A deep fascination with the foibles and fancies of human nature keeps Robyn Malcolm in thrall to the make-up chair. Words Claire Finlayson.

Most people wouldn’t choose a work-adjacent seat as their preferred sitting spot, but then most people don’t have quite as much occupational fun as Robyn Malcolm. The actor says the make-up chair she sits in before shooting a film or TV show is hands down her favourite seat because it’s where the look of the character she’s about to play comes to life.

For Robyn, the make-up chair is a portal to the imagination – it’s where she gets to dissolve for a bit and climb into someone else’s skin. Asked which borrowed skin has been her favourite (and there have been well over a hundred), she says she can’t go past that of Cheryl West – the Westie matriarch who leopard-printed herself on our televisual psyche in that hugely successful mid-2000s series, Outrageous Fortune.

Because looks were a conscious part of Cheryl’s armour, it took a good 90 minutes in the make-up chair every morning to transform Robyn into a heavily mascaraed, lock-tousled, cleavage-toting dynamo. She loved every hoochie-mama minute of it.

‘It was such a wonderful collaborative time – and so much fun. What nail polish mood are we in this week? Are we in a soft, hard, sexy, illegal, mood? It was a dream for someone who doesn’t wear a lot, if any, make-up in real life because the transformative artistry of it can be really powerful.’

This shape-shifting business is highly addictive for an actor. ‘It feels like freedom – a complete liberty from whatever internal constraints you live with as the self. It’s like stepping into the most magnificent and infinite universe of possibility and there’s no such thing as right or wrong. Miranda Harcourt once said that actors were internal bungy jumpers. I love that analogy.’

Robyn says there’s something about sitting on a chair in front of a mirror with someone slapping products on your skin and hair that unleashes a galloping frankness. ‘It’s the intimate nature of it. Someone is touching your face and hair for over an hour, and it’s done with such gentleness and care.

For Robyn, the make-up chair is a portal to the imagination – it’s where she gets to dissolve for a bit and climb into someone else’s skin.

Make-up artists are some of the most empathic, sensitive and intuitive people on the planet – I’ve never met one who I didn’t love instantly. And if there’s a line-up of actors in the bus, you can have an eight-way conversation that you’d only ever have in that space. I’ve cried in the make-up chair, fallen asleep, breastfed my babies, laughed until I was sick. Anything can happen.’

Her chat capacity has always been large. It was nurtured around the six-strong Malcolm family dinner table of her childhood. ‘It was a battle for conversation – and a battle for who knew the most. But we are not interrupters. We learned to listen from Mum and Dad. And to ask questions. We billeted a young drama student for a couple of weeks when I was at secondary school. He asked me quietly one day if I could ask my parents to stop asking him questions because it was exhausting.’

Robyn loves climbing inside a good conversation and finding out how someone else ticks. Big, fat, juicy topics are her favourite thing. ‘I love taking a subject and kicking it around, poking it with a stick. Stephen Fry once said that the most boring word to begin a sentence with is “I” – and I agree with that. Great conversation is about something, particularly conversations about taboo subjects like politics, religion, sex, death. That’s when you really get to know someone. We’re here for such a short time on this planet, so why just chat about the weather?’

Above Robyn being transformed into prostitute Shen Te in the Auckland Theatre Company’s performance of The Good Soul of Szechuan in 2014. Robyn’s next role sees her play a grief-walloped mother in the soon-to-be-released film, Pike River.