This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Arts & Entertainment

From Hellertown To Hollywood

Saucon Valley grad caught theater bug here, now is judge on Syfy reality TV show.

When Glenn Hetrick was a student at Saucon Valley High School in the late 1980s,  he was chosen to play the villain Bill Sikes in the musical “Oliver” by a director who made Cecil B. DeMille look like a minimalist.

Henry McClenahan Jr. did everything big and with “Oliver,” his first production at Saucon Valley High, he used dry ice to create the fog of Dickensian London, tripled the number of orphans called for in the play and hired a dialect coach to teach the actors how to speak with a Cockney accent.

“We walked around talking like that for months,” Hetrick recalled in a phone interview from Los Angeles last week. “The level of professionalism that we were afforded was unbelievable.”

Today, Hetrick is at the height of his profession as a special effects makeup artist in Hollywood. He can be seen as one of three judges in the reality television show “Face Off” which airs at 10pm Wednesdays on the Syfy channel. In the show, a group of young makeup artists are challenged each week with the tasks of creating and making up characters as they vie for $100,000 and a year’s worth of makeup. Hetrick and the other two judges decide each week which artist to eliminate from the competition.

Hetrick honed his craft doing special effects makeup for shows such as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Heroes,” “X-Files,” “CSI New York” and “Crossing Jordan” and movies like “The Prestige.” His company, Optic Nerve Studios, has earned three Emmy Awards. 

A Hellertown native, Hetrick grew up in the house where his parents Allan and Deborah Hetrick still live. He liked skateboarding and played a few seasons of football but really loved horror films and monster movie magazines. And thanks to Saucon Valley’s extensive theater program, Hetrick discovered a passion for acting.

That passion came through early on, according to Henry McClenahan Jr., who directed Hetrick at Saucon Valley. Reached at his home where he now lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., McClenahan remembered Hetrick as “very, very dedicated” to theater.

“In the ‘Oliver’ production, Glenn was marvelous as Bill Sikes,” McClenahan said. “What was great about Glenn was his enthusiasm, but he always questioned. I’ve always remembered him for his independence.”

After graduating, Hetrick attended York College as a public relations major where he graduated summa cum laude in 1995. He found work acting in numerous independent films, taught acting and learned how to build sets. “The New York independent horror scene was huge,” he said. “Somewhere along the way I started experimenting with theatrical makeup myself.”

Hetrick wrote and produced a video for the horror/heavy metal rock band, The Misfits, before deciding the best place for the kind of special effects makeup he was doing was Los Angeles. He landed a job sweeping floors and making molds for masks and prosthetics at Optic Nerve Studios, which worked on such shows as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Crossing Jordan.”

“I was just willing to do these insane long hours,” Hetrick said.

After six years there, Hetrick bought Optic Nerve.

Asked what the difference is between a good special effects makeup artist and a great one, Hetrick cited “commitment and the ability to self-analyze.”

Some artists gain recognition and then rest on their laurels. “The really great ones…are constantly pushing their boundaries,” he said. “The sculptors I hire are better than me. The painters I hire are better than me… In my lifetime I’ll never be able to master all of those skills.”

The toughest part of his job is trying to get directors, writers and producers to articulate their visions for each shows’ characters, forge an agreement on what they want them to look like and then turn that into reality, Hetrick said. “The producers, writers and directors think they know what they want” but when you sit them down in a room you get all sorts of different visions, he said. “You need to figure out how to make all of them happy.”

Hetrick said he was selected as a judge for “Face Off” partly because of his ease in front of the camera and his tough demeanor, which has earned him the Simon Cowell-esque role. “The extremely tough personality is how I run my crew,” he said. “I’m very, very scathingly honest.”

The crews who work for him are his business’ most important assets and it’s his job to channel their talents and make sure they work together. “If that leadership role is not handled correctly, everything goes wrong,” Hetrick said. “This isn’t a hobby, we need to make money doing it.”

So what would he tell students who want to follow in his footsteps?

“Learn your art basics,” Hetrick said. “So many people see what we do and start splashing blood on a zombie. If you think you want to do this take every sculpting class or painting class in your high school.”

However, you don’t have to be an aspiring makeup artist to benefit from the arts and it’s a mistake for school districts to cut such programs, Hetrick said.  “The arts are absolutely essential no matter what you’re going to do,” he said.

He was back in the Lehigh Valley at Thanksgiving for his high school reunion but says trips home are a rarity because of the demands of his work.

But is it worth it?

“I never second guess what I do,” he said. “I love it.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?