Even for Academy Award winners like Madison, there are reasons to seek out beauty deals.
One is that it can help their acting career.
Having your face writ large throughout drugstores, supermarkets, and airports can make someone a household name.
Photos: Getty Images
Celebrity deals with brands have been happening since the dawn of Hollywood.
Joan Crawford appeared in an ad for Max Factors line of Society Makeup in 1935.
Isabella Rossellini became the worlds highest paid model in 1982 when she signed an exclusive deal with Lancome.
In 2025, beauty contracts can be worth millions of dollars annually.
Makeup gigs are usually shorter due to the changeable nature of trends, she adds.
These contracts are so highly coveted that theres an entire business behind getting and maintaining one.
Large talent firms like UTA and CAA have agents in-house who work on getting clients endorsements.
In the fashion industry, the unspoken matchmakers between brands and celebrities are stylists.
In the beauty realm, makeup artists and hairstylists often make introductions.
I got my insider info from celeb makeup artists.
That was back in BielsSeventh Heavendays.
Maybe they are rising stars that weren’t obvious choices.
But the scale is very, very different.
Think $5,000 versus $500,000 for a similar deal, says the same makeup artist.
Faster than you could say Espresso, it was sold out at Sephora and Nordstrom.
By the end of September, Carpenter was named an ambassador for Prada Beauty.
A few weeks later, Carpenter did aninterview withVogueto share the news of her appointment.
Maybe a fine point on her contract still needed to be negotiated and someone hit send too soon.
We [would] think about brands that mean something to her.
There has to be genuine interest there, otherwise its hard to motivate to go perform.
Sometimes, though, the hunt for a face is more data-driven.
We were looking at Sharon Stone, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Susan Sarandon.
The year was 2005 and Stone got it, for Diors Capture skin-care line.
Camila Coelho was scouted by Lancome when she had under 100,000 followers.
She is the brand: Her mom used it, she looked the part, says a former executive.
I had that sense and took her to Paris to meet the global presidents.
I said, Shes aspirational but attainable; lets get in early.
That was back in 2018.
Now Coelho has more than 10 million followers and a beauty line of her own.
Today, industry sources tell us, this is not always true.
Big-luxury, worldwide brands are, generally, the most coveted contracts because of their prestige.
(Chanel declined to comment on the matter.)
Chanel would be hard-pressed to find another star with those bona fides.
It depends on what a celebrity wants.
Then there is the delicate issue of when a star and a brand part ways.
In 2005, tabloids published photos of Kate Moss with cocaine.
Shelost her contractswith H&M and Burberry.
Some brands stay confoundingly loyal.
Beauty observers I spoke with had different takes on why Depp remains a spokesman for Dior.
He could have an ironclad contract where they would have to pay him out, speculates one cosmetics executive.
I was surprised, says an agent.
There is usually a moral clause that would have been able to be used to break the contract.
Companies are constantly tracking brand awareness through teams of data analysts.
Often thats when painful calls start getting made.
Either way, the deal is up.
Competitors will ask when deals are up.
If youre popular, there will be plenty.
The executive at the time told me that advertising is about dreams.
And the dream allegedly was that women dream to be young, RossellinitoldThe Cut.
Rossellini was so beloved and so deeply linked to the brand that customers complained.
Two decades later, in 2018, she wasbrought backas a brand face at age 63.
Rossellinihas saidLancomes new chief executive, Francoise Lehmann, told her the company never should have let her go.
The changing of the guard is handled with more decorum these days.
First, they made a splashyannouncementabout Theron becoming their ambassador of jewelry and skin care.
Theyll switch you around, says one executive about Therons new role.
Phase you out from one area to another category.
Your face is still recognizable and youre still relevant.
(Dior did not, as of press time, respond to a request for comment.)
In the end, its about money and who is hot.
Brands are after disposable income and new customers.
There is one person, of course, at the top of everyones list.
Who is going to land Taylor Swift?
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