As a professional hair and makeup artist who has worked on films for the past nine years, recent San Antonio transplant Kelly Porter is accustomed to starting her mornings on a movie set well before the sun rises.
“Our days can be long because we’re in before everyone else,” Porter, 31, told the San Antonio Report during a recent interview. “We get the actors ready in the trailer in the morning, and then we go to set with them. If other actors come in, we’ll send part of our team to get them ready. We’re watching actors all day.”
This past March, Porter and her husband, Chris, moved to San Antonio from her home state of Utah, where she had lived her entire life.
She attended cosmetology school during her senior year of high school, focusing on hair, before beginning her career in a salon. She later added special-effects makeup to her skillset after getting a job at a haunted house and eventually working at a fantasy theme park.
“At the theme park, we were doing makeup for goblins and witches and other really fun characters,” Porter said. “It was film-quality work.”
Before long, Porter was networking with people in the film industry. Since then, she has held several positions, including key hair stylist, special makeup effects artist and hair department head, a role that puts her in charge of the lead actor’s hair and makeup needs.
Some of the celebrities who have graced her hair and makeup trailer include actress Jenna Ortega for the 2024 romantic comedy “Winter Spring Summer or Fall,” rapper T-Pain for the 2026 horror flick “Don’t Move” and Sacha Calle and Dane DeHaan for the 2026 crime-thriller “Wardriver.”
“I took care of [Dane] for the whole movie,” Porter said. “I maintained his hair, which I would cut once a week, and his facial hair, which I would trim every other day. I took care of his stunt double, too!”
One of Porter’s most memorable experiences in recent years was working with late actress Anne Heche on the horror thriller “You’re Killing Me,” which became the first film Porter worked on to land on Netflix. She remembers Heche as someone full of energy and life.
“She was a hoot!” Porter said. “She ended up chopping her hair off the day before we started filming. We were shooting in rural town Georgia, and I had to find a wig for her stunt double. I was sweating it, but we were able to make it happen.”
Some productions, however, leave little room for last-minute improvisation. This includes Hallmark original movies, which Porter said have extremely high standards for beauty, like “Love in the Limelight,” “Haul Out the Holly: Lit Up” and “Deck the Walls.”
“With Hallmark, I’m constantly touching up makeup and redoing hair between scenes — all day long,” she said. “Usually, I bring my portable hot tools, so I don’t have to use an outlet.”
Along with her work as a makeup and hair artist, Porter is putting much of her energy into another venture with her husband. It’s the main reason they moved to San Antonio six months ago.
On Oct. 2, the couple plans to open Spookshow Haunted House, a haunted attraction at Ingram Park Mall. They ran a similar venue in Utah called Spookshow Haunted Screampark.
Porter says she decided to move it here because San Antonio has only one major haunted house in addition to Six Flags Fiesta Texas Fright Fest and SeaWorld’s Howl-O-Scream. “It’s also cheaper to live here than it was in Utah,” she said.
With Halloween just around the corner, Porter is looking forward to starting her new business and continuing to work in the film industry.
Now, she’s just waiting for filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton and Guillermo del Toro to come calling.
“Working with one of them would be a bucket list item,” she said. “There are so many people I draw inspiration from. It would be so cool to live in that world.”
