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    Cillian Murphy on His Oscar Nomination: ‘I’m Kind of a Little in Shock’

    On Tuesday, Cillian Murphy was at his parents’ home in Cork, Ireland, drinking a cup of tea when his phone started buzzing. A glance at the dozens of texts revealed the news: For the first time, Murphy had been nominated for the best actor Oscar, for his performance as the title character in “Oppenheimer.”“It’s very, very humbling,” Murphy, 48, said in an interview by phone on Tuesday. “I’m kind of a little in shock.”“It’s just a real honor to be involved in a film that has connected so powerfully with people in a way that we never expected,” he added.In “Oppenheimer,” a stunning biopic by the director Christopher Nolan, Murphy plays the American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant, enigmatic figure known as the father of the atomic bomb, a man consumed with ambition and haunted by his past. After opening alongside “Barbie” on July 21, “Oppenheimer” quickly became beloved by critics and fans alike, grossing just over $950 million at the worldwide box office.Murphy had collaborated with Nolan before, taking supporting roles in movies like “Batman Begins” and “Inception,” but his latest work for the director became a breakthrough moment, with Murphy winning praise for the intensity and emotional complexity he brought to the role. At the Golden Globes, he won best actor in a drama; he also was up for a Critic’s Choice Award (losing out to his fellow Oscar nominee Paul Giamatti); and he’s in the running for a Screen Actors Guild Award, punctuating what has been an exceptionally busy awards season for Murphy.“It’s been new enough for me, but I gotta say, I think I’m getting good at it,” he said, chuckling. He marveled about a recent ceremony where he was stuck in a line with Meryl Streep.“That may never happen to me again in my life, and it’s just a wonderful feeling,” he said.In a phone interview, Murphy also discussed what fascinated him about Oppenheimer the man, how he prepared for the role and the cast’s group chat. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Were you watching the Oscars announcement?No, I was at home in Cork with my mom and dad and my wife. And my phone started popping, so I figured it was good news. Everybody started texting. You know, you can’t really avoid good news or bad news, but it’s better when it’s good news.Oppenheimer is a different role than what you’ve done in the past. What drew you to this character?Well, he is, in Chris’s words, the most important man that ever lived. He changed the course of the 20th century, and we are all living in Oppenheimer’s world. He was complex and contradictory and flawed and vain and arrogant, but he was still immensely charismatic and fascinating. It was a huge responsibility. But the sorts of roles I enjoy are the ones where you think, I have no idea how I’m going to play this.Murphy said his phone blew up with word of his Oscar nomination. “You know, you can’t really avoid good news or bad news, but it’s better when it’s good news.”Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal PicturesWhat steps did you take to prepare?Oh man, I had six months. From the moment Chris called me, I just started working — from the inside out and from the outside in. I did an awful lot of reading and research and watched every single archival footage about him. Then I immediately started conditioning my body because he was very interesting how he carried himself physically and how slight his frame was. But a lot of it was just walking around my basement in Dublin talking to myself and practicing, practicing and practicing.As you did that research, was there anything surprising to you about Oppenheimer?He was an absolute contradiction in so many ways. He could have been an artist or a writer or a poet. But he was also this freakishly bright human being. A lot of his contemporaries would say he was the brightest man in the room at all times. But he was also very temperamental and fragile emotionally and mentally, particularly in his youth. If you were writing a fictional character, it wouldn’t add up to a character people could identify with. But in fact, he was just like the rest of us. He was just a human being. So that’s what I really identified with — his humanity.What was it like for you to work with such an all-star cast?A total gift. Every single cast member was fearless in the film, like they had done so much research and could improvise on the spot about their character and the real-life events. I felt really held and carried by everybody on the movie. We’re still all really close. There was a really good bond on this film, and it remains very very strong.Is it true there’s an “Oppenhomies” group chat?That is true, yes. Olivia Thirlby came up with that moniker.You and Nolan have a long history of working together. How did that impact your work with this film?Oh, it’s crucial for me. I don’t think I could have made this film with anyone else, without that level of trust that goes back six movies and 20 years. He really, really pushed me and I wanted to be pushed. He expects excellence from you because that’s what he delivers himself every single day.Is there something distinctive about a Nolan set or film that’s different from other projects you’ve been involved in?I think it’s the level of focus. It’s quite remarkable. It’s laserlike, the way he uses time, because time, I’ve realized, is your most valuable commodity when you’re on a film set. So much of it gets wasted. When you come on a Chris Nolan set, you come on to work. There’s no phones, there’s no chatting. There’s no video footage, there’s no monitors. That’s not to say it’s not a pleasant environment. It’s a private, focused environment. That’s how you get the best out of people.In terms of time, you didn’t have much of that at all right?No, we filmed in 57 days, and three of them were a preshoot. So it was insane, the pace of it, but it never felt rushed. We never left a scene behind.Some people have criticized the film for the inclusion of nude scenes. What do you make of that critique?Well, I think those things are essential for the story. If you’re familiar with the story, it was his relationship with Jean Tatlock which was the thing that really made him lose his security clearance and ultimately kind of cost his career. I think it was vital to highlight the intimacy and closeness of their relationship.Besides the Academy Awards ceremony, what else is in the future for you?I have a film called “Small Things Like These,” which I produced and acted in and that’s opening at the Berlin Film Festival in February. I’m really proud of the movie. It’s produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. They paid for it and we produced it together. So I’m juggling that and attending all these events at the same time. More

