Before Meghan Markle was the Duchess of Sussex, she was an actress on a fledgling TV show called Suits and in need of a glam squad to get her ready for an event. Enter: Daniel Martin. The celebrity makeup artist is now known around the globe as the pro who gave the newly minted royal her stunning wedding day beauty look, but he has actually been working with the star for nearly 10 years and just opened up about the serendipitous way they first met.
“I met Meghan a little under a decade ago when Suits got picked up — she was doing her first round of upfronts, an event where TV shows try to appeal to advertisers,” he told Into the Gloss in a new interview. “At the time, she didn’t have a publicist, so she personally reached out to my agent at The Wall Group.”
And, well, the rest is history.
“When I met her, it was just an instant connection,” he explained. “I knew what she wanted — it was one of those things where, she looked at herself in the mirror and was like, ‘Oh my God, this is what I always wanted, but I didn’t know how to get there.’ From that experience, we just kept in touch.”
In addition to working with her for red carpet events and the likes, he also became a frequent contributor to her lifestyle blog, The Tig. Martin joked that one day he “looked up” and his friend “was dating a prince.”
But the royal mom-to-be isn’t his only A-list client. Martin has long been a Dior Beauty ambassador and met Jessica Alba through his work with the brand. He did her makeup before one of the fashion house’s runway shows, and they instantly hit it off.
“This was someone who I knew was very particular about the way she looked — she worked with certain people, she was a Revlon girl for ages. I also knew she was very sensitive to a lot of makeup,” he shared. “When I met her in her hotel in Paris, she was in the shower, so I set up my kit and waited for her to come out. She came out of the bathroom with all of her makeup, and we literally had the exact same products. It was meant to be.”
Today, he serves as the Chief Color Consultant for her Honest Beauty brand (which she developed as a gentler alternative to some of the makeup and skincare products that irritated her sensitive skin), in addition to traveling the globe to work with beauties like Gemma Chan, Elisabeth Moss and Olivia Palermo and, yes, make the occasional palace call.
