Scott Barnes, Jennifer’s makeup artist for years, has been crazy busy lately. After wrapping up “The Back-up Plan,” he reintroduced his beloved Body Bling and planning to do the same with his cosmetic line. He also just released his first book ‘About Face’, with his muse Jennifer Lopez on the cover.

Luckily for us, he found some time in his busy schedule for an exclusive phone interview with OJF’s Maurice. On behalf of the entire OJF staff we would like to thank him for taking the time to do the interview!

‘About Face’

Scott was very excited to talk about his book ‘About Face.’ He explained how he came up with the concept of the book and how he wanted his book to be different from all of the other makeup books out there.

“‘What’s the message I’m trying to send?’, ‘What’s going to be different about my book?’, ‘How do you do that, how do you get that?,” those were all questions asked in the process of making the book. A priority for him was that the book had to have a function and that it had to be beautiful.

He started thinking about transformations.

“I always try to do the best possible version of someone, transforming someone. I started thinking about all the transformations that affected us throughout history. So I was like, everybody loves Cinderella, everybody loves a makeover story. We have Charles Bernard Shaw, which is one of mine and Jennifer’s favorite books ever. And we have My Fair Lady.”

People, like Jennifer who came from very humble beginnings, were one of his inspirations for the book.

“Jennifer came from the Bronx and rode the train to take [dance] classes. Myself came from Detroit, went to school for Fine Arts in New York City, had to pave my way through school and struggle and fight.” told Barnes.

He went further and thought about the first makeover story that was ever documented.

A portrait of Esther“It occurred to me that it was Esther from the Bible, Old Testament. She’s a girl from very humble beginnings; she was a daughter of farmers. She had to live with her uncle in Persia. She’s a good girl, teaching Sunday school, helping. She’s like a normal, sweet girl. Persia was huge, all over Europe, Africa and the Middle East. King of Persia kicks the Queen out of the palace. King of Persia orders all beautiful young girls to be presented to him, so he could choose a new Queen. One of the girls was Esther. She became the new Queen. She learned how to walk and talk like a princess, how to bathe differently, eat differently. She really started this grooming process. She took that time, and this is what the whole cross of the book is; to have beauty for purpose. Being beauty for vanity’s sake.”

“The king falls in love with her because of her beauty, [and she] became the queen. The king was supposed to wipe out all the Jews and then she finally tells him ‘I’m Jewish and you love me so why are you going to kill all these people?’ He winds up not killing all the people. She had a positive outcome. She was able to save a whole entire race of people. It doesn’t get greater than that. Saving people because of your beauty, grace and poise.”

And there we have Jennifer, as beautiful as ever on the cover of his book.

“Not only have we been friends and she has been my muse, we’ve been through so much together in 10 years. But she encapsulates that, she came from humble beginnings. She made a great success of herself, by her talent, by striving to be amazing. To me that’s about face. That’s what the name of the title of the book is, it’s ‘About Face’. Not only about your face, but as a total turnaround too,” explains Barnes.

Even The New York Times sat down to read the book. They called Scott and told him that they were very impressed with it, which was of course a huge compliment to the makeup artist.

“The message I want people to give is: ‘feel beautiful!’ You can get the job you want, you can go after the career you want, you can go after the husband you want. You don’t have to settle from what is given to you based on your parents. If we don’t look good, we don’t feel good. It’s not about what you are wearing, it’s not about material stuff. It’s about how you feel when you put yourself together.”

“The whole universe responds accordingly: opening doors, help you with things. It’s because you exude confidence, strength of character. And that’s what Jennifer does. No matter where she’s at, people part to see for her. And it’s not only because she is a great talent but also because she has the ‘x-factor’. What is inside you that makes you so amazing? You have the ability to affect people by the way you feel.”

In his book ‘About Face,’ the popular makeup artist addresses women of all skin tones. He has 16 normal, ‘real women’ in the book and 4 celebrities. Besides Jennifer Lopez, he also has celebrities Kat DeLuna, Kim Kardashian and Judith Light in his book.