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    Colman Domingo’s Oscar Nomination Is Only the Second of Its Kind

    Colman Domingo joined a rarefied club on Tuesday: With an Oscar nomination for his performance as the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in “Rustin,” he became only the second openly gay man to be nominated for playing a gay character. Ian McKellen was the first, in 1999, for “Gods and Monsters” and his portrayal of James Whale, the real-life director of the iconic 1930s horror films “Frankenstein” and “Bride of Frankenstein.”Andrew Scott was also considered a potential nominee for his heart-wrenching role as a gay screenwriter in “All of Us Strangers,” but he was not recognized.Over the decades, many straight male actors have earned Oscar nominations for playing L.G.B.T.Q. characters, and quite a few of them won a statuette: William Hurt won in 1986 for portraying a transgender woman in “Kiss of the Spider Woman”; Tom Hanks in 1994 for his role as a lawyer dying of AIDS in “Philadelphia”; Sean Penn in 2009 for playing Harvey Milk in “Milk”; Jared Leto in 2014 for playing a transgender woman in “Dallas Buyers Club”; Rami Malek in 2019 for his turn as Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody”; and last year, Brendan Fraser for playing a 600-pound gay man in “The Whale” — to name a few.On Tuesday, that list also grew longer with the nomination of Bradley Cooper for his role as the storied American conductor Leonard Bernstein in “Maestro.” Bernstein had relationships with both men and women, and the film focuses primarily on Bernstein’s personal life.While there have been instances of gay or bisexual men securing nominations for playing straight characters, often these actors’ sexual orientation wasn’t public knowledge in advance: Marlon Brando, for example, who had relationships with men and women, won two Oscars, in 1955 for “On the Waterfront” and in 1973 for “The Godfather”; and Kevin Spacey won in 1996 for “The Usual Suspects” and in 2000 for “American Beauty.”In a 2016 interview with The Guardian, McKellen addressed the imbalance, referring to the many straight men who have won for playing gay: “How clever, how clever. What about giving me one for playing a straight man?”He noted that he himself had prepared a speech each time he was nominated and “I’ve had to put it back in my pocket twice.”“No openly gay man has ever won the Oscar,” he went on, adding dryly, “I wonder if that is prejudice or chance.” More

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    Norman Jewison Streaming Guide: ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ to ‘Moonstruck’

