Culture
The Most Dramatic Celebrity Hair Changes Of All Time, From Major Dye Jobs To Surprising Cuts
If ever the transformative power of a dye job or a major chop comes into question, simply look back at the most dramatic celebrity hair changes of all time and remember that transformed tresses have shaped history (well, Hollywood's history, at least).
Beauty obsessives of the current generation will forever remember the moment Katy Perry cut her signature jet-back hair into an edgy platinum pixie, for instance, or the time Miley Cyrus pulled a similar stunt with her innocent Hannah Montana-era waves (an act that opened the door to future mohawks and mullets, we now know).
Hair is about as rooted in our identity as actual DNA — the proof is in Kate Middleton's permanent princess waves, Anna Wintour's iconic pageboy bob, Halle Berry's tousled pixie — and major celebrity hair changes have in the past marked memorable shifts in life phases. Cyrus went from Disney star to woman with her pixie cut, and Perry from "Teenage Dream" to the one who hogged 2018's Met Gala red carpet with a pair of sky-high angel wings.
It's more than just aesthetic, of course. For many of these celebrities, dramatic hair changes helped usher in new chapters of life.
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Katy Perry's Surprising Side-Swept Pixie
For the first 10 years of her career, Katy Perry was known for her coal-colored mermaid hair. It was sometimes styled in retro pin curls, other times with Zooey Deschanel-lookalike bangs, but she never strayed from her jet-black shade until she debuted the early stages of her now-famous pixie.
The short and shaggy cut she debuted at the 2015 Met Gala quickly morphed into an edgy side-swept, half-shaven pixie. It was dyed blonde within a couple years and the singer hasn't returned to her dark roots since. In an interview with Viceland's The Therapist, Perry spoke about the reason she cut her hair and its relation to her mental health. "I so badly want to be Katheryn Hudson that I don't even want to look like Katy Perry anymore sometimes, and that is a little bit of why I cut my hair," she said.
Rihanna's Fire-Red Undercut
If there's one person who has trialed every hairstyle imaginable, it's Rihanna. Every color, every length, curly, straight, shaved — she's tried them all. Early in her career (as in: the "Umbrella" era), she rocked a sleek bob with '00s-era red and blonde streaks.
But by 2010, she had given it the undercut and gone fire-red, still one of her most memorable hair looks to date. These days, Rihanna rarely departs from her signature black shade, but she still seizes a redhead moment every now and again (like at the Fenty x The Webster pop-up launch party in June 2019).
Emma Stone's Transition From Blonde To Redhead
Emma Stone makes such a good redhead that you'd never even guess that her natural hair color is blonde. "My coloring is similar to that of a redhead," she said in a 2012 interview with Refinery29. In her early days of fame, though, you'd often see her sporting her biological blonde shade.
Stone originally went red — at the recommendation of celebrity colorist Tracey Cunningham — ahead of her breakout role in Superbad, when she was around 17 or 18 years old. Since, she has become the most natural-looking unnatural redhead to ever walk the planet, rocking every fiery hue from strawberry blonde to auburn over the past decade.
Sarah Hyland Embracing Her Natural Curl
When she initially hit the Hollywood scene as Haley on Modern Family, Sarah Hyland was all long, bouncy waves. Over the course of the show, she sported super-long and straight hair, a trendy cropped blonde bob, and several other styles, but none that match up with the voluminous curls she now wears regularly.
In a 2019 interview with Allure, the actor said she had actually been wearing hair extensions for Haley since around 2013. She cut her strands short after experiencing hair loss from medications for kidney dysplasia, but she "didn't know just how curly it was going to be." These days, Hyland's hair vibe is more akin to Baby from Dirty Dancing — and always stunning.
Zoë Kravitz's Pixie Cut
Big Little Lies-era Zoë Kravitz was known for her partial braids. The actor has long experimented with cascading dreads, undercuts, short bobs, even bleached hair, but in 2019, she debuted a *major* transformation via Instagram.
Kravitz chopped her hair into a chic pixie crop last November, and the cut just stuck. It wasn't the first time she had sported such a look, though. In 2017, she walked the Met Gala red carpet with a similar style, except it was platinum blonde.
The Sudden Departure Of Taylor Swift's Curls
Perhaps the most memorable hair transformation of our generation is Taylor Swift's immediately iconic curls changing — over the course of several stages — into a sleek and straight bob. RIP to the dense, early aughts-style coils from the cover of her self-titled debut studio album. According to the singer, her hair texture changed naturally with age.
In her list of 30 things she learned before turning 30 for Elle, T. Swift said she learned that hair can, in fact, change texture: "From birth, I had the curliest hair and now it is STRAIGHT. It's the straight hair I wished for every day in junior high. But just as I was coming to terms with loving my curls, they've left me." Now, the singer can usually be seen with a wavy bob or a pin-straight, chin-grazing crop like this.