Scott with Jennifer at a Versace party in 2006“I didn’t do makeovers on the celebrities because they are portraits, they all tell their story. [From] all the women in the book there’s a before; what they consider themselves to be beautiful. Then they came to the studio and I deconstructed them and showed them how to become, let’s say, ‘red carpet ready’ step by step.”

He also asked the women some basic questions about their skin care, like: ‘What’s your beauty arrangement?,’ ‘How do you clean your face?,’ ‘What do you feel is a problem?,’ ‘What do you don’t like about yourself?,’ ‘What do you like about yourself?’

“So when you are reading this at home as a regular woman, you are like ‘I have the same thing.’ I always say ‘Distract from what you don’t like and emphasize what you do like.’ Really just explaining to women: you are beautiful. We are all kind of Gods creation and you have got to embrace yourself whether you are size 16 or size 4.” says Scott.

“All the women in the book contributed something back,” according to Scott.

He and the women questioned “‘Yeah, it’s great to be beautiful but how are you going to use that voice once you get there?’ Being beautiful is great but it doesn’t get you much. At the end of the day how are you going to effect other people’s lives? How are you going to use this beauty and this voice in a positive way? All the woman in the book have something that they are about and they are passionate about it. It’s not just a makeup book, it’s the feeling of inspiration. It makes you inspire to help other people. When you love and help other people, it’s infectious.”

Scott’s journey to makeup artist

It might sound as a surprise to many, but Scott wasn’t into makeup at all when he started his Fine Arts study. It was a photographer he used to work with, as his personal assistant, who made him pursue a career in makeup.

Scott Barnes“On the days [the photographer] wasn’t shooting in the studio he would allow me to paint in his studio because I didn’t have space. I moved to NYC with $300 and literally had 6 roommates and we were living on top of each other, there was no room to paint. He used to watch me paint and he said ‘You should do makeup!’ But I was like ‘Nah-uh,’ I had no desire [to do makeup] whatsoever. I did portrait painting, that was really what I’ve been so drawn to, in classical art. But he pushed and pushed and pushed and finally I did it!”

Scott didn’t start off with it smoothly though, he explains:

“I was horrible at it! And then I got angry with myself because I was like ‘Okay I should be able to do this, it looks fairly easy and I’m sucking at this.’,”

Professional as he is, he wanted to learn and took on the challenge.

“So I got up and I started to challenge myself. He looked at me one day and goes ‘You have to do this, [like] how you paint.’ He used to watch me mix my own paint. I learned how to do things from the start. It wasn’t like you squeeze some paint out of the tube. I mean there’s nothing wrong with that, but I learned how to mix all my paint and oils. I started doing it and out of a sudden a light went off and it was like ‘WOW, I get this.’”

“The exciting part for me was [when] we photographed it and then the girls would wash off their face but it would be immortalized on film and I was like ‘This is so cool, this is like sidewalk art. I can make people look however I want them to look.’ You’re not painting on a one-dimensional canvas but you’re painting on a 3D canvas and getting this person to come alive. Then they take on this thing that you tell them, you start talking, discussing, working with them and it’s like ‘Become this!’”

“There seems to be a symbiotic moment where the person starts becoming what you’re doing to them and they start feeling it and then it projects all over the place, and that is fun, that’s the exciting part about it.”

Makeup tips

Scott also shares some makeup advice for all the women out there.

“If you don’t know, seek people who do know. Seek a book, a professional, somebody that can help you put the makeup on properly. It’s about application. I always tell people ‘Get the right tools.’ Once you get it to work, with the right tools you can make anything happen.”

Women have to invest their money in good products, which doesn’t always mean that it has to be expensive. For more tips from the man himself, check out his YouTube channel.

Perceivement and Achievement

Often being called ‘the makeup artist of the stars,’ puts him in a box.

“I’m doing tons of fashion editorials lately. For a very long time I was only working with celebrities and fashion photographers thought I couldn’t do fashion anymore. Which was really sad to me because I can do anything, they can tell me; ‘Make them look like.. [fill in a name]’.” explains Barnes.

