Stefanie Gredig meticulously prepares for job interviews, studies the script or booklet, thinks about make-up in the smallest detail, designs the characters for herself. As a rule, she doesn't get enough information about the Directors to enter into such conversations openly. Sometimes perhaps also to protect herself from her own excitement. After all, a filmography and list of awards can often be quite intimidating, as was the case with Ruben Östlund. He asked her to meet him in 2019 for the Hair & Make Up of the satire "Triangle of Sadness". The film was awarded the Palme d'Or in Cannes last year. Now it is in the running for an Oscar in three categories on 12 March. Hair & Make Up is not nominated, but Stefanie Gredig was already honoured with the Swedish film award Guldbaggen in January. Definitely a highlight of her professional career to date.

For the woman who has lived in Hamburg for almost 30 years, it all began in a small town in the Eifel region. "When it came to deciding what profession I wanted to learn during my school years, I wavered between Hair & Make Up and photography," recalls the now 55-year-old. She became a Hair & Make Up artist and, as a hairdressing apprenticeship was a prerequisite for training at the time, she applied to the local salon, owner-managed, for men on one side and women on the other. It was all about washing, cutting, laying and lots of perms. "Back then, I didn't think it was so great to put curlers in the hair of the mostly older female customers. Today, I'm very grateful for my dexterity and confidence with curlers and hair in general, as I spend 70 per cent of my time working with hair," she says.

Gredig stayed in the salon for a few years after her training, worked at the Burgfestspiele Mayen in the summer and wrote around 50 applications until she got a training position as a Hair & Make Up artist at the Landestheater Detmold, a three-section theatre that put on many guest performances. Even then, she learnt to work in the most impossible places and situations. This was also an experience that would later prove very useful in film.

After Detmold, her path led her to "Cats" at the Hamburg Operettenhaus. Then chance and luck came together and she got her first jobs in film, as an additional mask in various TV films produced in Hamburg. "No Sex!", a ZDF production, was her first TV film in 1999, which she supervised entirely. She did make-up and hair on "Adelheid und ihre Mörder" with Evelyn Hamann and supervised Wolfgang Stumph as Wilfried Stubbe, she was Hair & Make Up artist on "I Was, I Am, I Will Be" and on "Curveball" and most recently on "We Are Next of Kin", among others. In between, she spent around 70 days shooting in Sweden and Greece for "Triangle of Sadness", the film that was also supported by the MOIN Film Fund Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein with 230,000 euros.

"When I got the booklet, I really wanted to be involved because it's just a really good story and the film is so complex," says Gredig enthusiastically. Recommendations from the Hamburg production company Tamtam, among others, brought her into the film. For Gredig, this is a challenge that she enjoys so much. Because for her, it's about creating a mask that fits into the stories, that carries the stories without being noticeable, but without which something wouldn't be right. For example, there are the dirty fingernails and greasy to matted hair that the crew and passengers have after the luxury cruiser capsizes and is stranded on a desert island in "Triangle of Sadness" and which the Hamburg Hair & Make Up artist had to take care of. Or the mosquito bites that cover the face of the beautiful, successful influencer Yaya (Charibi Dean Kriek) and thus tell of the damage to the beautiful façade. Or the Karl Marx beard that grows on Russian oligarch Dimitry (Zlatko Buric) of all people, details that underline the story, subtly reinforcing facets. Gredig even carefully chooses the nail polish colour and design. "It still has to fit when a film is released in cinemas several years after it was made," she explains. For "Triangle of Sadness", however, a nail designer who was part of the almost ten-strong make-up team was responsible for this.

Gredig spends weeks preparing for all these details, studying the script, researching the characters, making make-up tests in her small studio in the Portuguese quarter, making wigs and beards. She calls this preparation "creative development", which is part of every film alongside the necessary craftsmanship. Hair & Make Up is, of course, not only a creative process but also a craft that has to be learnt and constantly refined and developed. "In 'Adelheid and Her Murderers', make-up was still done in clown white because the light was much more extreme. Digital camera technology alone has changed the requirements dramatically," says Gredig. Some skills, she says, are even slowly dying out. She herself has just attended another workshop on "sticking beards by hand", as she is currently working intensively with beards. She is currently preparing a feature film supported by the MOIN Film Fund and co-produced by Tamtam, in which a young Dane joins the IS. "I have to glue or fluff knotted beards," explains Gredig.

Dirt, blood, the rough stuff, that's what Gredig likes and demands, not least because it all offers more design possibilities than natural daytime make-up and requires imagination and creativity. Her dream is to work with the Spaniard Pedro Almodóvar one day. "His films are great, he's great, his actors and actresses are great and the hairstyles are always great," she enthuses. But for now, beards for IS fighters and, of course, the Oscars in Hollywood.