Does She or Doesn't She? (Hair Coloring)

Well, I think we know. They ALL do. Seventy-five percent of adult American women color their hair. We brush it, blow it, cut it, curl it, shampoo it, treat it, perm it, straighten it...but most of all we dye it.

Hair worship has been a part of Hollywood since film began. Technicolor became more affordable in the '50s and when Clairol simultaneously introduced the first one-step lightener and tint, dye jobs became a hit with just plain folks. "Does She or Doesn't She?" ads convinced fashion-conscious homemakers for the first time that it was alright to color their hair.

Very few of those technicolor queens wore their real color on screen. The most famous of the natural redheads were Katharine Hepburn, the first freckle-faced, red-haired actress to become a major star, and Maureen O'Hara (87). (Lucille Ball self-described her natural color as "mousy brown." Ann-Margret (66) came into the world a brunette, ditto Rita Hayworth.) The first redhead was actually a genetic error originating 20,000 to 40,000 years ago. Red hair appears in people with two copies of a recessive gene on chromosome 16, causing a mutated MC1R protein. It's the rarest natural hair color in humans.

Today's stars regularly go from light to dark and back again. It's nearly impossible to name one film actress who has maintained her natural hair color. Or even to name her natural hair color.

Male actors like Brad Pitt (44) change hair color frequently, but always ostensibly for a role. Richard Gere (58) and George Clooney (46) opt for greying naturally.

Let's pick on Nicole Kidman (40). Naturally ginger, she went really deep red with her Moulin Rouge hair, then auburn, then the blond Bewitched stage, and now strawberry blond (usually). Kidman's gone grey, hence the chemical blonde-ing of her natural red. Look at the temple area where the grey takes the hair dye poorly. Being overly thin is a disadvantage: the hair falls out and gets dull (pregnancy hormones will temporarily help). She almost always appears on-screen and at galas with hair helpers in place (look for the bangs that often disguise the lace-front wig hairline).


And remember when "Highlights" used to be a magazine for kids? The NYTimes recently meant something entirely different in A Girl's Life, With Highlights. Lest you think the article celebrated intellectual or emotional empowerment in some way, let's be clear: it was enumerating hair. That's right, highlights as in hair. For the pre-teen crowd. Today's on-screen "tween" role models like Hanna Montana or Miley Cyrus aren't the least bit girlish about their hair (or scripted sexual histrionics).

Young celebrities change their hair color as often as their shoes.


Most of my generation grew up with pink or blue-haired grandmothers. Our own mothers dabbled in color, but took to their grey with menopause. Less than 60 years ago only 7 percent of American women dyed to hide their gray. But for a middle aged woman today? Grey? Almost anachronistic!

What do we think when we see a man in a salon chair, his hair up in foils? Narcissistic? Gay? Or the aging Lothario covering his grey, ala The Donald? Why does it strike our eye as so odd (and desperate) for an aging man, but normal for a middle-aged woman? Men can go grey and be cool. But when was the last time you saw a sexy grey-haired woman in a movie?

Now, if you'll excuse me I'm off to get my hair colored.

Hollywood Hunks - Aging or Not?

The life-cycle of the leading man used to be predictable: the bigger the film star, the more you could bank on the four phases. Every 10-12 years these male actors would metamorphose, thereby holding old fans and gaining new ones as they aged. Think of Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, James Stewart and Henry Fonda. The changes wrought by aging were embraced, or at least capitalized on.


The NYTimes cites the 1959 classic western Rio Bravo as a freeze frame of the "Four Ages of the Movie Star:"

"[f]irst comes the rebellious young adult (Ricky Nelson, as a cocky gunfighter) who evolves into the conflicted middle-aged professional (Dean Martin, as the deputy with a drinking problem), who turn into the trustworthy elder statesman (John Wayne, as the self-sufficient sheriff), who eventually gives way to the lovable old coot (Walter Brennan as, well, the lovable old coot)."

Interestingly, RioBravo is a film in which the plot is simply a token and it is the nuanced characters which are essential.

Contrast this with today's aging action figures: nothing slows them down. They capitalize on the franchise, no older, no wiser. The biggest stars of yesterday didn't resist the transition to sagging jowls and character-etched visages. Today's stars make use of every trick that drugs, surgery, and the camera can offer in order to appear trapped in a time warp.

Sylvester Stallone (61) notoriously did it with hGH, gym time, and lots of plastic surgery. Before filming the comedy Oscar (1991) he had his first surgery, a unilateral direct browlift to correct a birth injury brought on by high forceps. Since then Rocky has had his nose broken, more brow work, belpharoplasty, and a facelift (2006). And probably botox and facial fillers.

Harrison Ford (65) went in for reputedly once went in for hair transplants & coloring in the 1980s and now a very young wife. But even without plastic surgery, his upcoming appearance in the upcoming 4th installment of Indiana Jones seems to confirm what's changed about today's leading macho man roles. Nothing.


Ford plays the same archeologist adventurer over a 20 year span doing the same stunts. The script may joke about aging, but essentially he doesn't age. Ditto for Bruce Willis (52) who is dying hard for the fourth time in 20 years. Hollywood uses every digitalized sleight of hand to make them appear unchanged.