2007’s El Cantante was his first complete feature film. He had worked with Jennifer in other movies but never a full feature before. He did the beauty scenes in ‘Maid in Manhattan’ but to Scott that was like doing a music video. Transforming Jennifer in ‘El Cantante’ was a real challenge for the makeup artist.

“I had to age her in El Cantante, I never did that in my life. I always make people look younger. I had to make Jennifer look like 50 years old and haggard, because she hit the drugs. But Jennifer is so clean, she doesn’t even take aspirin. So I’m looking at her and I was like ‘How am I going to make you look wrecked? What if you did cocaine for 10 years, what would you look like?’ And it was weird to look at her like that and it was funny as well because as soon as it was done she was like ‘Get this off of me! It makes me feel tired.’”

Scott was nervous about aging her, “I kept saying: I don’t know if I can do this, I know I can make you look younger but to age you, I don’t know.” But that’s when Jennifer came in and said, “You can do this! You are doing it, you can do it, stop!” “She was amazing with that,” explains Scott. “I was like, ‘Okay if you have this much faith in me, then I’m doubting myself when I shouldn’t.’”

Mr. Barnes did such an amazing job at the makeup for ‘El Cantante’ that he was even up for an Oscar nomination.

“The Academy called me and they [told] you’re up for Oscar consideration! What they do is, out of the 200 movies, they select 30. And I was on that 30 list, [the one] that goes out to The Academy panel. They drew 5 out of them that you see on TV. It was crazy Maurice, I never expected that in a million years. The point of it was [that] I was transforming myself at the same time too. I was pushing myself in places I wasn’t able to go. And because of our friendship and [Jennifer’s] faith in me, it was really quite amazing that she pushed me like that and she was like, ‘I’m right here with you, we’re gonna do this together.’ I was like ‘Oh wow!’”

Scott is very confident, but that doesn’t mean that he never panics.

“I still panic. Sometimes I send her out to an event and I’m like ‘Was it good?’ And you’re always doing that and I think this is what keeps you on your toes. When I send her off to the Oscars I’m always like ‘Owwww.’ I always get that moment where I can’t breathe, when she steps out of the car. Then you see her on the red carpet, everybody is like: ‘Jennifer!’ and you see all the camera flashes. And you’re like, ‘Good, they love her!’.”

Scott explained that he has been going in a different direction with Jennifer for her recent stuff. He mentions her look when she was out in Washington DC a few months ago.

“Do you remember her recently in DC? When she was performing, that bronze color. To me she looked fresh and clean. And that’s how I like to see Jennifer. I don’t like her with so much eye makeup, I think it makes her look kind of older to me. I bring a natural glow to her, clean and glamorous.”

Working with Jennifer

The natural glow look, known as the famous ‘J.Lo Glow’, became Jennifer’s signature look. The man behind this look is of course Scott Barnes. It was love at first sight between the two when they met.

“The first time I met her, I talk about this in the book too but don’t want to give too much away, I looked at her and, oh my god, she blew me away because she was so beautiful. She had such a beautiful skin quality. It just fell in line with what I was doing with models [at the time]. I said ‘I’m going to make you look like that for camera.’ She was like ‘Okay!’ And until that point she always had had too much makeup on for me, too much paint, it was like she looked too contoured, very structured, almost like hard looking.”

When Scott started working with Jennifer he wanted the whole world to see what he saw: a beautiful woman who was sitting there, dying to get out.

“Still using makeup but not in the way that everybody was doing on the scene. And in that week we met she was like, ‘Would you shoot my album cover with me?’ That was on a Wednesday and on that Friday we did her album cover. I had big drama because I was booked with Kim Cattrall and she was very angry because I picked Jennifer over her.”

Scott calls this one of the smartest moves he has ever made in his life.

