Monroeville native goes from Glamour Shots to glamorous clients

If you grew up in the 1980s, the brand name Glamour Shots probably conjures a very specific — and colorful — image in the mind.

For Monroeville native Brett Freedman, the overly rouged cheeks and popping lipstick in classic Glamour Shots photos were part of the inspiration that led him to where he is today, working makeup for some of Hollywood’s best-known names, including Taylor Swift, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Jodie Foster.

“In high school, I started doing these sort of family-room makeovers on my friends, kind of a mock-Glamour-Shots type of thing,” said Freedman, 57, a 1986 Gateway High School graduate. “My sister used to joke that she was the only girl in Monroeville who had to ask her brother where the mascara was.”

Freedman attended the former Art Institute in Pittsburgh with the idea of becoming an artist.

“I’d started a T-shirt line when I was at the institute, but I kind of always did makeup as well,” he said. “One time I got $40 to do a commercial for a store at the Miracle Mile (shopping center), and then I started getting work in several areas.”

Pittsburgh makeup artist Susie Popovich can remember Freedman’s T-shirts — she used to wear them in fashion shows he would organize.

“We were both living in Monroeville and hanging out with the same people,” said Popovich, 54, of Pittsburgh’s South Side. “He is one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever met, and he’s always been that way.”

Freedman said he’d get random phone calls from brides planning their weddings and looking for a makeup artist. He began working as a rotating makeup artist at Kaufman’s and Horne’s department stores.

“Eventually I thought, why can’t I just do makeup?” he said. At 24 years old, he decided to move to the Miami-South Beach area with $600 to his name.

Living in a studio apartment, Freedman started working at a makeup store and ended up with a small write-up in Allure magazine for his eyebrow work. The writer’s husband was working on major-brand makeup commercials in Europe.

“She suggested I should work makeup for the ads,” Freedman said. “I was so under-qualified, but I said yes, let’s do it. I had to hire assistants, I had to figure out how to create a time sheet, all these things.”

That led to more work in Miami, and some of Freedman’s work began appearing on European magazine covers. In 1996, he moved to Los Angeles and hired an agent.

“Me and my dad, who was kind of a frustrated artist, both loved Hollywood and old movies,” Freedman said. “I wanted to do Sharon Stone’s makeup.”

A few years later, he got the chance.

“One of the first actresses I worked on was Courtney Thorne when she was on ‘Melrose Place’ in the late ’90s,” Freedman said, crediting Hollywood publicists with helping to get his name out among L.A. celebrities.

“They’d like my work, and they’d have other clients they wanted me to work with,” he said. “TV Guide did a lot of work with one publicist, who came to me and said they wanted me to do Lori Loughlin’s makeup for a photo shoot of the actresses who’d played Jerry Seinfeld’s girlfriends in ‘Seinfeld.’ That’s how it’s happened a lot of the time.”

Freedman has worked with “Friends” actress Lisa Kudrow for more than a decade and worked on her makeup for one of the show’s reunions.

“I was putting her makeup on and I just looked around the room and suddenly thought, ‘Wow, everyone here is at the top of their field, from the actors to the caterer to, turns out, me,’” he said. “It was great validation.”

And every celebrity is different.

“Taylor Swift is very engaging, but she also uses that time to talk with her team,” Freedman said. “Tyne Daly did a crossword puzzle the entire time. Paris Hilton literally slept the whole time and I woke her up for concealer and eyeliner.”

Freedman did Jodie Foster’s makeup for the 2025 Golden Globes, which received a mention in “Elle” magazine’s “30 Best Hair and Makeup Looks” coverage of the ceremony.

“She’s very chill,” Freedman said. “She’s been in a makeup chair since she was tiny and honestly isn’t that interested in makeup. But then someone like Catherine Zeta-Jones, who I’ve worked with for 20 years, is a mom with kids who comes in and says, ‘Put all the makeup in that entire box on my face.’”

Popovich said recognizing that every client is unique is part of what made Freedman such a successful makeup artist.

“If you look at his portfolio of actresses, you can see they are all different ages and styles,” she said. “As a makeup artist, it’s not always just the talent, because a lot of people have talent. It’s the relationships you form with these people. Actresses want to have Brett work on their makeup; they want to be around. He’s so much fun and one of the funniest guys I ever met.”

Freedman is also the “glam-bassador” for Farmhouse Fresh, a line of organic face, body and skincare products, and offers beauty tips on their website.

He was in town during the first week of June to watch his brother Jeff serve as grand marshal in the Pittsburgh Pride Parade.

“I’m going to come watch him and visit with some family,” he said. “And I’m hoping to make it to Kennywood.”