Damon Winter/The New York Times, Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for ESPY, Claudio Onorati/European Pressphoto Agency, Danny Moloshok/Reuters
Diana Schmidtke, at The Art of Shaving on Madison Avenue, is a groomer for male celebrities. Her clients include Jon Hamm of “Mad Men,” George Clooney and Seth MacFarlane, whose movie she worked on this summer.
When the nine-time Emmy nominee and widely acknowledged dreamboat Jon Hamm sails down the red carpet on Sunday, chances are you will notice his date’s dress, makeup and hairstyle more than the particulars of his appearance.
But Mr. Hamm will have had his hair carefully styled to look looser than the tightly combed businessman’s coif for which he’s known on “Mad Men.”
“I work with Jon when he’s Jon Hamm,” said his groomer, Diana Schmidtke. “I don’t work with Don Draper. So for me it’s always about making him not look too Don Draper. Almost like he just ran his fingers through his hair. Very natural.”
Though some men, famous or not, have been boldly stepping out with “guyliner” and nail polish, we are not quite at the point where Hollywood makeup artists are taking credit for it as they do with women.
Ms. Schmidtke, 38, is one of a handful of male celebrity groomers there, a term little heard of 15 years ago (when, she said, photographers would ask her, “What is that, like dog grooming?”) but increasingly bandied about in a world of high-definition cameras and metrosexuality. She has tended to the floppy forelocks and five o’clock shadows of not just Mr. Hamm but Clint Eastwood, George Clooney, Jimmy Fallon, Viggo Mortensen and Chris Hemsworth, making sure they look like the best versions of themselves for magazine covers, press junkets and award shows.
This summer, Ms. Schmidtke was in New Mexico, working on her first film, the comedy “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” directed by and starring Seth MacFarlane, whom she started working with two years ago and groomed for the Academy Awards in February.
Reviews of Mr. MacFarlane’s Oscars hosting stint were mixed, but thanks to the Peter Thomas Roth anti-shine gel Ms. Schmidtke smeared on his T-zone, no one could say he was shiny. On a typical celebrity booking, Ms. Schmidtke starts with an old-fashioned barber shave. Next come the eyebrows, a potential minefield. “The quickest way to feminize a man’s face is to over-groom the eyebrow,” she said. “You can do above the brow, but when you start to take too much underneath or create any type of arch, boom, he starts to look like a girl.” She prefers plucking the brow to waxing, which she said removes too much, and also uses tweezers to tackle stray nose and ear hairs.
Then she applies concealer (no Pan-Cake, please!) and mattifying lotion — more guy-friendly than powder puffs, she said — as needed.
In fact, Ms. Schmidtke is sensitive to all sorts of macho preferences. For example, she’ll boil down beauty lingo into action words. “Pre-shave oil” may not register with guys, but “if you say it helps the glide of the blade, ding ding ding, they understand what it means,” she said.
Within the industry, Ms. Schmidtke is praised as much for her demeanor as for any specific ministrations. “I always trust that Diana will make my clients looks and feel their best,” said Robin Baum, a Hollywood publicist who has worked with Mr. Hemsworth, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and James Franco. “She has great energy.”
The photographer Mark Seliger, who has worked with Ms. Schmidtke for 14 years on shoots for Mr. MacFarlane, Will Ferrell and others, praised Ms. Schmidtke’s “fun and positivity.”
But the groomer characterized her rapport with A-list actors another way: “I’m a little crass at times,” she said.
Ms. Schmidtke became interested in hairdressing after modeling for Nexxus at age 16, attended Pivot Point beauty school in Chicago and moved west in 1997, working for a pricey Beverly Hills salon. “I wasn’t used to that type of clientele,” she said. “Everything was so shiny and new, the beautiful people and the cars. I failed.”
But an apprenticeship with Marvin Lynch, then a successful hairstylist, led to representation by the Celestine Agency (she has since moved to the Wall Group), which booked her on music shoots.
“I had every intention to do girl hair, but it just wouldn’t click with actresses,” Ms. Schmidtke said.
In 1999, after an assigned groomer didn’t show, she was pulled into a shoot with David Boreanaz of “Angel.” In thanks for the favor, Mr. Boreanaz’s publicist next called on Ms. Schmidtke to groom Chris Klein for his “American Pie” press tour.
“Then all the mayhem started,” she said. “I loved it. I was young and my job was making hot guys hotter.”
She studied the history of shaving and stays current by reading men’s fashion and grooming blogs. Though Ms. Schmidtke’s work sometimes involves the more traditional process of putting a client into character, as she did with Mr. Clooney for a Cary Grant-style Vanity Fair shoot, she also enjoys watching the application of television trends to real life (the “Boardwalk Empire,” shaved close with an undercut while leaving a floppy 4 to 5 inches on top, was popular this summer, she said).
And while her work revolves around famous faces, Ms. Schmidtke is pleased to see companies making more grooming solutions for everyday Joes. (One of her career high points, she said, was in 2009 when she made over husbands on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”)
But getting a man, even one who banks on his image, to change his regimen is almost always an uphill battle, Ms. Schmidtke said. “With guys, you have to keep it simple.”