    From “In the Heat of the Night” to “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Moonstruck,” the director always brought heart and humanity to his work.The oeuvre of director Norman Jewison, who died this past weekend at the age of 97, can’t be simply categorized. His versatility was rarely matched by any of his peers. He made epic musicals like “Fiddler on the Roof,” heart-stirring romantic comedies like “Moonstruck” and tense social thrillers like “In the Heat of the Night.” Over his decades in Hollywood, he directed everything from the Cold War comedy “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” (1966) to the sexy heist feature “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1968) to the based-on-a-true-story drama “The Hurricane” (1999). While the divergent tones could imply that Jewison was something of a journeyman, instead he brought a humanity to every story he touched, treating each one, regardless of subject matter, with the grace it deserved. Here are some films of his available to stream, no matter your mood.‘Send Me No Flowers’ (1964)Early in his career, when Jewison was under contract with Universal, he made the last of the three Doris Day and Rock Hudson comedies, “Send Me No Flowers.” In a divergence from the pair’s earlier collaborations, this one finds them not as warring city dwellers but as a married suburban couple who undergoes a crisis when the husband, George Kimball (Hudson), a hypochondriac, begins to think he’s going to die. Without telling his wife, Judy Kimball (Day), George goes about trying to make sure she is set for when he dies, including finding her a new man to marry when he’s gone. Naturally, misunderstandings ensue. It’s a classically zany rom-com from the era, but the film also shows Day and Hudson at their most vulnerable as they untangle all these complications. It’s a sign of what was to come from Jewison, who always found the emotional core of his characters and allowed actors to do some of their best work.Rent or buy on most major platforms.‘In the Heat of the Night’ (1967)From the very first moment of “In the Heat of the Night,” a close-up of a fly crawling across a calendar, there’s an unsettling air to Jewison’s film about a Black police officer, Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier). He first is wrongfully accused of a murder in small-town Sparta, Miss., and then is tasked with solving the crime. Poitier’s forceful delivery of the line “They call me Mister Tibbs” — a declaration of his personhood in the face of racist dehumanization — is perhaps what’s best remembered from this Oscar winner for Best Picture. But it’s a towering film in every respect, a document of the insidiousness at the heart of places like Sparta and in American culture in general. Jewison’s careful framing of Poitier makes sure he’s the most dominant person in every scene, even as the shadows of this nasty place encroach on him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Netflix’s Head of Film, Scott Stuber, Is Departing

    Scott Stuber attracted Oscar-winning filmmakers to the streaming service and helped usher the entertainment industry into the streaming era.Scott Stuber, who brought Oscar-winning filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Jane Campion and Alfonso Cuarón to Netflix and in doing so helped to usher the entertainment industry into the streaming era, is leaving as the service’s film chairman, the company said on Monday.News of Mr. Stuber’s departure came on the eve of the Oscar nominations. During his tenure, which began in 2017, Netflix has had eight films nominated for best picture, though a win in that category has proved elusive.“Scott has helped lead the new paradigm of how movies are made, distributed and watched,” Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive, said in a statement. “He attracted unbelievable creative talent to Netflix, making us a premiere film studio.”While Mr. Stuber’s slate of movies helped to boost Netflix’s business substantially, he often clashed with Mr. Sarandos over strategy. Mr. Stuber often tried to appease filmmakers by pushing for wider theatrical releases than Mr. Sarandos was willing to undertake.Still, Netflix received the most Oscar nominations of any studio in 2020, 2021 and 2022. In addition to critical hits like Mr. Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” Ms. Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” and Mr. Cuarón’s “Roma,” Mr. Stuber’s tenure produced popular hits like “Red Notice,” “Bird Box” and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.”He made big bets on filmmakers he wanted to lure to the studio, spending $450 million to secure two “Knives Out” sequels from Rian Johnson and more than $160 million for Zack Snyder’s recent release, “Rebel Moon.” Greta Gerwig, who directed and co-wrote the blockbuster “Barbie,” is also working with Netflix on adapting two films based on the “Chronicles of Narnia” book series.“Maestro,” a biopic of the composer Leonard Bernstein, which Bradley Cooper wrote, directed and stars in, is one of the Netflix films expected to pick up several Oscar nominations this year. (Netflix will also announce its fourth-quarter earnings on Tuesday.)Netflix was sometimes criticized for prizing quantity over quality in its film strategy, a knock that Mr. Stuber acknowledged.“I think one of the fair criticisms has been we make too much and not enough is great,” he said in an interview in 2021, adding, “I think what we want to do is refine and make a little less better and more great.”In a statement on Monday, Mr. Stuber thanked Mr. Sarandos and Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder and executive chairman, for “the amazing opportunity to join Netflix and create a new home for original movies.”“I am proud of what we accomplished,” he said, “and am so grateful to all the filmmakers and talent who trusted us to help tell their stories.”Mr. Stuber is scheduled to leave in March and will start his own media company. Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, will assume Mr. Stuber’s duties when he leaves. Last year, she essentially became Mr. Stuber’s boss, putting a management layer between him and Mr. Sarandos. More

