Mary Greenwell, makeup artist

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mary Greenwell is a makeup artist who has worked with some of the most famous faces in the world including Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, David Bowie and Cate Blanchett. Her less-is-more approach has won her plaudits in the beauty industry and she became Princess Diana’s makeup artist of choice.

Mary was born in Sussex and left school at 16. By the mid-1970s she was living in Los Angeles where she started out on the door at the legendary Joe Allen restaurant, escorting the likes of Paul Newman and Jack Lemmon to their tables. She received her one and only makeup lesson from the award-winning Ilana Harkavi and shortly afterwards created a look for 12-year-old actor Brooke Shields.

Mary’s big break came when she moved to Paris in 1984 and began working with the original supermodels; Christy Turlingon, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Tatiana Patitz. In 1990 she met Princess Diana on a Vogue photo shoot and became her go-to makeup artist and friend.

In 2025 Mary was appointed an MBE for services to the beauty and fashion industries and her charity work.

Mary lives in London.

DISC ONE: Lay Lady Lay - Bob Dylan DISC TWO: I Am Enough - Tallulah Rendall DISC THREE: Suzanne - Leonard Cohen DISC FOUR: Walk on the Wild Side - Lou Reed DISC FIVE: Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd DISC SIX: Cold Little Heart - Michael Kiwanuka DISC SEVEN: Diamonds - Rihanna DISC EIGHT: Heroes - David Bowie BOOK CHOICE: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima LUXURY ITEM: A bed CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: I Am Enough - Tallulah Rendall

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Paula McGinley

There are more than 2000 programmes in our archive available for you to listen to. We’ve cast away other hair and beauty experts including the makeup artist Pat McGrath, and hairdressers Vidal Sassoon and Trevor Sorbie. Cate Blanchett, one of Mary’s clients, is in our archive too. You can find their episodes on BBC Sounds or on our Desert Island Discs website.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:07.0	Hello, I'm Emma Barnett. For most of my career, I've been on live radio, and I love it.
0:13.3	But I've always wondered, what if we'd had more time? How much deeper does the story go?
0:19.2	I remember having this very sharp thought that what you do right now, this is it.
0:24.3	This defines your life.
0:26.0	I'm ready to talk and ready to listen.
0:28.3	I'm insulted by how little the medical community is ever bothered with this.
0:33.9	Ready to talk with me, Emma Barnard, is my new podcast.
0:37.0	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:38.7	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4.
0:43.6	Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury that they'd wanted to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:50.9	For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds.
0:58.4	Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is the makeup artist Mary Greenwell.
1:30.8	For over 40 years, she's been at the glittering forefront of an industry now worth billions to the British economy.
1:37.3	She's helped to set trends, to shape our perception of the icons of our age,
1:41.8	and to create some of the unforgettable images of our times.
1:45.9	She got her big break working with the original supermodels,
1:49.0	including Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista and Cindy Crawford.
1:53.2	She went on to develop a reputation for her Less is More approach
1:56.9	and became Princess Diana's makeup artist of choice.
2:07.6	Everyone from David Bowie and Kate Blanchett to Uma Thurman and Margaret Thatcher have placed their faces in her hands. But she didn't wear as much as a smear of lipstick herself until she was in her early 20s.
2:12.6	A free spirit living and working in 1970s Los Angeles, she was given her first makeup lesson by an
	...

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