A Hollywood Hairdresser Styled ‘Star Wars’ Actors Before the Slowdown Led Her to Open the ‘Shack in the Back’

Sallie Ciganovich has styled actors’ hair on “Star Wars” streaming shows like “The Mandalorian” and “Ahsoka” and earned four Primetime Emmy nominations over her two-decade career. 

But these days her struggle to find steady work in Hollywood has led her to reopen what she fondly calls “the shack in the back” — the eight-by-10-foot shed by her pool where she is cutting and coloring friends’ hair to help ensure her family’s survival.

“It was just always meant to be where my friends would come over and get their hair cut. Or where I would do little projects. It was like my little safe space, where I would practice a hairstyle or whatever.”

In the last year, work has dried up in a way that Ciganovich, 48, had never experienced. Before the Chicago-area native landed a recent gig working on the movie “Freaky Friday 2” as the third hairdresser, she had depleted her savings account to about $500 and was struggling to keep her guild health care coverage, she said. 

“My savings are wiped out,” Ciganovich said. “I know that’s the ebb and flow of the business, but I didn’t really think it could ever get to where I feel so desperate because I have no money, and I have a child. It feels like you’re begging, and I’ve never had to beg for work.”

Now Ciganovich is seriously considering a pivot that could see her moving across the country in search of work or even back to her family’s farm in southern Indiana to open a day spa in a church.

The double strikes last year shut down television productions and deepened a troubling trend that Ciganovich was already experiencing: A lack of new shows and shrinking opportunities for veteran below-the-line workers around Los Angeles.

As TheWrap has reported in its Holding on in Hollywood series, the employment struggles for Hollywood workers amid industry convulsion — with studios like Paramount now doing more layoffs — have reached an acute level. Some workers say they are living on food stamps, or accepting money from their parents, and most are at least considering leaving production hubs like Los Angeles and New York City for more affordable places.

For Ciganovich, who works mostly on streaming shows, the studios have become risk averse, relying on “remakes and more remakes” rather than greenlighting new shows — a recurring theme in TheWrap’s series. “When you look at the production report nothing is [being filmed] in Los Angeles,” she said. “It’s all Great Britain, Ireland, New Mexico, Atlanta.”

Between the COVID-19 pandemic and last year’s strikes, several producers Ciganovich typically turned to for work opportunities either retired or stepped away from the business altogether, she said. “Now I have to build up new connections and get new people to hire me. It’s like I’m starting over,” Ciganovich said. “When I moved here at 25 I did this, and now I’m doing it again at 48.”

From beauty school to Star Wars

Ciganovich has dedicated her career to hairdressing. She grew up in Naperville, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Her father worked for a carpet company, her mother worked as an event coordinator and travel agent. After graduating from high school, Ciganovich attended beauty school. 

She completed her 1,400 hours and got her beautician license. She delivered pizzas before landing a job as a colorist at a Chicago salon that performed a variety of Jenny Jones makeovers including on lottery winners, at the NBC building. “That’s kind of how I got my taste of Hollywood,” she said.

Then, in her early 20s, she wanted a change, so she moved to Boulder, Colo., for a few years. By that time her sister had moved to Los Angeles and needed a roommate. Ciganovich obliged. 

Soon after arriving in L.A., she met a boyfriend who had co-written the 2003 movie “Wonderland,” which starred Val Kilmer and Kate Bosworth. She worked on the film essentially for free, but she got her hours and that paved her way to joining local 706, the IATSE hair and makeup union.

In the beginning it was slow going, and she kept a steady job at Rudy’s Barbershop for about five years. Then she landed a hairdressing gig on “Monk,” and suddenly she felt part of the Hollywood professional community.

She found real stability when she joined the team on “So You Think You Can Dance.” She stayed on as a hairdresser for 12 seasons. “That was the show that I loved so much that it didn’t matter like what I was doing, I would just quit whatever job I was on to go back to it,” she recalled. 

“That show was the ultimate. You had all this creativity to do everything. It was quick changes and the dancers were really cool. And the group of people that came together on that show was like a family.”