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    Norman Jewison, Director of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and ‘Moonstruck,’ Dies at 97

    His movies — from dramas to comedies and musicals — became magnets for Oscars, but he was best known for socially conscious films, like “In the Heat of the Night.”Norman Jewison, whose broad range as a filmmaker was reflected in the three movies that earned him Academy Award nominations for best director — the socially conscious drama “In the Heat of the Night,” the big-budget musical “Fiddler on the Roof” and the romantic comedy “Moonstruck” — died on Saturday at his home. He was 97.His death was confirmed by a spokesman for the family, Jeff Sanderson. He declined to specify where Mr. Jewison lived, saying that the family requested privacy.Mr. Jewison, whose career began in Canadian television and spanned more than 50 years, was, like his close friend Sidney Lumet and a select few other directors, best known for making films that addressed social issues. The most celebrated of those was “In the Heat of the Night” (1967), one of his earliest features and his first Oscar-winning film.A story of racial tensions in the American South filtered through a murder mystery that brings together a Black Philadelphia detective (Sidney Poitier) and a white Mississippi police chief (Rod Steiger), “In the Heat of the Night” could not have been more timely: It opened weeks after racial violence had erupted in Detroit and Newark. It went on to win five Academy Awards, including best picture and best actor, for Mr. Steiger.Mr. Poitier was among the many actors who had fond memories of working with Mr. Jewison. “He gives his actors room and keeps them as calm as he can, because it’s easier to speak with them when they’re calm,” he told The New York Times in 2011. “A director has to keep the actors on their toes while the camera’s running, but when the scene is done, they should be relaxing, nothing on their minds. There can’t be a constant level of seriousness. And with Norman, there’s always a lot of laughter.”Mr. Jewison lost the best director award for “In the Heat of the Night” to Mike Nichols, who won for “The Graduate,” and he never did win an Oscar for directing. But his films, and the actors in them, garnered many Oscars and 46 nominations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Depardieu Sexual Assault Suit Dropped Over Statute of Limitations

    Hélène Darras, a French actress, had accused Gérard Depardieu of groping her in 2007 on a movie set. A separate investigation of the actor is proceeding, Paris prosecutors said.A sexual assault lawsuit filed against Gérard Depardieu by a French actress has been dropped because it was past the statute of limitations, prosecutors in Paris said on Monday, but the French actor is still under investigation in a separate case.In the lawsuit that was dropped, the actress Hélène Darras had accused Depardieu of groping her on the set of “Disco,” a comedy released in 2008. Her suit had been filed in September but was made public only last month, shortly before she appeared in a France 2 television documentary alongside three other women who also accused Depardieu of inappropriate comments or sexual misconduct.The documentary, which showed Depardieu making crude sexual and sexist comments during a 2018 trip to North Korea, set off a fierce debate in France that prompted President Emmanuel Macron and dozens of actors, directors and other celebrities to defend Depardieu, splitting the French movie industry.Depardieu, 75, has denied any wrongdoing, and he has not been convicted in connection with any of the accusations against him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    What to Expect When the Oscar Nominations Are Announced

