You've probably never heard of Alabama hairstylist Ann Bray, unless you follow the wild world of hair shows. She’s been in the business for 54 years, and is the first American to win the World Championship of Hairdressing. She was even knighted by the Intercoiffure in Paris for her international accomplishments (yes, that's a real thing.) But what caught Catching Fire Hair Department Head, Linda Flowers' attention was The Golden Rose, a hairdo that Bray came up with using a model's real hair. Flowers felt the 'do would be a perfect fit for Effie Trinket, and asked Ann Bray to join the Catching Fire team. AL.com talked with Bray about her experiences on the set:
Ann Bray and daughter Shelby Zimmerman with Effie's golden rose wig. Photo by Matt Wake. Ann Bray thought it was a joke at first when Catching Fire hair department head Linda Flowers contacted her about working on the sequel to the 2012 blockbuster The Hunger Games.
"I said, 'Come on," Bray says. On a recent afternoon, she's seated near a row of Belvedere chairs inside Huntsville salon The Masters, which she opened in 1974.
"And they said, 'We're serious.' So I talked with them about it. They sent me a story board of what they wanted to do, and I think all but three things were photos they'd collected of mine throughout the magazines. It was really wild. That was really how it came about, through this one photo, because this rose went viral."
Ah yes, the rose.
An image of Bray's "golden rose" hair design, shot during a session with photographer Luis Alvarez, had caught Flowers' eye. Actress Elizabeth Banks can be seen wearing the post-modern style in her role as larger-than-life character Effie Trinket, in Catching Fire.
The otherworldly hairdo is aptly named. While she fashioned a golden rose wig for Catching Fire, the style captured in the Alvarez photo featured a model's actual hair. "It takes a long time," Bray says of that original 'do. "I can do the actual rose easily in an hour, but to do all the prep work on it you're talking a couple of weeks because the hair has to be processed a certain way. It has to be built a certain way."
Asked what it was like to work so closely with a star of Banks' wattage, Bray fondly recalls Banks hanging out during lunch, "standing in line with the crew and wearing her little cut-off jeans with holes in them and her little tied-up shirt."
Then Banks sat down for lunch with Bray and Bray's daughter Shelby Zimmerman, who also worked on the Catching Fire hair team. "We had a good ol' time. She's very, very nice and outgoing," Bray says. Banks signed the pink-pages of an autograph book Bray brought to the set "Ann, stay happy. You rock. XOXO Elizabeth Banks Effie".
Bray describes the Catching Fire set as "very secret' before recalling a scenario in which a Lionsgate helicopter was used to chase off a paparazzi helicopter hovering over leading lady Jennifer Lawrence.
Lawrence's autograph in Bray's souvenir book is a little more business-like, although her bubbly-shaped handwriting is very reminiscent of an average schoolgirl's yearbook scribble. Bray remembers Lawrence being "very wonderful, beautiful and sweet" on-set. "One day there was an older car that pulled up (on set), not a raggedy car but nothing you expect a star to be in, and it was Jennifer. So they could take her back and forth from the hotel without being seen."
Sometimes the extras weren't too fond of their wild hair designs. "If [one of the extras] had their hair done the day before, they kept a little picture in a file, and they brought the picture back to you and you're supposed redo whatever was done the day before, because it might be a different stylist working on you. Some of those girls didn't like what they wore the day before and they tried to sneak in and do something really different, and they got busted a few times, some of the extras."
Bray's work on Catching Fire actually began a few months before film began shooting. She was flown out to Los Angeles to instruct other hairstylists on the avant-garde looks for the film and also to lead advance preparation of hairpieces. Bray estimates the Catching Fire hairstylists used about 500 wigs and hairpieces on the movie, most of which was filmed in Atlanta, except for the jungle scenes which were shot in Hawaii.
When filming began around fall 2012, there would be anywhere from 20 to 65 hairstylists on-set working on Catching Fire. While the hairstylists would never work for more than eight hours straight, sometimes the day began at 2 a.m. - if that's the light the director and cinematographer were looking for. A bus would pick the stylists up and take them to locations such as Atlanta's historical district or a racetrack outside the city, where the Catching Fire chariot scenes were filmed.
Bray recently received a text from Flowers asking about her working on another genre film, although she hasn't been told the project's title yet. She's also considering an opportunity to train film hairstylists, and hoping to work on the final installments of The Hunger Games, MockingjayParts 1 & 2.
Thanks to HGGirlonFire for the tip!