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The Actress Who Plays The Nun Is Gorgeous In Real Life

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Under the black-and-white grease paint of Valak is a face David Lynch once built an entire diner nightmare around.

Bonnie Aarons is the actress responsible for making millions of moviegoers afraid of the dark corners of their own bedrooms. She originated the demon nun in The Conjuring 2 (2016) and reprised the role for the character’s own showcase, The Nun, which hit theaters in September 2018. Strip away the habit and the contact lenses, though, and Aarons is a striking, classically photogenic woman whose career took a very different path than the one Hollywood gatekeepers once predicted for her.

• The Nun director Corin Hardy has praised Aarons for having a “classic Hollywood face,” a stark contrast to Valak’s disfigured grimace.
• Early in her career, industry naysayers told Aarons her distinctive features and nose meant she’d never make it as an actress — until David Lynch spotted her at a Twin Peaks party and cast her as the terrifying dumpster bum outside Winkie’s Diner in Mulholland Dr. (2001).
• Aarons played Baroness Joy von Troken in both The Princess Diaries (2001) and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), and says she actually wore heavier makeup for that role than she does as Valak.

The Face Behind Valak

Aarons’ Valak makeup requires hours in the chair, layering grayish pallor and cracked, corpse-like texture over her features until almost nothing recognizable remains. That’s precisely the point Corin Hardy has made in interviews promoting The Nun: the transformation works because it’s built on a face with strong, striking bone structure to begin with. Take away the contacts and the habit, and the same woman who unsettled audiences in The Conjuring 2 looks entirely at home on a red carpet.

From Nose Jokes to Mulholland Dr.

Aarons didn’t get handed easy breaks. She has spoken about being told point-blank, early in her career, that her nose and unconventional features would keep her out of leading roles. Instead, that very distinctiveness became her calling card. David Lynch reportedly became fixated on her face after meeting her at a party tied to Twin Peaks, and he built a scene around her for Mulholland Dr., casting her as the horrifying figure lurking behind Winkie’s Diner — a moment that’s since become one of the most talked-about jump scares in modern film.

She actually wore more makeup playing a Habsburg-style baroness in “The Princess Diaries” than she does playing a demon.

Range Beyond Horror

Long before Valak, Aarons was proving she could do more than terrify. As Baroness Joy von Troken in The Princess Diaries and its 2004 sequel, she played comic relief opposite Julie Andrews and Anne Hathaway, decked out in noticeably heavier cosmetic makeup than anything applied for her horror work. She’s also shown up in David O. Russell’s The Fighter (2010) as Crackhead Bonnie and in Silver Linings Playbook (2012) as Ricky D’Angelo’s mother — a resume that runs from prestige drama to studio comedy to nightmare fuel without missing a beat.

A Horror Fan Who Likes to Scare Her Co-Stars

Aarons isn’t just playing a monster for a paycheck — she’s an outspoken horror fan who talks up the genre’s adrenaline rush as a genuine mood booster. That enthusiasm apparently extends to set pranks: she’s admitted to sneaking around in full Valak costume between takes on The Nun just to spook co-star Taissa Farmiga. It’s the kind of on-set behavior that stands in sharp contrast to some of the industry’s worse offenders, the type detailed in rundowns of actors who treat their co-stars like trash — Aarons’ scares, by all accounts, come from a place of fun rather than cruelty.

Outside of studio films, Aarons also produces and stars in her own comedic YouTube vlog series, And You Know Who You Are, giving fans a version of her that’s closer to the warm, self-aware personality she brings to interviews than to Valak’s silent glare. With The Nun newly in theaters as of September 2018, expect Aarons’ own face — the one Corin Hardy keeps calling “classic Hollywood” — to get just as much attention as the one buried under the makeup.