Mandy Moore, she of early-aughts memorable walks and a 1999 hit about hypoglycemia, has shared her biography (in the form of beauty secrets) with Into the Gloss. She begins at the beginning, when she “grew up in Orlando, Florida, randomly.” She got a record deal and made an album when she was 15, touring with ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys and singing/growling “Candy.”
I did my makeup on tour myself. It wasn’t glamorous! There was a lot of MAC Lipglass. But really, I’d wear anything that resembled bubblegum — the pinker and the glossier the better. I loved pearlescent everything. I was blessed with good skin, so I don’t think I wore base. I just wore blush, lipgloss, and eye shadow. It was the same for my first music video, ‘Candy’ [below]. That was a lipgloss-centric video. I was 15 and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do and wear whatever!’ It’s so 1999 — that spiky hair! That was not my idea. [Laughs] I was just emulating what I had seen in music videos — it was the era of TRL. As I got older, I had more to say about my style.
Good things have emerged from the pearlescent oyster, though. She’s now “nesting” with Ryan Adams, and he makes jokes about her being in KISS when she wears fancy, nourishing masks. She even lives down the street from one of the Backstreet Boys. While they were on tour together, he had no idea who she was, she says. But now, “Whenever we pass each other we say ‘Hi.’” Teenage social strata have been leveled.