    Big showings by “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” are likely in an especially strong year.The Q. and A.’s and cocktail parties are a wrap. The votes have been cast. And on Tuesday, we’ll find out which movies and artists will have a chance at Academy Awards when the Oscar nominations are announced.It was an unusually strong year for films, meaning that members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had some hard choices to make by the time voting closed last week. As I have written throughout this awards season, this year, there are simply more good movies and great performances than there are awards to honor them. When I came up with predictions, I was tied up in knots trying to narrow down the list. But that also means I have some ideas about the names and titles Zazie Beetz and Jack Quaid will announce when they reveal the nominees at 8:30 a.m. on ABC and Oscars.com. Here’s what to expect:“Barbenheimer”: The juggernaut made up of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” dominated the box office last summer and has continued to be a force when it comes to prizes. Both films made strong showings last week when the acting, directing and producing guilds released their nominations, and spots for both on the best picture list are all but guaranteed. For the biopic “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan is now the presumed front-runner for a directing nod, and it’s a good bet you’ll see Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. among the acting nominees. For “Barbie,” the picture is a little less clear in the individual categories. Director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie are likely, but not assured, of spots while Ryan Gosling should be guaranteed a supporting-actor slot.Double-Digit Nominations: I expect “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer” and the historical-crime tale “Killers of the Flower Moon” to each score double-digit nominations. Thanks to the short lists that the academy released last month, we already know that these movies have a good chance of competing in technical categories like score and sound. Still, there’s one race where “Barbie” can’t max out: Though three songs from the film — “I’m Just Ken,” “Dance the Night” and “What Was I Made For?” — all advanced to the short-list phase, only two songs per film are allowed in the final five.“The Holdovers”: Alexander Payne’s dramedy about a history teacher, a cook and a student forced to stay behind at a boarding school over winter break has been coming on strong all awards season long. Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who play the adults on campus, have won key prizes already; look for their names to show up on Tuesday. And besides a likely best picture nod, there could be ones for directing and screenplay as well.Acting categories: The two Golden Globe winners Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) are strong locks for best actress; the question will be who fills out the rest of the category. Besides Giamatti and Murphy for best actor, expect Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”) and Jeffrey Wright (“American Fiction”), leaving just one spot a question mark. In the supporting categories, Robert De Niro (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) will probably join Downey and Gosling, while Jodie Foster (“Nyad”), Emily Blunt (“Oppenheimer”) and Danielle Brooks (“The Color Purple”) will probably line up next to Randolph.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Marie Irvine, Makeup Artist to Marilyn Monroe, Dies at 99

