Best of 2015

BETH KING
Photo by David Clark
Written by Therese Van Veghel Phipps
I am proud to introduce you to Tucson native, Beth King. She
is an extraordinary Special FX makeup artist, the creator of
The Look, and is constantly practicing, and expanding on her
multitude of artistic skills and knowledge.
As a child, Beth dreamt of becoming a superstar when she grew
up and was always fascinated with the application of cosmetics.
Her face became her canvas and her mom, awoke quite frequently
with her make-up done by none other than, wait for it, Beth
King. In 1995, her older brother Matthew, also known as “Zip”,
introduced her to horror movies. On that very momentous day,
an intense love and passion for horror and Special FX make up
began, Beth says, “Now I love all things horror, the scarier the
better. The movies that make you want to hide behind a pillow,
grab onto the person next to you and scream. Those are the
movies that I absolutely love!”
She has a long list of favorite movies, including, “Halloween”,
“Day of the Dead”, “Friday the 13 th ”, “Nightmare on Elm Street”,
“Evil Dead”, “Hellraiser”, “Dawn of the Dead”, “The Exorcist”, and
“Night of the Living Dead. She says, “The first time I watched “The
Exorcist”, it was like the clouds parted and the angels sang. I knew
that was what I wanted to do when I grew up, (she wanted to)
make the characters that make the viewers squirm.”
Throughout her high school years at Sahuaro, Beth took theater
classes, and shone especially bright doing hair and make up for
the Drama Department. Prior to her graduation in 2003, she
became aware that Pima Community College offered a Theater
scholarship and auditioned for it. After receiving the scholarship
at Pima, she took a Theater Makeup course where she feels
extremely fortunate to have met and studied under her mentor
Suanne Woodward. Beth says, “Suanne really opened me up
to different techniques for stage makeup: old age, cuts, bruises,
corrective makeup. This was when I was introduced her to Ben
Nye products, Scar wax, liquid latex, etc... All things that make an
FX makeup artist drool.”
When her scholarship ended, she decided to get her Cosmetology
license, she chose Artistic Beauty College, and received her
license in 2006. She worked in a couple of salons doing hair and
makeup, but it really did not make her happy, Beth’s passion is to
do FX. She says, “When Halloween came around, I was always
busy doing Special FX make up for friends and family, and one
year I decided this was going to be my main focus, not hair,
not formal make up, but special effects makeup. It was time to
make people squirm. I decided I needed to educate myself on
more FX techniques.” Beth began watching and practicing the
tutorials on youtube.com and says that Syfy Network’s show
“Face Off ” absolutely blew her mind and that it has been a hugely
educational tool.
Her FX career began to take off after a friend named Lindsey
Basham introduced her to model and creative director Jake
Rafus. She happily did FX makeup on Jake and professional
photographer, Dominic Arizona Bonucelli’s photo project entitled
“Zombie Apocalypse”. This creative project opened the door to
more work, including working on Dominic’s spoof of Bing Crosby
and David Bowie’s Little Drummer boy “A Very Special Bing and
Bowie Christmas” where she received a positive mention for her
FX work on Tucsonweekly.com. Beth did hair and makeup on a
pilot for a Netflix series written by John Brozo and directed by
Chris Klok, called “Lucky Stiffs”. She also competed and won first
place in both the Tucson’s Face Off Zombie Prom contest and The
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