Alexis Continente, the Catalan hairdresser who triumphs in Hollywood

Adam Driver He has the best hair in the ‘star system’ with permission from J.Lo. The 1.89 of the ex-marine turned into a big screen wonder is crowned by a stout head of dark brown hair where “not a gray hair” has yet made its star appearance. Your personal advisor testifies, Alexis Continent (Barcelona, 1982), also known as the Catalan hairdresser of Hollywood. Not only does he know the swirls and waves of the hair of Kylo Ren, the villain of the ‘Star Wars’ saga, but they have passed through his combs Natalie Portman, Chris Hemsworth, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz, Christian Bale, Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver, María Valverde, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Jodie Comer…

Although she has been a hairdresser since she was 18, it has been almost 10 years since she left for London. Here he worked for laboratories that sold products to hairdressers, he told them the colors they would wear next season. “I wanted to move to international companies and I saw the need to improve my English.” With 29 he left everything and was placed in a salon in Shoreditch, the most ‘hipster’ neighborhood. “The owner was an Italian who knew Chris Hemsworth’s hairdresser, who was filming ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’ at the time, the boy started bringing me doubles to color them,” he recalls.

Landing at Pinewood

“Until one day I asked him to go to the set to see what exactly they were doing there,” says the stylist, who discovered “another world.” “All the actors, 90%, wear wigs, hairpieces and extensions”, he claims. His stroke of luck came with ‘Thor: the dark world’ “The girlfriend in Chris’s film was Natalie Portman, and she asked my boss to have someone do her mother’s dye, who was returning to Los Angeles. ‘Don’t screw it up,’ he told me. But you can see that I did it well and after four days Natalie asked me to do it to her too. In addition, I took care of Thor’s mecha, and the hair of his wife, Elsa Pataky… In eight months I went from working in a salon to signing for the Pinewood studios, the largest in London, and being surrounded by actors, “he says.

And of directors. The one he has worked with the most times, four, has been with Ridley Scott. First in ‘Exodus’ (2014), later in ‘All the money in the world’ (2017), and finally, in ‘The last duel’ Y ‘The Gucci house’, both released this year. It was in the production set in France in the fourteenth century that he was in charge of the hairpieces from Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Jodie Comer and the long knight of Adam Driver, who was so delighted with him that since then, since the beginning of 2020 it is his personal ‘hair styler’.

The characterization process

The process of creating a character is always the same. “They pass you the script with the description of the character and you get an idea. Then you meet with the director and he tells you his vision, and he gives you references to other films that you can draw inspiration from. So, I prepare sketches with the help of A ‘concept artist’, who draws what I ask of him and with the exact measurements of the actor’s head. We present this to the director and the actor for approval. Usually they coincide, but if not, the one who wins has the biggest name. And If you have Ridley as a director, you do what Ridley says“, Explain.

“We work with wigs they have a very thin fabric that sticks to the skin. Is it so hand-sewn, hair by hair, natural hair, the best on the market. The hairstyle we see of Adam in ‘The Gucci house’ it’s not her hair. He wears four different ‘looks’ that reflect the evolution of the character until his tragic end. For each ‘look’ two wigs are made, the one that is used and a twin in case something happens to the first one. And underneath is her real hair, and it is part of our job not to show a big head. “It is a complex job that takes a long time.

“His shadow”

“We are his shadow. In the morning the actor is prepared, minimum two hours between makeup and hairdressing, but then there is a follow-up of 10 or 12 hours a day in which we go behind them only retouching and maintaining continuity. If you do some waves at eight o’clock in the morning, at twelve o’clock they have been lowered and they are no longer the same, “says Alexis.

They are many hours together. Filming of ‘The Gucci house’ It was in Rome, Milan and the Italian Alps. “It was a lot of fun,” he explains. “I was staying at the same hotel as Adam and when we went out the paparazzi would wait for us, they followed us everywhere,” he recalls. For this reason, he already considers the actor as a “client-friend”: “I no longer only do his characterizations, but I cut his hair, he talks to me about his personal life, he asks me ‘what if he did this or that to me?’ … In the end they are still people, and Adam is a close and generous person with which I am very happy to be working and I hope to do it for a long time, “he wishes.

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After ‘La casa Gucci’ they were six months in Cleveland shooting ‘White Noise’, by Noah Baumbach, the same one who directed Driver in ‘Story of a marriage’, and which will be released in 2022. Until March-April he will not travel with the actor again to groom him in his new film, the Continent cannot let go more garments “by contract”. These months the hairdresser will spend in Barcelona, ​​where since 2017 he opened your own living room, Conti Hair, on Paris street. There he explains his films to those who are going to comb their hair, and sometimes, even, has done Pierce Brosnan’s hair in ‘Mamma Mia!’ -Another of the films where he has worked- to some middle-of-the-road movie buff client.