C Sriram, who jointly owns an advertisement agency and that initiated her into being associated with make-up for innumerable commercials.
Life for Banu has been one away from the routines of the common man, a celebration at home, a friend’s birthday party, a ritual, a social outing was always secondary to work which had precedence over all things for her. She has clearly defined her priorities and work ethics and has in time created such a mark, that names as big as Rahul Dravid, Jyothika, Trisha, Asin, Mohan Lal, Surya, Vikram and the Boss – Rajini have all enhanced their looks in the commercials and movies with the magic of Banu’s brushes and shades. Her work in more recent land mark Tamil movies have been seen in ‘Vetayadu Vilayadu’, ‘Mozhi’, ‘Gajini’ and ‘Anniyan’.
When I probed further into her experience on working for ‘Sivaji’, she shared that the movie shooting started in December 2005, but the actual work with several trials started even three months prior to that. It involved a lot of home work and effort to get the expected results and she enjoyed the entire shooting and was personally satisfied with her work.
She exclaimed, “I love my work, because it involves being very creative and imaginative and I need to be on my toes. I have got to be one up all the time; I look at it as one up on myself every time.” She loves the travel that goes with her work. Several shoots have taken her across the world, Switzerland to New Zealand, Russia to America.
When I asked her about the difference between working for commercials and feature films, she said “They are different games all together; commercials involve minute detailing of work. Feature films give a new high, just by the sheer grandeur.” She said that when they traveled to shoot commercials, she enjoys interacting with people across cultures. She enjoys meeting new people for every assignment, every few days. Work abroad always indicated stipulated time frames and long working hours in order to complete on schedule. Local shoots give the flexibility to adjust work schedules, even shuttling between two commercials on a single day. Nevertheless, work in any flavor and form is exciting for her.
Banu lives by her motto, ‘Live for today, look forward to tomorrow’. As a makeup artist she treats every face that she works on as a teacher to learn something from. With such reverence to work and such an attitude to life, she is truly the new face of India who in the process gives face lifts to the celluloid stars.
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