Hollywood couple leaves the film industry to live in Chattanooga

Why would a successful makeup artist to the stars move from Hollywood to Chattanooga?

Criss Skinner, whose clientele included Kathy Griffin, Ben Stiller and Julianne Hough, to name a few, says the answer is simple. Her husband, Harold Skinner, a native Chattanoogan who works as a lighting director in the film industry, including on the recent “Interstellar,” wanted to come home.

“Chattanooga is a beautiful, progressive city,” she says. “Harold always wanted to move back here and, when Hanna was getting to the age of middle school, we decided to take the plunge.”

Hanna is the couple’s now 16-year-old daughter.

“Working as a makeup artist in Hollywood is a difficult and highly competitive arena,” says Skinner, 51, who had a successful career there before moving to Chattanooga in 2009. “I feel privileged to have been able to have worked in that industry and it led me to the man I love, a beautiful daughter and now Chattanooga.

“The culture shock (from moving from California to Tennessee) was minimal for me. I am married to a Southerner, so I had been conditioned.”

Criss, who continues to practice her profession in Chattanooga, partners with Hair a Go-Go on Manufacturers Road and also serves as a private consultant.

“My clientele is much different,” she says. “(In California) I only worked with actors, models and comedians, unless I was doing contestants for a game show. Now I work with the general public and it’s much more rewarding.”

An example of that, Criss says, took place recently with a 15-year-old female client.

“(She) came in to get her makeup done for the first time. She had a case of teen acne and I felt for her,” Skinner recalls. “They were going to have their family pictures taken afterwards.

“I like to turn the mirror and show each phase of the makeup process, but she said she didn’t want to look until the end. After I was finished, she stared at herself and asked if she could give me a hug.”

Harold, 46, a graduate of the Baylor School and the University of South Carolina, is a lighting director and an award-winning cinematographer. He says he lives mainly in California and on movie sets across the globe but tries to come home about every two weeks. When he’s working abroad, though, it’s sometimes months before he makes it back to Chattanooga.

“He’s leaving for Argentina soon and will be there about six months,” Criss says. “That will be the longest he’s gone. But we’ll make every effort to see one another every two months.”

The separation is difficult, particularly for Hanna, when Harold is gone for months at a time, Criss says.

“Having been in the industry, I knew what I was getting into, but it is hard for Harold and Hanna to be apart from each other,” she says. “That’s why we make it a point to see each other at least every other month when he’s out of the country. But when Harold is home, he spends every day at home. His focus is on us.”

An upside is that Harold’s travels allows the family to “see the world,” Criss says.

Harold recalls that he became interested in the film industry while still a student at Baylor.

“I was involved with the theater department under Schaack Van Deusen, where I began lighting sets,” he says. In college, he majored in film.

“I immediately began working in South Carolina after graduation on a film called ‘The Program’ as a production assistant,” he says, then continued working on films produced in South and North Carolina, including “Chasers” and “Die Hard with a Vengeance,” as well as on ABC’s “Movie of the Week.”

“From my contacts I made on these productions, I was asked to come to San Diego to work on another ‘Movie of the Week,'” he says. “There I met Criss and we began dating. I decided then to move from my college apartment in Columbia, S.C., to Los Angeles.”

After moving to California, Harold’s success in the film industry continued to climb as he worked on movie after movie (“Enemy of the State,” “Fight Club,” “Failure to Launch,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Social Network,” “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” among others) as well as on music videos and commercials.

“As a progression to becoming a cinematographer, I shot a film for director Martin Weisz called ‘Squatters,’ which won Best Cinematography at the New York City International Film Festival,” he says. “Most recently, I was the chief lighting technician on Chris Nolan’s ‘Interstellar.'”

Still, the excitement of Hollywood and the entertainment industry was not enough to keep them on the West Coast.

“We had a great home … and Hanna attended a top school there,” Harold says. “She was approaching graduation and the options were not to our liking. Over the years, we would come back to visit family and we saw how Chattanooga was developing.”

And they liked what they saw.

“The value system here is a little more down to earth and I wanted Hanna to experience the environment here. I purchased a whitewater raft and we raft the Ocoee every chance available,” says Harold, who once worked as a raft guide on the Ocoee River.

Criss, who grew up in Agoura Hills, Calif., quickly adapted to her adopted city, but it took longer for Hanna. Now a sophomore at Signal Mountain Middle High School, Hanna wasn’t as keen as her parents about moving from California to Tennessee.

“It took Hanna about a year to make some good friends and now I think she’s happy. She will always romanticize Los Angeles. We go there often to visit Harold when he’s filming there,” Criss says. “Hanna’s happy not to sit in an hour of traffic to go 20 miles, but she really misses the beach. We lived 20 minutes from Malibu and she spent almost every weekend there.”

Criss, however, settled in quickly, despite having, like Hanna, a longing for the ocean.

“I plan to stay here for some time,” she says. “My mother has moved here and all Harold’s family is here, so it looks like I’m here for the long haul.”

Contact Karen Nazor Hill at khill@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6396.