Tom Hanks was lovely. So was Meryl Streep. And "just to work with Stephen Spielberg" was great. Pauline Collins, Bob Carlyle, Emma Watson - the names trip off her lips so easily. She might have to get up at the crack of dawn every day for weeks on the trot but Clare Lambe loves her work passionately. She's a film makeup artist.

"You get to be creative," she says. "It's very sociable. You meet some fantastic people and you see some fantastic acting. You get to know the actors as well. You're challenged all the time."

Since graduating from Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design four years ago, Lambe has worked on a range of films and TV productions, from Father Ted to The Ambassador to Ballykissangel. Her most recent work as a make-up artist in the past two years was on the set of Dancing at Lughnasa, Saving Private Ryan and I Went Down. She has just finished working on Angela's Ashes.

"You have to hang around and maintain them all day," she says about her make-up work on the film set. The hours are long and conditions can be miserable, standing around in freezing weather. "You drink a lot of coffee and you eat a lot of buns," she laughs.

But even the drudgery is part of the fun. "There's a lot of hanging around, but you talk to a lot of people and you could be very busy. You could be running around. There might be one hundred in the cast." Without a flicker of doubt, she smiles and says: "I adore it. I couldn't sit at a desk all day."

Film work is seasonal, Lambe explains. Generally the winter is slow but from spring onwards, a make-up artist can be in demand all the time.

An artistic talent is important, says Lambe. She loved art in Loreto College, Kilkenny. She mentions her art teacher, Sister Pius Berri, as being supportive - "and lovely."

She wanted to do "some kind of an artistic course. I didn't really think about being an make-up artist." After the Leaving Cert, she studied for a certificate in design - display at DIT Mountjoy Square. "It was great. I got a good feel for colour. I used to find myself drawing portraits when we should have been doing lettering. I loved the face."

After graduating, she applied to the newly-launched two-year course at Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design in film makeup and special effects. "I knew that's what I wanted to do. I loved it. I absolutely adored it. You couldn't stop me. It was basically make-up application, sculpture, history of film, foam latex applications, special effects."

The course, she says, allowed students to be very creative - "you take the face as an empty canvass and create something on it." In general, the design on a film set is "dictated by the script you're working on, the director's idea and the actor. It has to be something that is created from scratch, something that will fit into the script. You have to get all the elements - the lighting, the costumes, what the actors want." To enjoy the job, she says, "you have to have a personality and be someone who gets on with people because you're working with people all the time. You're in a very intimate situation with them. They have to trust you. You have to have a lot of energy. You have to be kind of mature too because, well, in a sense you have to know when to keep your mouth shut."

Her first film was working with an Italian production crew on Mia Forever, a love story. It was shot in west Cork over three months. Today she's on a break.

"It's an insecure business," she warns. "You have to always go out looking for work. You're only as good as your last job. It's highly competitive. It's a small film industry and you're only as busy as the industry is."

At this stage in her career as an assistant make-up artist, "I feel relatively established now but it's a lot of ringing up people. And you do a lot of `freebees' to get the experience."

The next couple of months will be busy, says Lambe. Three films are due to start next month, so she's using her free time at the moment to relax. Once a film goes into production, there's no let-up until filming is complete.

For those who want to work in a creative field, she believes film make-up allows you to be "very creative and you're making a nice living out of it as well."