ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — The Oscars honor those who bring our favorite stories to life on the big screen. You know the actors, but what about the thousands behind the scenes who make movie magic happen?
Two such people with resumes that could fill a textbook got their start at home in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
“My mom called me and said that they had placed a classified ad for hairdressers for a movie that was coming to Asheville,” Deborah Ball, a Haywood County native, said.
Ball and her friend, Gail Hensley, spent a career working in salons before the production of “The Last of the Mohicans” came to their doorstep.
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“The salon, with contemporary work, can become boring for an artist,” Ball said. “I found the challenge in film work. Not only in the research, but also in the construction of these pieces.”
A three-decade journey of hair and wig work began for Ball and Hensley on the set of the Daniel-Day Lewis-led, Oscar-winning movie.
“(An) unbelievable opportunity crossed our way,” Hensley, a West Asheville native, said.
Winning a Golden Globe on the TV show “Homeland” and a career of opportunity working on films like “Titanic,” “The Patriot,” “The Help”, and “Lincoln” involves quite a lot of research.
“You have to start thinking about, ‘Well, how did they manage their hair back then?'” Ball asked.
Research which took two months to thumb through in their latest film, Oscar-nominated “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
“We had traditional Osage, the men and the women, and the men wore the two braids, and the ladies had the one braid,” Hensley said. “Then we would have to transition them into the 1920s as they progressed in the time period when they became wealthy Osage.”
Hensley, who…
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