Perhaps the exception to the pre-video cinema time machine was Cary Grant, the epitome of the seductive man – sauve, sophisticated, marvelously dressed. He never looked really young even in the 1930s when he landed on-screen and he never looked really old when he left the screen at age 62.

George Clooney (46) is heir to the Grant's bespoke shoes. Male actors can command a long life as romantic leads, just as they do in real life. The standards for masculine sex appeal are broad and encompass some aging, unlike the standards for action hero virility which requires that time stop.

Will Clooney make it to 62 without resorting to surgery? If he continues to emulate Cary Grant, it will be by making no attempt to hide his true age. So far, he hasn't.

According to the NYTimes, "[t]he stars who emerged in the 1960s and early ’70s — before cable television, home video and the Internet began to divide the audience into discrete demographic groups — will likely be the last generation to make it into coothood with their popularity more or less intact: Clint Eastwood (77), Jack Nicholson (70), Al Pacino (67)."

Stars like these have moved on with the times and chosen roles reflective of their age, despite modest plastic surgery. Jack Nicholson had a direct browlift after his first film success Five Easy Pieces. Robert Redford (70) had a blepharoplasty many years ago. Eastwood (despite misleading pictures) has not. Robert Duvall (77) has not. Warren Beatty (70) has perhaps had an upper blepharoplasty years ago, but nothing obvious.

Their behaviors and mates may not be age-appropriate, but their looks are.

But for stars who arrived in the late seventies, after movies moved out of the theatre, the options are very different. They are a generation of young actors aging on the small and large screen, their films out of chronological order. It includes the likes of Tom Cruise (45), Leonardo DiCaprio (33), Brad Pitt (44), Matt Damon (37) and Will Smith (39). Will they do without plastic surgery?

It's unlikely today's fans will tolerate their favorite stars getting any older. Tell us what you think.

Like the songs you heard on-air?

No SAGging Allowed Awards

Now that the Golden Globes has been reduced to a press conference and who knows what will happen to the Oscars, Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards had to provide a boost to a Hollywood pulled down by the writers' strike. The writers' union granted a waiver in support of their actor pals for 14th annual SAG Awards. Not that there was any sagging to be found amongst all those strapless dresses.

It might interest you to know that, unlike any other awards show, at this one the stars have to eat on camera. The executive chef said "We want it to be tasty and clean — no linguine, no meatballs." Just like the present Queen of England, one should never eat garlic, long pasta, or messy tomato sauces in public. However, I suspect her namesake did, on occasion, eat with her hands.

Female Actor in Leading Role

Of the five nominees here, our two favorites Cate Blanchett (37) and Julie Christie (66) are both (relatively) unoperated – and their three-dimensional roles show it. Can you imagine a facelifted Christie trying to convince us that she has Alzheimer's? Or Blanchett playing Dylan with a bobbed nose? Blanchett has long been outspoken about women (and most recently teens) and plastic surgery. Christie admits to a tightening of her jawline in the 1990s: "I'm tempted every time I look in the mirror. You want to get your familiar face back when you see all the lines around your chin, neck, eyes, mouth, arms and everything else." She is a perfect example of judicious, excellent work, most likely an endoscopic lower facelift.

Marion Cotillard (32) is French, so it almost goes without saying that her face is her own; look under her eyes. For her role as Edith Piaf "her hair was shaved back to create Piaf's high forehead. Her eyebrows were shaved off and redrawn as fake lines. Make-up for the older Piaf - she died at 47 but looked 30 years older - took between three and six hours."

Angelina Jolie's (32) lips are her own. All you have to do is look at her teenage photos. It's her nose – her nose! that was done. As for her supposed pregnancy with twins? Check out this photo gallery: can't see it in her breasts yet.

Male Actor in Leading Role

Alright! Finally an all-silicone actor is nominated...no wait, you mean Ryan Gosling got the nod, not Bianca?? Oh well. Good thing he brought his sister, instead. He wore the Hollywood version of a black arm band in memory of poor Heath Ledger: a black lapel ribbon. Winner Daniel Day Lewis memorialized him as well.

And about George Clooney (46) supposedly "admitting" that he'd had eye surgery during an interview with Julia Roberts a year ago – it was a joke, friends, a joke.

Female Actor in TV

Winner Queen Latifah (37) has been very open about her post-weight loss breast reduction surgery in 2003, but laments being made only a DD! Maybe that's why she didn't show up.

Vanessa Redgrave (71) has played the facelift role in Nip/Tuck, but she also appears to have done it in real life about a decade ago. Click on the photo and compare her tragus (the cartilage in front of the ear opening) with that of Peter O'Toole's (75) from the film Venus. She's had a lift; he has not. But he has had other work done – on his nose and eyes.

Ellen Burstyn (75), another nominee, looks to have had a a very nice facelift done a few years ago.

Male Actor in TV

No fun here. Winner Kevin Kline didn't show up, either.

Okay, okay....on to the really important stuff. My favorite dress? The beautiful Korean-inspired gown of Sandra Oh.