Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
Ross Martucci fell in love with special effects makeup as a child, when he saw the gruesome Freddy Krueger of the movie “Nightmare on Elm Street” on the cover of a horror magazine.
“I couldn’t believe how it was possible to make somebody look like they were burnt from head to toe and it not be real. It was almost like magic to me,” the Chicago-based artist recalls. “I said to myself, ‘This has to be one of the coolest jobs to do.’”
More than 20 years later, Martucci got to assist on the “Nightmare on Elm Street” remake, which was mostly filmed in Chicago. On a day when main make-up artist Andrew Clement was unavailable, Martucci and Clement’s assistant worked together on Freddy Krueger’s makeup. “That was amazing,” he says.
In fact, Martucci credits Clement and Jake Garber (a California-based makeup artist like Clement) with teaching him the tricks of the trade.
Martucci, who grew up in Elmhurst in suburban Chicago, is Italian on both sides of the family. His parents, born in the United States, raised their children following Italian traditions, such as celebrating St. Joseph’s Day with a feast featuring his mother’s trademark eggplant parmesan.
Growing up, Martucci loved the fine arts and was enchanted by the works of Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci. His parents were very supportive of his desire to become an artist, he says.
“My father got me my first airbrush, and all three of my siblings helped me develop my artistic skills,” he recalls. “When I was a toddler, they would all draw with me or helped me develop my drawing.”
After graduating from York Community High School in Elmhurst, Martucci majored in illustration at the American Academy of Art College in Chicago, from which he earned a bachelor’s of fine arts degree.
Now living in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, Martucci was most active as a special effects makeup artist from 2006 to 2016.
Over the years, he was in a key makeup role on films like “Nothing Like the Holidays,” and assisted on films like “Jupiter Ascending” and “Horsemen.” He also assisted on TV shows like “Empire,” “Boss,” “Crisis” and the “Chicago Fire” pilot.
He worked on two episodes of the TV show “Sense 8,” for which he created anatomically correct birthing scenes, he says. “You actually see the baby coming out,” he explains. “It’s not the usual closeup of the baby crowning where, if you pulled the camera away, you can see it’s fake.”
Nowadays, Martucci focuses on oil painting, occasionally working as a makeup artist if a friend calls him for an extra set of hands.
His artist resume includes receiving a 3rd place prize in painting at Summerfair Cincinnati in 2021. One of his most labor-intensive paintings is a recreation of Rembrandt’s “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee” (the original was stolen in 1990 from a museum in Boston).
Martucci is also skilled at airbrush portraiture, which he’s been into since childhood. He is especially proud of his photorealistic portraits of country singer Willie Nelson and of his favorite actor, Alec Guinness, in the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in “Star Wars.”
His portraiture skills, along with the anatomy classes he took in college, were instrumental in the development of his expertise in special effects makeup, he explains.
“You have a good eye for what the eye looks for as far as being real or fake, and making something look more organic, rather than just placed there,” he says. “Especially with HD technology today, prosthetics could be detected a lot faster than they could be before. Everybody had to really up their game.”
When people tell him he has talent, Martucci says, he replies that would be a conceited way of looking at it.
“It’s an ability that he was given,” he says. “I am so thankful, so grateful that I have been able to do what I do.”
