The Oscars red-carpet is the ultimate playground for peacocking; displaying all your beauty and finery under a million flashbulbs each snapping your every turn and hair flick. For the world's many observers, this is a modern form of theatre, where men and women go to be observed, as the most perfect physical embodiments of themselves, sparkling and new. 

But it's in those tucked away little vestiges of beautification that the real magic happens. The Hollywood hotel suites which quickly become filled with bodies, labelled boxes, brushes, plugs, cables and tulle. The Bel Air bedrooms that radiate light from a wall of carefully angled mirrors. The bathroom counters that clank and clatter with the weight of 14,379 palettes, compacts and flacons. From all of this, you can glean so much more about a star than of her poised red-carpet camera gaze. It's here that she has licence to be real - of flesh and bones - and all the more intriguing for it. 

It's such an intimate exchange, the pre-Oscars beauty sanctuary has until recently, remained a secret world away from our prying eyes: the calm before the red-carpet storm. No longer. For this, we now have Instagram to thank. As well as the fair and few hair and make-up stalwarts who have, generously, decided to invite us unside these little pockets of beauty in motion; Kayleen McAdams as she tends to Jessica Biel's face, hair stylist Eric Gabriel as he pulls fish faces with Heidi Klum and all the make-up and skincare in between.

Handily, we've gathered all the photos here so you can step into that secret beauty world.