She continued to hone her skills and learn new techniques through classes and by working on shows like “Cold Case,” a police procedural where cast members would solve dormant cases often using flashbacks of the same character. She did five episodes of “Glee,” 21 episodes of “The X Factor,” a full season of “Bones” and led the hair department on “The Orville.” She worked with background actors — the secretaries and office workers — on one season of “Mad Men.” 

Now I have to build up new connections and get new people to hire me. It’s like I’m starting over.

Hairdresser Sallie Ciganovich

She was in the hair department for the 2011 movie “Friends With Benefits” starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis.

In late 2021, she joined the hair department on the third season of “The Mandalorian” and the next year she worked on another Star Wars spinoff, “Ahsoka.” For both, she was nominated for Primetime Emmys, her third and fourth nominations.

And then the strikes happened, and the work dried up. And since they ended, it hasn’t gotten much better.

By July of 2023 “it really started hitting our family where you can’t buy a bottle of wine. You can’t go out to dinner. It was scarier than what it was in COVID.”

The shack in the back and possible pivots

While still digging for jobs on set, she decided to take clients in the shack in the back, which she had purchased for $1,900 from Home Depot some eight years earlier. The shed sits in the back corner behind the pool of the rented one-story bungalow Ciganovich shares with her husband and daughter. 

Her husband, who works in property management, insulated the roof, put in the floor and they painted it white, she said.

“He has a steady income for sure,” Ciganovich said. “But I couldn’t be a housewife. I have to work to make our house survive.” (Her husband also has financial commitments to his ex-wife and two children, she said.) 

On a blistering hot Southern California afternoon, with a fan blaring inside the shed, Ciganovich gave TheWrap a tour of the space, which features a salon chair and makeup mirror. Adorning the walls are her framed Emmy nominations, a picture of the band Poison (“my favorite childhood band”) and signed publicity artwork from the Star Wars shows.

On that Sunday, she trimmed the hair of two Hollywood makeup artists. One worked with Ciganovich on “The Orville” and the other on a “Star Wars” show. After her interview with TheWrap, she was expecting the costume designer from “So You Think You Can Dance” and “The Masked Singer.”

She isn’t charging L.A. prices: A men’s haircut is $60. An all-over color is $100. “It’s just friends helping friends, really,” she said.

But even with the supplemental income from her home salon, and her husband’s job, Ciganovich has been struggling to keep up. Before landing her spot on “Freaky Friday 2,” she was in danger of losing her health insurance for not qualifying for enough hours, she said. “In the 20 years that I’ve been in this, this is the first time that I’ve ever been in danger of having no health care for me and my daughter.”

Now she is considering other more radical pivots. Her mother recently called her to note that 32 movies have been greenlit in Kentucky, which has established tax breaks for productions. “My family lives in Indiana,” Ciganovich said. “I might as well just go try to find a job in Kentucky.”

Or she has been mulling the idea of trying to transform a church close to her parent’s family farm near Hanover, Indiana, into a day spa. She plans to take an online business course to prepare for that possibility.

But it’s not where her heart is.

“How do you give up something that you love so much?” she said. “People moved here to be part of this [entertainment] community. That’s why there’s a Hollywood sign on the side of a mountain. It’s just kind of heartbreaking that it is all falling apart.”

Catch up on Holding on in Hollywood:

Part 1: Hollywood Workers Grapple for a Foothold in an Industry at a Crossroads (Erin Browne)

Part 2: A Development Executive Wrestles With How TV’s New Normal Is Crushing the Job Market (Erin Copen Howard)

Part 3: An Assistant Director Says: ‘There Are 100s of Us Sitting at Home’ as Production Shrinks (Paul Lindsay)

Part 4: A Sitcom Writer-Turned-Psychologist Counsels Hollywood Workers on the ‘Industry Apocalypse’  (Phil Stark)

Part 5: A Dolly Grip Says: ‘I Don’t Know How Long This Career Can Sustain Itself’ (Diego Mariscal)