A heated rivalry. Stalking. A plan to commit murder. This is the intriguing plot of Elizabeth Bank’s latest film “Skincare.” The thriller portrays Banks as LA-based aesthetician-to-the-stars Hope Goodwin who is about to launch her own skin-care line. But a rival facialist, Angel Vergara (played by Luis Gerardo Méndez), opens a skin-care boutique right across from Goodwin’s store causing her to suspect someone is out to get her — and destroy her business.
If this feels like deja vu, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong in thinking so. The film loosely resembles a real life crime involving famed aesthetician Dawn DaLuise. Keep reading to learn more about the fascinating story behind the film.
Who Is Dawn DaLuise?
In the 2010s, Dawn DaLuise was the go-to facialist for Hollywood’s elite. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alicia Silverstone, and Jennifer Aniston were just a few stars who reportedly visited DaLuise regularly for treatment. Known for her galvanic facials, which CNN describes as treatments that “use small electrical currents to help beauty products penetrate the skin,” she owned the popular Skin Refinery Salon in West Hollywood.
But when aesthetician Gabriel Suarez opened his own boutique, Smooth Cheeks, in the same building as DaLuise’s, a rivalry ensued. “I came in and I said ‘Can I help? Because she was in my office,” Suarez recalled of their first encounter in an interview with CNN. “And she said, ‘Oh good, a Mexican that speaks English.’ And that hurt. She wanted me out of the building.”
The Case
What happened next was a string of strange events with twists and turns that are worthy of a Netflix docu-series. According to People, DaLuise was arrested in March 2014 after authorities accused her of ordering a hit on Suarez. She subsequently filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles Sheriff Jim McDonnel, alleging that they arrested her under faulty evidence instead of helping her find her harassers (she had claimed that her tires were slashed and someone placed a Craigslist ad soliciting men for free sex services shortly after Suarez set up his business close to her’s).
The police believed that text messages she sent her then-friend Edward Feinstein showed serious intent to kill her skin-care rival. But in the end, she only served time for roughly 10 months before a jury found her not guilty of solicitation of murder and solicitation of assault charges.
Feinstein, along with Nichola Prugo, member of the infamous Bling Ring, were then charged with one count of solicitation to commit sexual assault and three counts of stalking DaLauise and her two daughters.
Post-Trial
DaLuise was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in June of 2015. She filed a tort claim against Los Angeles Counting after alleging that her complaints of rectal bleeding were ignored and treatment was delayed for too long, causing her cancer to advance.
In 2018, she tried to rebrand herself. According to The Hollywood Reporter, she opened a skin-care boutique where she coined one of her treatments “Killer Facials.” As she explained to THR, “I was branded as a ‘killer facialist’ when I was falsely accused of trying to hire a hitman to off a competitor, [and] I use a special galvanic mask. which everyone tells me looks like the Hannibal Lecter mask.”
Fast forward to today, and DaLuise accuses Banks and IFC studios for ripping off her real life experience. According to an interview with Page Six, she says that she has been working with a production company to sell her story. She claims that she was in the process of signing a deal with Netflix for a documentary, but now she fears the movie may put that project in jeopardy. “It could rob me of my ability to tell my own story,” she tells the mag. PS has not been able to reach DaLuise for comment.
But Banks denies having any knowledge of DaLuise’s story prior to the making of the film. “I didn’t know it at all,” she says in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I had never heard about it. I was just all in on Hope Goldman and this character and the sort of milieu of LA.”
“Specifically, I had been thinking a lot about image — about how image drives success and is often valued more than success itself,” Austin Peters, director and co-screenwriter of the film, tells EW in the same interview. “These themes of authenticity, beauty, and superficiality playing out in this very real and often very gritty environment really excited me.”
So how much did art imitate real life? Or was this just pure coincidence? Well, you can decide. Skincare is out in theaters now.
The reps at IFC Films did not respond to PS’s request for comment.
Audrey Noble is a beauty writer who covers breaking news, writes celebrity profiles, and does deep-dive features about the ways race, gender, sexuality, and other forms of identity impact society via the beauty industry. Previously, she was the beauty reporter at Allure and has held editorial positions at Vanity Fair and Refinery29. Audrey’s work can also be seen in PS, Vogue, Harper’s BAZAAR, Bustle, InStyle, WWD, and more.