Christine Belinda Allsopp was born in London and raised in Farnham Common near Pinewood Studios. Her father was an architect, writer, surveyor and editor of the Estates Gazette. Her mother, Connie Reeve, was a leading make-up artist who supervised John Huston’s ‘Moulin Rouge’ and ‘Beat the Devil’, and ‘The Tales of Hoffmann’ for Michael Powell. Her uncles Harold and Gerald Fletcher were make-up artists; Harold trained Connie, the first woman trained at Shepperton Studios in the early 1950s. Aunt Eileen was also a make-up artist and exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy.
After private schooling at Dair House, Brigidine Convent and St. Helens and St. Katherine’s, her parents’ divorce led to state schools where she was bullied for sounding posh. She adopted an Oxfordshire accent to fit in.
She attended secretarial college in Cheltenham, then joined Oxford University Press as a secretary, assisting Ron Heapy in Children’s Books. Sensing limited prospects without a degree, she left to pursue film make-up.
Her mother had taken her on sets as a child. She began professionally in 1981 with body make-up on ‘Clash of the Titans’. She assisted on ‘The Draughtsman’s Contract’ with Lois Burwell, then trained under Stuart and Graham Freeborn on ‘Return of the Jedi’ and Tom Smith on ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’.
Choosing actor work over creature effects, she joined ‘Never Say Never Again’, caring for Klaus Maria Brandauer and Kim Basinger’s body make-up. At 22 she Chiefed ‘Party Party’. She later assisted Peter Frampton and Paul Engelen.
In 1985 she joined ‘Full Metal Jacket’ after two chiefs were fired. Stanley Kubrick kept her on as Co-Chief after a successful bullet-hit test; she did Matthew Modine’s make-up. She called the intense discipline her most enjoyable career experience, and Kubrick praised her work.