Emmy Rossum 'Didn't Recognize' Herself After 'Angelyne' Transformation (Exclusive)

When Emmy Rossum was done completely transforming herself into Los Angeles billboard queen Angelyne, the actress couldn't even recognize herself. Rossum opened up about the transformation – inside and out – into the camp icon in an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com ahead of Angelyne's May 19 premiere streaming on Peacock. 

Over four years, Rossum worked with an "incredible" team of prosthetics artists and makeup artists, as well as Angelyne herself, to complete the transformation as part of a "love letter" to one of the most unique symbols of the City of Angels. "She has such a hyper-curation of her image and finding all the little specificity in that was really incredible," Rossum told PopCulture. "The first time they did it all on me, they had me facing away from the mirror and then did a big reveal. I didn't recognize myself."

"If you can imagine for the first time looking at your reflection and not seeing yourself," she continued. "There's no part of me that is there." It was an "incredibly liberating" experience, the Shameless star continued, and one that allowed her to completely dive into becoming Angelyne on the screen. Rossum has been captivated by Angelyne since she was 13, driving with her mother through LA for the first time on the way to auditions.

"I remember just being taken by her power and her image and how she captivated the city's attention. I was just so fascinated," she explained. "The more people I asked about her, it seemed like there were so many different stories about her. But she engenders the same feeling in everyone, which is positivity and whimsy and she is kind of the ultimate fantasy." Becoming someone she had admired for so long took years of dedicated character study.

"I mean, I studied her. Her voice, her cadence, her meditation tapes. I read every little interview she'd ever given," Rossum revealed. "I had the opportunity to sit with her and speak with her. So it was really a long and holistic process, but Angelyne is such an unconventional icon and she is really a living, breathing piece of performance art."

Angelyne is and has been so many things to so many people over the years, and to Rossum, she's a mixture of many of those things. "I see a woman who is a trailblazer, who is a renegade, who's a rebel," she said thoughtfully. "I see a punk rock Barbie doll. I see a woman who is completely in control of her body and her hyper-femininity. I see someone who has an uncompromising commitment to the positive and somebody who seeks to spread joy and light wherever she goes."

"I think what's fascinating about her is that she is so incredibly known in Los Angeles, but also so unknown," Rossum said of Angelyne's storied and mysterious past. "And she's done the impossible, which is to maintain that mystery and that mystique and that interest in her and lift people's spirits for decades. In a town that's so fickle, she's really done the impossible." Angelyne streams May 19 on Peacock.