Kaori Nara Turner, the 92-year-old first Japanese makeup artist to win an Emmy Award, will appear on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) on May 8th at 1 p.m.
From a young age, she studied Japanese traditional dance and tap dance, and after the war, she worked as a dancer. While performing in Hong Kong, she met and married her husband, a makeup artist who was there for a film shoot. The witness to their wedding was none other than Steve McQueen. Initially, she danced in the United States as well, but retired due to an injury. She accompanied her husband on an overseas shoot as a way to unwind, and when they were short on makeup staff, Kaori, who did her own stage makeup as a dancer, offered to help. This led to her joining a makeup artist union.
Since then, she has traveled back and forth between Japan and the United States while working on numerous films and dramas, but at the age of 88, her home in the United States caught fire... Her husband's belongings, mementos, dresses, and kimonos were all destroyed in the fire, but she says she is grateful to be alive thanks to a series of fortunate coincidences.
