Annie Trovillo hated having makeup on as a kid.
She disliked having anything on her face, for that matter.
But she always loved Halloween.
“I always wanted to go all out for it,” she said.
Trovillo has no trouble making up other people’s faces.
“I would draw with markers on my Barbies … I don’t really know if that counts as makeup or not,” she quipped.
The 16-year-old Blanchester High School junior tennis player hopes to take her high-grade horror makeup skills to the professional level.
“I would love to take this and work on movies or TV shows; that’d be a dream,” she said. “But, for now I’m keeping my goals smaller and I’d like to do makeup for a haunted house at some point in my life.”
Trovillo has been a standout tennis player for coach Matt Sexton’s Ladycats. In her three seasons, she’s been first team All-SBAAC twice as a third singles player and once as a first doubles player, all while helping BHS win three National Division championships.
Her affinity for transforming things through makeup started when she was younger with those unsuspecting Barbie dolls. To do it on a real person, however, wasn’t in the plans early on.
“My dad always joked about me doing people’s makeup for Halloween and making money off of it, but I was always too scared to do it on another person,” she admits.
As she got older, Trovillo watched movies and television shows with a different eye than most — she was keen on the actors’ makeup.
“I absolutely loved movie makeup,” she said. “I was always fascinated with how they were able to make the monsters in horror movies or do the gory, bloody stuff.”
Trovillo said the television show “Face Off” proved to be the impetus for her dream of going Hollywood. The show’s premise was “special effects make-up artists participate in elaborate challenges for a grand prize and the honor of being Hollywood’s next great effects artist.”
“I watched that show religiously,” she said. “It was a reality, competition show where they would be given prompts and make crazy monsters based off them. That’s probably where my interest started.”
Leery of plying her trade on someone else, Trovillo started her makeup career on herself.
“It was rough,” she admits. “It was a look where I had a pencil through my nose. The pencil looks super long because I didn’t cut it short enough.
“I do most of my makeup on myself. My little sister has let me do it on her once, but she didn’t like it because it’s uncomfortable. But, it was the first time I had done it on someone else, and I was proud of myself.”
Short of landing a job on a television show or movie, Trovillo said a possible next step would be a school for horror makeup aficionados.
“There are classes and schools that you can attend, but I haven’t,” she said. “I’ve learned everything off tutorials on YouTube, and trial and error. It would be so cool to get to go to a school, class, though.”