“Kim Cattrall’s publicist called me and was like ‘You are never going to work in this town again!’ And I was like ‘Whatever.’ I just liked Jennifer, we looked at each other in the middle of the day, and she was like ‘I like you’, and I was like ‘I like you too.’ On the set we were just staring at each other and I said ‘You are just beautiful and she said ‘Thank you!’,” tells Scott.

“‘You really are, you blow me away.’ She was like, ‘What are you doing on Friday?’ And we shot the J.Lo album cover on that Friday. The whole world responded to that…” and the rest is history.

Scott notes that he has to feel connected and fascinated about the client he works with.

“There’s a part of me as an artist that when I think a woman is beautiful, when I feel attracted to her, you have to love who you’re working on because you’re creating on them. And I just fell in love with [Jennifer], she is amazing. We created so many things together over the years; videos, movies, photoshoots and covers. Constantly keeping it fresh but still keeping it close to who she was. The “I’m Real (Remix video)” had a glance on her over the camera, which is a hard task because it’s covered all up. I was like, ‘Let’s make it you, but louder. Let’s get loud!’, to play on words hahaha.”

The moment the video aired on TV, Scott’s phone didn’t stop ringing. He says that everybody wanted to know how he created ‘that look’ and everybody wanted to look like that as well. That was the moment in time that the ‘J.Lo Glow’ was born.

It’s obvious that Scott loves to work with Jennifer. He discussed how it’s like to work with her.

“The most fun thing is [that] we laugh our asses off. She is really funny and almost like goofy and I don’t think people understand that of her, they always have something to say. [The] thing what people don’t understand is that Jennifer understands beauty and fashion, she knows herself like nobody I have ever met. She can put on a dress and be like, ‘This is not going to work.’ And you’re like, ‘But it’s good,’ and she’s like, ‘No!’ Sometimes I get off track a little bit, sometimes I get a bit too creative, she just let’s you go and go and then all out of a sudden she goes ‘What are you doing?’ Next thing I do is start laughing and I’m like ‘I don’t know.’

Scott travels with Jennifer all over the world. He shares a very funny moment with us.

Top: The Back-up Plan shoot – 2009
Bottom: ELLE magazine shoot – 2002“There was this one time when we were pushing the J.Lo album, we were in every country for one day. Throughout Europe, in Australia. We were in Miami. Jennifer, Oribe and I travelled for hours straight from Miami to Australia and she had to do press there. I’ll never forget it. We were so tired too. I don’t even remember doing her makeup and I think Oribe doesn’t remember doing her hair. But she woke up and she looked cracked out, completely. She looked insane, like bad. And according to Jennifer’s style she was like, ‘Take a picture of this, right now, and wash it off because you’ll never make me look like this again.’”

“It literally hung inside the makeup mirror [that] we use when we’re travelling and it was in there for like 5 years. Every time we would look at it we all just literally laughed tears in our eyes because it was just [that] we were exhausted. It was like [us] coming up with something new, she had a big popping out black and white dress and I put red lips on her and Oribe curled her hair. Seriously, by the time we were done with her she was asleep, she looked… it was just bad. She reeled it back in, she was like ‘Okay make me look normal now.’”

Another moment Scott witnessed was when Jennifer found out in Portugal that she was pregnant – while she was there to perform at the 7 New Wonders of the World show.

Scott clearly remembers this moment:

“I looked at her [and said] ‘You’re so pregnant!’ I know her so well. I know there’s nothing out of place. Every part of her body, because we’re always putting on moisturizer and such. Like I’m so protective over her skin. When anybody comes to wax her eyebrows or anything I’m like ‘What are you doing, isn’t that too hot?’ Jennifer is like ‘Relax’, but I’m like ‘No, I gotta protect you.’ I looked at her and I asked her ‘Are you pregnant?’ But she was like ‘No!’ But I was like ‘What’s up with you?’ I’m the worst, because I’m like ‘What’s going on?’ She is like family to me, like my sister.”

Jennifer’s look

Without a doubt Scott tried lots of different looks on Jennifer. He told a little something about how they come up with a certain look.

