Dream Weaver
Sheila Stotts is the go-to girl in Hollywood for A-list actresses
who want natural-looking hair extensions.
An Army brat who spent her childhood in
Memphis, TN, met Elvis Presley when she was five
and talked rocker Ted Nugent into a makeover
right before he went on stage, Sheila Stotts was
born to make beauty history. "We lived in Atwater
Village, just south of Glendale in Los Angeles,
when I was in high school," says Stotts. John
Paul DeJoria, now president and CEO of Paul
Mitchell, lived in the same neighborhood. "I used
to trick-or-treat at his mother's house, but he and
I never put two-and-two together until we had a
conversation about it five years ago."
Stotts, who was adopted by her parents while
they were stationed in Germany, became a U.S.
citizen around the time that John F. Kennedy was
shot in Dallas. She lived in Texas then. It was earlier,
while living in Memphis, that Stotts, on a dare,
climbed over the fence at Graceland. She was
being escorted off the property by a security guard
when Elvis, wearing a blue bathrobe, came to her
rescue. "He invited me in," she says. "We had
Chips Ahoy cookies and milk in his kitchen."
It was in Memphis where Stotts made friends
with the black girls in her class and had an
aha!
moment. "They were adding raffia and yarn to
their hair," she says. "That's when I realized that
you could do things to make your hair appear
longer than it was."
It was also while in Memphis that Stotts met
Ted Nugent. "I'd gone to visit my cousins, who
were groupies," she says. "One of them was
dating a member of Savoy Brown. They were
opening for Ted Nugent so she got me backstage.
I had just graduated from beauty school and didn't
even know if I'd passed the state boards, but I
already thought of myself as a hairdresser, and I
had my shears with me. At first I thought Ted was
a roadie. I told him that I could give him a really
great cut and break up his curl. When he went
on stage, he pulled me on with him. That's when
I realized who he was. He asked the audience
what they thought of his new haircut. It was
phenomenal."
After Stotts returned to Los Angeles, she got
into a car accident. Nugent sent flowers to the
hospital. "My cosmetologist's license came the day
after the accident, but I couldn't work because
I'd dislocated my shoulder," she says. Russ Parks,
who owned the first unisex salon in
Glendale—this was the 1970s—
had offered her a job before her
accident, but by the time she could
work he had filled the position. "So
I got a job at the Scissor Shack in
Sherman Oaks," says Stotts, who
met The Knack of
My Sharona
fame there. "They were my first
celebrity clients."
Later on she worked for Dusty
Fleming in Beverly Hills. Gene
Shacove—Warren Beatty based
his character in
Shampoo on
him—worked there. So did
Harold Lapin, one of the Lapin brothers, who'd
invented lift-and-deposit color. "I learned so much
about color from him," she says. When she got
tired of the Beverly Hills scene, she moved back to
the Valley and opened the Sheila Stotts Salon in
Studio City. "I was an Aveda professional then,"
she says. She was also doing hair extensions. It was
in the Valley that she met her husband, Galileo
Stotts. When they married, they tattooed each
other's names on their ring fingers. Sadly, he died
in 2001. "Five weeks after we found our dream
house, he was diagnosed with cancer," she says.
They have a son, Cole, who's 12.
Today Stotts sees a roster of celebrity clients,
including Celine Dion and Mandy Moore, at her
studio in Woodland Hills. "I met Celine through
Peter Savick, an editorial stylist who's very
flamboyant," Stotts says. "He looks like a gypsy—
20 earrings, pants tied with a scarf. He called me
from the Beverly Hills Hotel where he was doing
Celine's hair. He kept whispering 'nightmare' into
the phone, so I packed up my entire kit and drove
right over with 300 ounces of hair in different
lengths, textures and colors. I stayed up all night
doing color correction and adding extensions. She
started touring wearing her long hair, which I think
is as much a part of her persona as her voice."
Barbara Lorenz, a set hairdresser for 35 years,
sought Stotts out when filming began for Oprah
Winfrey's
Their Eyes Were Watching God. "Halle
Berry had about an inch and a half of hair," Stotts
says. "Barbara wanted her to wear a wig, but
Oprah insisted that she needed extensions. Barbara
didn't think it could be done, but I did a full head
using 12- and 32-inch wefts in different colors and
textures. I think I put in more than 1,400 bonds."
Stotts has done about 130 movies and more
than 50 TV shows. Recently she launched her
own line of products, including shampoo, blowdryers,
flat irons and brushes that won't damage
extensions. Visit her Web site,
sheilastotts.com, to
find out more. —MARIANNE DOUGHERTY
54 American Salon
September 2007