TO THOSE WHO HELP ACTORS FACE THE DAY.

Byline: Barbara De Witt  Fashion Editor

MAKEUP ARTISTS help actors look their best - making lips full and cheeks rosy. Or they make them look their worst - adding wrinkles or masks.

Yet the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences didn't recognize their importance until 1981, when the first Oscar for Achievement in Makeup was given to Rick Baker for ``An American Werewolf in London.''

Awards coordinator Patrick Stockstill says this Oscar always has had a special cachet, as the nomination process is solely in the hands of the makeup and hair stylist members of the academy. Those members watch 15 to 20 films before the ``Make-up Bake-off,'' where the top seven are invited to share their portfolios before the three nominees are chosen, Stockstill says.

When the category is listed on the final ballot, voters see the film title - not the names of the makeup artists, which we've included below:

`A Beautiful Mind'

This film about math genius John Forbes Nash Jr. (Russell Crowe) begins in 1947 and ends in the present, so the challenge for Santa Clarita makeup artist Greg Cannom and Los Angeles hair stylist Colleen Callaghan was the aging process.

``The thing I'm most happy about was how fluid the aging process was on film,'' said Cannom.

On the subject of Crowe's myriad hair styles, Callaghan called him ``dynamite'' with a '40s side part.

``But there was so much more work to be done than just his. I had to make sure that all the extras in the background had a hairstyle that reflected the decade they were in, and I found that the '40s and '50s were the easiest because they were very specific, while the '80s was the most difficult look to achieve because there was such a mishmash of hair styles then,'' Callaghan said.

`The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring'

Although viewers might not realize it, makeup artists Peter Owen and Richard Taylor and their staff created masks for most of the cast. Not the thick Halloween variety, but translucent facial prostheses of latex and silicone designed to create a cultural inheritance for each species in the medieval fantasy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's book, says Taylor.

``Yes, even Gandalf, played by Ian McKellen, is wearing a gelatin nose prosthesis,'' chuckles Taylor, who explains that each mask or appliance is glued to the actor's face in a five-stage application that takes up to five hours to complete. And then it's reapplied the next day.

'Moulin Rouge'

Hair designer Aldo Signoretti and makeup designer Maurizio Silvi are the Italian team who created more than 80 flamboyant wigs with coordinating makeup to keep up with all the wild costumes in this musical melodrama.

``I have been in this business for almost 30 years ... but this film was a big commitment between reality and fantasy, and it gave me the opportunity to keep an eye on the contemporary world and the crazy world of the belle epoch,'' says Signoretti.

He adds that each character had its own personality, and some of the most colorful are Zidler, played by Jim Broadbent, who wears a bizarre orange-red wig with spots almost like a fox, and Satine, played by Nicole Kidman, whom he changed from a 19th-century courtesan to a glamorous diva from the '40s, with deep red hair in waves.