“I come up with stuff, I’m a big movie and book collector. And Jennifer does too, she really does have a lot of books and movies. She loves old movies. That’s what I love about her. Sometimes she is like ‘Let’s do this.’ Then I’m like, ‘Yeah let’s try that.’ or sometimes I’m like ‘Nah!’ So sometimes we agree, sometimes we don’t. And sometimes we go right in the middle and it works out amazing.”

Jennifer turned out to be one of the most influential style icons of our time. According to Scott this is no surprise.

“When you are a celebrity you have an obligation to look like a star. And Jennifer always looks like a movie star. In Europe and in the UK you have the royal family, Hollywood is our royalty. And I think we have an obligation to protect that and to keep it really beautiful, keep the mystery to it. If you let people see everything then it’s not special anymore. And she understands that and lives that. She is one of the last true Hollywood movie stars. I think that’s why people give her style awards, because everybody is hungry for that.”

Barnes is a huge glamour lover and that’s what he always opts for in his work: Glamour.

“If you want to see the girl next door you just open the door and go next door. You don’t want to see the girl next door, you want to be like ‘Oh, take me out of my ship for 5 minutes, I hate my job, I hate the subway, I hate going to work, I want to escape.’ And how do we escape; we escape with music and movies and magazines. So we have to be exporational in our job.”

Scott shared another thing about working with Miss Lopez:

“I always joke around, it’s one of the things I always say to Jennifer, ‘Give them what they came for, give them what they want.’ [And] they get what they want, that’s what they came for. They came to see beauty, a dragshow [or something else], give them what they want. You don’t want to see her looking beat up, looking tired, they don’t care. They want to see her looking gorgeous, that’s what they want to see. Like, ‘How beautiful is she?!’ It makes people frenzied. And that’s the cool part!’

Scott’s current ventures

Here’s what Scott had to say about the things currently occupying his life.

“Right now, I reintroduced Body Bling, I repackaged it, that’s doing amazing. People are really into it, getting the word out that it’s back. I did the book of course which is wonderful and talking to some people about television shows. They want to take the concept of the book and translate it into a television show, it’s really exciting. I’m always like, ‘Jen come on produce it with me!’ She’s really clever, I think she would be amazing for that.”

“I’m [also] reintroducing the whole cosmetic line so I’m working on that. I started painting again and I added a brand new edition to my family which I’m excited about. I got a Great Dane that I’ve been wanting forever. She’s 5 weeks old, I’ll pick her up in a week. We’re going to name her Taylor, she’s got blue eyes. She’s so cute, she’s already 13 pounds and is only 5 weeks old. So that’s what’s happening in my world at the moment.”

Nearing the end of the interview, Scott also gives us an update about some protects he is about to work on with Jennifer:

“I’m going to LA this weekend (Sat. Dec 12) to re-shoot some scenes for the movie (“The Back-up Plan“). They are adding a couple of things. I have no idea yet when we are going to shoot the “Louboutins” music video. That’s what I like about her, she keeps it quiet until she worked out what she wants to do. Until then, she doesn’t bother me with it because it could change. She’s really good like that and then she calls me and goes, ‘This is what I want to do, can you make it happen?’ And I’ll bring my thing to it. She’s very collaborative in that. I heard the album (“Love?“) obviously and I’m excited for her because I think this is some of her best work. I’m excited for the whole world to hear it.”

And we are too! ‘About Face’ is available for preorder right now. As a J-Lo fan, there must be no doubt that you are interested in reading the book ‘About Face.’ Besides that, the book is a great item to have for all of Jennifer’s fans out there because she graces the cover and she wrote the foreword. When you order the book on Scott’s official website you will receive a limited edition signed copy.

Win a signed copy of ‘About Face’

Scott was so kind to give away one signed copy of the book to OnlineJLoFan.com, read all about how you you can enter to win a copy right here.

Please check out ScottBarnes.com and Twitter.com/ScottBarnes68 to keep updated on Scott’s ventures. Thanks for everything, Scott & Nick!