On February 14, at the 13th annual Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Awards, opens in new tab, Judy Alexander Cory and Greg Nelson received Lifetime Achievement Awards in the respective categories of hair styling and makeup. With both artists logging over fifty years in the industry, they were individually recognized for their long-term contributions to beauty craftsmanship in film by their peers in the guild.

Looking back on their careers, both artists have expressed admiration for the troubleshooting and technicalities of their craft during an era where technical limitations bred creativity. “I worked during the best period of time. Those days are over because now you don't have to think about something that can't be done, because they do it with AI. It was a great period that we had to be able to make things work that couldn't work,” Cory says. 

“People say, 'Why don't you just use a stencil and make it eas?' I said, 'Well, I don't do work because it's easy, I do work because it's a challenge.' And so I purposefully never used a stencil and every time I tried to do it better. That's just who I am.”  Nelson says.

Read more about Judy Alexander Cory and Greg Nelson's incredible lives and work below.

Judy Cory Alexander: Lifetime Achievement in Hair Styling

Judith "Judy" Cory grew up around the film scene in Los Angeles, knowing what she wanted to do from a young age. “I always wanted to work behind a camera, but when I got in the business, you could do three different things [as a woman in motion pictures]. You could be a costumer, you could be a script supervisor, or you could be a hairstylist. You couldn't even be a makeup person. So I went to beauty school so that I could become a motion picture hairstylist, and that was my choice, that was how I got going,” Cory shares.

Cory’s first hairstyling gig was on a TV show called “Wagon Train,” which aired in 1957, and she went on to style cult classics like “Hook,” “Schindler’s List,” “Forrest Gump,” “The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” and “The Matrix,” being a lifelong collaborator with Steven Spielberg. 

When Cory entered the industry, she walked into a very different world from the one she has left behind since retiring; she came into this business during a time when most people did not know how to use a Marcel iron. “I was trained by these ladies that had been in this business many years before me, and they were so generous to teach me these trades… to do hairlace wigs to do croquignole curling irons—that's the iron that you put in a stove—those people, they're the ones that need to be thanked,” Cory acknowledges. 

Greg Nelson: Lifetime Achievement in Make-Up

Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, Greg Nelson never imagined a career in Hollywood. After attending the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and training as a cartoon animator, his life trajectory changed when a local theater in Chicago put on a makeup contest. Greg and a friend entered the contest, and a local reporter mistakenly wrote them up as the winners before learning that they lost.

“The reporters left before the contest started and had this whole article [written] about us, which they ended up putting in the newspaper anyway, saying we weren't the winners but here's who these kids are,”  Nelson says. “From there, we got a call from a customer in Chicago, and he was doing some promotion for a movie called “Frogs.”

Upon moving to California, Nelson started working on '70s sitcoms and game shows at NBC, including “Hollywood Squares,” “Sanford and Son,” and “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.” Nelson credits Michael Jackson’s iconic music video for the song “Thriller” as the bridge between his television work and more serious film projects involving prosthetic makeup. The artist went on to work on “Batman Returns,” “Death Becomes Her,” “Stargate,” “The Last Samurai,” and “The Aviator.”

Beyond his primary work, Nelson devoted 40 years to bringing Ronald McDonald to life, applying the character’s signature makeup more than 800 times across four different actors. For him, the thrill of makeup lies in transformation—turning the mundane and recognizable into something extraordinary, yet entirely believable.

“The fantasy of working on the backlots was much more fascinating to me than working on location because everything is fake. To make a complete environment look real to the audience and make the makeups that we do look real, whether it be beauty or carnage or old age or character or alien, it's hard for me to explain the enjoyment I get out of that. It's kind of like we're all magicians that we’re actually fooling people,” Nelson explains.

With thanks to the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild, Autumn Marsilio at Cloutier Remix, and Dan Evans at IngleDodd Media.