    Late in Ms. Monroe’s life, Ms. Irvine was her go-to makeup artist in New York City. Earlier this month, she became a TikTok sensation.Marie Irvine was 99 years old when a chapter in her long-ago career became a TikTok sensation. During a crucial period late in Marilyn Monroe’s life, Ms. Irvine had been her makeup artist in New York City. When a TikTok star learned her story, it blew up the internet.In 1958, Life magazine commissioned Richard Avedon to reimagine Ms. Monroe as the screen and stage sirens Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Theda Bara, Jean Harlow and Lillian Russell. It was Ms. Irvine who assisted with her makeup — turning her into Ms. Russell’s candy-box pinup, and Ms. Dietrich’s steamy Lola Lola from the film “The Blue Angel.”It ran in the Dec. 22 issue of the magazine, with a piece written by Ms. Monroe’s husband at the time, the playwright Arthur Miller, with the headline, “My Wife Marilyn.” He described the photos “as a kind of history of our mass fantasy, so far as seductresses are concerned.”And when Ms. Monroe, having been sewn into her skintight sequined gown, sang a breathless “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy at a Democratic fund-raiser at Madison Square Garden in May of 1962, it was Ms. Irvine who prepared her beforehand in Ms. Monroe’s apartment on East 57th Street, and then rushed to the Garden later with the star’s drop earrings, because she had left them behind.Erin Parsons, a 45-year-old makeup artist and TikTok star with a passion for vintage makeup and Ms. Monroe, had read of Ms. Irvine’s small part in these iconic moments, and she tracked her down to learn more. And when she posted about her search on Jan. 8, her video went viral.More than a million people have viewed it, and it has accrued more than 1,600 comments. One woman was particularly moved by the $125 fee Ms. Irvine had charged for her services on the night of the Garden event, the equivalent of more than $1,200 today. (Ms. Parsons had a photo of the bill, an artifact which sold at auction for $1,152, and showed it in her video.)“We stan a queen that knows what her skills were worth!” the commenter wrote. “I bow down.”Ms. Irvine circa 1967. She helped transform Marilyn Monroe into stars like Marlene Dietrich and Jean Harlow for Richard Avedon’s famous Life magazine shoot in 1958.Courtesy Horan family, via Charlotte BentleyMs. Irvine died a week after Ms. Parsons’ post, on Jan. 15, at a care facility in Sarasota, Fla. Her daughter, Jane Bentley Sullivan, announced her death.Ms. Irvine was not the architect of Ms. Monroe’s signature look. Her sleepy, bedroom gaze, articulated by the swoop of her liquid eyeliner; her bright red moue; and that beauty mark were the star’s own creations, conceived with her longtime West Coast-based makeup artist, Whitey Snyder. Her fans and fetishists, from Norman Mailer to Ms. Parsons’ audience, knew that she used a secret blend of three shades of lipstick and a gloss made with Vaseline. Mr. Mailer spends a page describing it in his 1973 biography, “Marilyn.”Ms. Irvine met Ms. Monroe because she was an on-call makeup artist to Mr. Avedon in the 1950s, and he hired Ms. Irvine to help with the Life magazine project. It took three months to complete, largely because of Ms. Monroe’s erratic schedule.“We could shoot it only when Marilyn felt like it,” Ms. Irvine told an interviewer in 2014. “Sometimes it was in the middle of the night with a short notice. One time it was such a short notice, that I couldn’t find a babysitter so Marilyn said, ‘Bring your baby to the set.’”(That was Ms. Sullivan, who was 9 months old at the time.)“So it was like a family atmosphere,” Ms. Irvine added. “She told me how much she wanted a baby.”Ms. Irvine was self-effacing and discreet. Her earliest clients were society figures, like Thelma Foy, the daughter of Walter Chrysler, the automobile magnate, a swan who often appeared in Vogue and on an annual list of the 10 best-dressed women in the United States. When Ms. Foy became ill with leukemia, Ms. Irvine’s role shifted from preparing her for photo shoots to helping her hide the ravages of cancer. Ms. Foy died of the disease in 1957, in her early 50s.Marie Irvine was born on Dec. 16, 1924, in Pawling, N.Y., in Dutchess County, the only child of William and Theresa (Brendlin) Irvine. She attended a one-room schoolhouse through grade school. She moved to New York City in her late teens and trained to be a secretary at the Katharine Gibbs School — otherwise known as Katie Gibbs to generations of white-gloved young women — but found the prospect of secretarial work too boring.She found a job at Elizabeth Arden, at the flagship salon with the distinctive red door at 691 Fifth Avenue that served the ladies of the carriage trade, where she became a beauty adviser and color specialist for the company.Toward the end of World War II, Ms. Irvine met a naval officer at Delmonico’s restaurant when he was on leave; they married in 1947. In addition to her daughter, Ms. Sullivan, Ms. Irvine is survived by a son, who requested anonymity for himself and his father, whose name he shares, and two grandchildren. Ms. Irvine’s husband died in 1994.When her daughter was born in 1957, Ms. Irvine left Elizabeth Arden and became a freelance makeup artist, working for photographers like Mr. Avedon, Irving Penn, John Rawlings and Harold Krieger. She did commercial work, too, notably coating the actors who played the Jolly Green Giant, the mascot created to sell canned vegetables, in layers of green greasepaint.In the late ’60s, Ms. Irvine and her family moved from Queens to Essex County, N.J. Her husband, general counsel for a security firm, did not want his wife to continue working, so she retired — and learned to drive at 44.Once she left the fashion world behind, she rarely spoke of it.Ms. Parsons, the TikTok star, had many questions for Ms. Irvine that she was unable to answer before her death. She hoped the former makeup artist could illuminate the histories of the sort of esoterica that transfix Monroe obsessives: For instance, did Robert Champion, a hairdresser who was at the Garden when Ms. Monroe sang, really touch up her makeup and blot her lips with a tissue (an artifact that belongs to the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museum in Orlando, Fla.)? Did Ms. Irvine recognize a gold lipstick tube that once belonged to Ms. Monroe that Ms. Parsons had won at auction for $15,625?Ms. Irvine was pleased she’d had her own moment of fame, though she wished, as she told her daughter, that the attention came when she had more energy to pursue it.“I told her that the important thing was that it had happened at all,” Ms. Sullivan said. “She was an original and one of a kind laboring in obscurity to create many beautiful images with the pioneering photographers of the 20th century. After all, how many 99-year-olds who attended one-room schoolhouses go on to be TikTok stars?” More