Some actors sit through hours in the makeup chair, others take on drastic dietary changes, and other immerse themselves in the language or profession of the characters they’re hoping to inhabit. These 10 stars sheared off their hair in order to deliver the most authentic performance possible.
Florence Pugh recently made headlines when discussing the buzz cut she underwent for We Live in Time, in which she plays a cancer patient. But Pugh is hardly the first actress to go supershort on screen. Demi Moore, Natalie Portman, Joey King and more have all previously gotten out
Below, see some of the actresses who have shaved their heads for a role.
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Florence Pugh
Florence Pugh had a short bob prior to shaving off her hair for the film We Live in Time, in which she plays Almut, a chef who is diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer. And though she publicly had fun with the close crop on the red carpet, she was surprised by some of the more personal things that happened as a result.
“[Shaving] it was really bizarre,” she told British Vogue. “My head was so sensitive and so many people were trying to touch it and it was so alive.”
Still, Pugh stands by her choice, telling the outlet, “For any actor taking a role like this, it is completely important that you see her head and we see her shaving it — it was just always a no-brainer. You have the honor of doing something to yourself that is totally in support of the character.”
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Joey King
Joey King has shaved her head three times for movie roles. She cut her hair for The Act, The Dark Knight and Wish I Was Here and she has no qualms about it.
“I think every woman should [shave their head] at least once in their life. I’ve never felt more free or more in tune with my beauty. I couldn’t hide behind my hair,” King told Allure in 2022, adding that she “would absolutely do it again.”
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AnnaSophia Robb
Though AnnaSophia Robb had previously shaved her head for her role in 2020’s The Expecting, she needed help to pump herself up to do it again when it came to playing Summer McBridge in Netflix’s Rebel Ridge this year.
Luckily, she had Joey King to lean on. “Yeah, I called Joey before I shaved my head,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “I was like, ‘Girl, you’ve done this a couple times. Do I do it?’ And she was like, ‘Yes!’ ”
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Sanaa Lathan
For most of her career, Sanaa Lathan had long hair, so to say fans were shocked when she cut it all off for her role in Nappily Ever After would be an understatement.
And the prospect of shaving it off was nerve-racking for the actress ,who also had to do it on camera. “It was intense… I had butterflies for the week before because I knew that it was very crucial for Violet’s journey and it was a one-shot deal and there was the added thing of I’m shaving my head,” she told Enertainment Weekly.
Lathan also admitted that while there were thoughts about “what is my head going to look like?” she just had to take the leap and found that having shorter hair was “surprisingly great.” “I actually continued shaving my head for four months after we finished the film because it felt so freeing, so good,” she told the outlet.
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Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway’s role in Les Miserables was so moving that she won her first Academy Award for it in 2013. Part of what made the performance so powerful was the heartbreaking scene in which her impoverished character, Fantine, has to sell her hair to send money to her child – and Hathaway wasn’t just acting in that scene.
“I wasn’t expecting [cutting my hair] to be a big deal. It was my idea to do it, since it was something the character did,” she said on Live! with Kelly. But she became “inconsolable” the day of the cut after “I realized I couldn’t take it back.”
Once it grew from a cueball cut to a cute pixie, she decided that she could get on board, she told Vulture. “I’m just so pleased with how I look, so I now quite like having short hair.”
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Maisie Williams
Maisie Williams went short for her role as Catherine Dior in Apple TV+’s The New Look. And though she wasn’t feeling too skittish about cutting her hair, she imagined the ordeal was probably foreboding for Catherine, who was a Nazi prisoner during the period on which the series is set.
“I had cut my hair short at the time, so some of the overwhelming part of that was gone before we did it,” Williams told Variety.
She continued, “But the women in these camps having their heads shaved, although we now look back and see how degrading and dehumanizing that was, I think of all the things that happened to them in the camps, it was probably one of the easiest moments.”
“I guess for myself, kind of diving into Catherine’s psyche, I felt like it was a moment for her to prepare for what could come next,” she explained.
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Natalie Portman
These days, Natalie Portman rocks shoulder-length tresses, but the actress had us all stunned when she went fully bald for V for Vendetta. She has since switched between a pixie cuts, bobs, curls and many more hairstyles.
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Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron is no stranger to transforming her look for the sake of a role, so it comes as no surprise that shaving her head for Mad Max: Fury Road was actually her idea.
“I had done a press junket. My hair was really fried. And I had a night where I thought, ‘You know what? What if we just shave it?’” Theron told Entertainment Weekly.
“I wasn’t fully convinced, so I called [director] George [Miller]. I probably woke him up at 3 a.m., and I said, ‘What do you think about this idea?’ And he was just really quiet. And then I could hear him breathe. It was like he took a deep breath. And I took that as a positive. And then I found out yesterday that he was concerned about the shape of my head.”
Needless to say, the choice gave Furiosa some edge.
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Demi Moore
Demi Moore’s classic buzz cut in G.I. Jane was a one-and-done. The actress shaved her long hair for the action film, but she told PEOPLE back in 2022, that she’d be “hard-pressed” to pull off another drastic hair move at this point in her career.
“I think now that I’m older, I also know, I don’t have anything to prove. So if they really need my hair different, they can give me a wig,” she said, adding that it’s “also not as clear how it would grow back!”
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Shira Haas
We may still be recovering from watching Esty Shapiro cry her eyes out as she gets her head shaved in Unorthodox, but for Shira Haas, the process was simply par for the course.
“I was really ready to do it because I read the script and there was no question that it was part of the story,” she told ELLE UK of having to shave her head. “And also, I believe that if I have something that I wanna share, I wanna tell, I wanna be a part of, I’m willing to do a lot in order to tell that story.”
She did admit there were some nerves involved, telling the outlet, “I was also stressed and nervous, I’m not gonna lie. It worked well for the character. After that it was amazing, I cannot explain to you the feeling of rain on a bald head.”
Source: People
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