Mary Greenwell, makeup artist

·49 min·4 clips

At 18, Mary was arrested while hitchhiking in America, leading to a surprising intervention from a judge.

Mary Greenwell begins with faces. Lauren Laverne places her beside supermodels, Princess Diana, David Bowie, Cate Blanchett, Uma Thurman and Margaret Thatcher, then lets the story move backwards. The glamour is there, but it does not take over. Before the industry worth billions and the images everyone remembers, the conversation goes back to school, parents and the early choices that nudged her life off its expected track. She left school at sixteen. A-levels did not tempt her because, as she puts it, she was not learning anyway, and her parents let her stop. Secretarial school was over almost as soon as it began. In Knightsbridge, she could not type, lasted about five weeks, and admitted she could not cope. Her parents accepted that too. Next came a beautiful art gallery in Grafton Street, another move away from the path laid out for her. Then her father made an offer. At eighteen, as he prepared to retire, he gave Mary and her sister a choice: a coming out ball or a journey around the world. Mary chose the journey. Her mother backed her, seeing the wider world as better than coming out in London. The route still has a charge to it: Bombay, Hong Kong, Singapore, Hawaii, San Francisco and New York. New York changes everything. With the family due to leave within days, Mary tells her parents she is not coming home and stays in America. Lauren keeps the questions spare, which suits the story. What comes through is a polished public career rooted in restlessness, parental trust and one clean refusal.

As heard by us

A poised portrait of Mary Greenwell, where glamour arrives by way of instinct, escape and accident.

Mary Greenwell's Desert Island Discs catches a life that seems glamorous in retrospect but oddly improvised in the telling. Lauren Laverne introduces a makeup artist who worked with the original supermodels and became Princess Diana's makeup artist of choice, yet Greenwell…

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Why you'd press play

For a calm, elegant look at Mary Greenwell's path from leaving school at 16 to becoming a makeup artist trusted by icons like Princess Diana, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, and Cindy Crawford.

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