Jean Steward (Make-Up Artist)

Jean Steward was born in London in 1947. Her 34-year career in the BBC Make-Up Department began in 1968 as one of two of the original Stock Keepers. She was invited to train as a make-up artists and rose through the ranks to become Manager of the Make-Up Department design group. In the 1970s she was also the first Chairwoman of the largest television branch of the BBC’s union, Associated Broadcasting Staff (ABS).

In this interview Jean recalls being one of the first two people to work in the stock room at Television Centre. She discusses how she was one of the very young women to be offered a place on the highly competitive make-up training course ran by the BBC. She discusses how she was one of the first in-take of trainees to be taught make-up for colour television. She discusses her pathway through the different grades of the Make-Up Department and the variety of the work undertaken. She discusses the demarcation of her role as the make-up artist in television by way of comparison with film and she also discusses the lowly status and grading that make-up artists endured during the early years at the BBC because it was a role associated with women. She subsequently discusses the department’s fight to be re-graded and her part, as a union representative, in securing that upgrading. She reflects upon the subsequent downsizing of the Make-Up Department and the move to a freelance culture at the BBC in the 1980s. It is in relation to the latter that Jean discusses managing redundancies of the staff in her department. She discusses her decision to take voluntary redundancy aged 48 and her subsequent employment as a freelance make-up artist at the BBC from the mid 1990s.