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Dyeing for Your Art

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Top: Christian Bale in The Machinist. Bottom: Bale in Batman Begins... roughly six months later.

Every job has its demands, and many people make sacrifices in their personal lives to advance their careers. However, actors and actresses sometimes experience some peculiar demands on their hair's appearance, well beyond the common restrictions in other professions that may simply require neatly-trimmed hair (and for men, beards) .

There are limitations to what can be done with wigs and fake beards. When performers make real changes to their hair's appearance for a part, with shaving, cutting, straightening, curling, or dyeing, such that they look different in the mirror in the morning, that's commitment. That's Dyeing for Your Art.

This entry does not cover those actors and actresses who dye their hair all the time for professional or personal reasons e.g. Billie Piper, Gwen Stefani and the late Marilyn Monroe. They're Dye Hard. Though the two can overlap sometimes if an actor prefers the hair color they were required to change to and keeps it that way. When Dyeing For Your Art affects the appearance of another character played by the same actor, see Real Life Writes the Hairstyle.

Often overlaps with Oscar Bait nowadays. When the casting directors opt to have the actors focus on their performance instead of the character's appearance it's Ability over Appearance. If an actor gains weight for role, it's a case of Intentional Weight Gain.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime 
  • Glass Mask has an in-universe example with Ayumi Himekawa. When she was cast as the imprisoned, malnourished Princess Origeld for the The Two Princesses play, she chose to live in an unheated and dark underground theater and intentionally starved herself to properly look the part of a malnourished person.
  • Skip Beat!
    • Kyoko dyed her hair back to black when she figured out how she wanted to portray Mio in Dark Moon, instead of using a wig.
    • Several actresses dye their hair black when audition for roles in the historical drama The Lotus in the Mire. It's specifically mentioned that the producer of the drama puts a lot of emphasis on historical accuracy, which means black hair on Japanese women. Kyoko actually wonders if she should have dyed her hair black prior to the audition.

    Fan Works 
  • Family Guy Fanon does an in-universe example with Mayor Wild West. When he's determined to become overweight to win the obese side of Quahog over to his side in "Fattest in the West", he gained almost a hundred pounds to be classified as obese. Originally, he wanted to try a Fat Suit, but went this direction upon seeing how long it took from a test try with Peter, and being full-on uncomfortable.

    Film — Hair Change 
  • Anna Faris is blonde, but dyed her hair black for the first two movies in the Scary Movie franchise as a parody of Neve Campbell in the Scream films. She gave up on it by the third, which is helped considering the main "inspiration" for that one, The Ring, also stars a blonde. She claims on Canned Ham: Scary Movie that she told the casting people she was a natural brunette. No doubt she knew what happens to blondes in horror movies.
  • Scream: Rose McGowan went blonde to play Tatum, to contrast with brunette Neve Campbell. Emma Roberts did the inverse for the fourth film, darkening her hair to play Jill, an Expy for Campbell's Sidney.
  • Bob Geldof actually shaved his own eyebrows off when playing Pink in the movie The Wall. However, he drew the line at shaving ALL of his hair off, so it looks like it's been simply slicked-back after his transformation.
  • Cate Blanchett had her head shaved for real while filming a scene for the movie Heaven where her character does the same.
  • Charlize Theron:
    • She dyed her hair black in order to play the title character in Æon Flux.
    • A more dramatic change came with Mad Max: Fury Road, for which she shaved her head in order to play Furiosa.
  • Gene Hackman was tricked into shaving his mustache to play Lex Luthor in Superman: The Movie. Director Richard Donner had had a mustache shortly before he went to see Hackman about the part. Hackman didn't know he had shaved it off already, so Donner wore a false mustache that the makeup department made up for him. When he saw Gene, he told him that if he shaved off his mustache then he would shave off his own. So, Gene Hackman shaved off his moustache right in front of Donner and then said "Your turn" whereupon Donner pulled off his fake. Hackman was most displeased but, fortunately for Richard Donner, is quite undisposed to violence. On the other hand, Hackman flat out refused to shave his head to play the famously bald Luthor. Instead, he came up with the Running Gag of Luthor wearing a different wig in every scene (and wearing a bald wig when he's arrested).
  • Michael Redgrave bleached his hair and shaved the crown of his head to create the appearance of a bald patch for his role as prematurely aged Classics teacher Andrew Crocker-Harris in Anthony Asquith's highly acclaimed film adaptation of The Browning Version (1951). Redgrave also wanted to lose more weight to capture Crocker-Harris's ill-health, but had been cast at such short notice that he did not reach his target before filming began. As a result, his weight visibly fluctuates between scenes.
  • Gretchen Mol, a blonde, played the title role in The Notorious Bettie Page. Page was a brunette and Mol either dyed her hair or wore a wig to match.
  • Jeff Bridges revealed that one of the reasons he decided to play the role of Obediah Stane in Iron Man was because the part required him to both shave his head and grow a beard, which were two things he'd always wanted to do.
  • Josh Hartnett, along with the other actors who played Army Ranger members, shaved his head for Black Hawk Down. Because of this, he wore a wig for The Virgin Suicides, which he then gave to Jeffrey Eugenides as a souvenir.
  • For The Silver Chalice, the brunette Natalie Wood dyed her hair blond for the role of young Helena.
  • Ingrid Bergman cut her hair quite short for her role in the film version of For Whom the Bell Tolls, annoying Max Steiner, who wanted her to come back and re-shoot some Casablanca scenes with an original song in place of "As Time Goes By".
  • Javier Bardem's roles in Skyfall and No Country for Old Men both involve a bad haircut. Skyfall is the only one that he had to dye his hair for, although Bardem famously worried that he wouldn't get laid for three months while shooting No Country for Old Men.
  • Jennifer Connelly dyed her usually raven hair blonde for the film Whats Wrong With Virginia.
  • Jerome "Curly" Howard of The Three Stooges shaved his head and his thick moustache specifically for his Stooge character when he joined the act.
  • Johnny Depp, in The Film of the Book of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas cut his hair to resemble his character's male pattern baldness. For added authenticity, Hunter S. Thompson, the author of the book the film was based on, personally shaved Depp's head. With a straight razor. While wearing a miner's headlamp.
  • Jared Leto dyed his hair green and shaved his eyebrows for Suicide Squad (2016)
  • Kal Penn had his head shaved on camera for The Namesake.
  • Lindsay Lohan had her natural red hair in Georgia Rule, changed it to black for I Know Who Killed Me then she went blonde for Machete.
  • Matt Smith lost his signature floppy locks for his part in Lost River. Debate still rages over how well it suits him.
  • Monica Bellucci, for the Italian movie Malèna, dyed her own hair first red (and cut it at shoulder length), then blonde, then sacrificed it completely for the scene where she is shorn by force by the other women of the city. She went blonde again for the film Le Deuxieme Souffle.
  • Naomi Watts, while she's naturally blonde, dyed her hair brunette for The Painted Veil. And that's the least of it.
  • Mel Gibson waxed part of his leg on camera for a shot in What Women Want.
  • Moe Howard of the The Three Stooges began dyeing his hair black once it started going noticeably gray. He also allegedly dyed it reddish-brown for a period of time in his younger days.
  • Kristen Stewart dyed her hair black and cut it into Joan Jett's style to play her in the Runaways biopic.
  • For Kristen Stewart's role as a runaway teenage stripper in Welcome to the Rileys, she learned how to pole dance, deprived herself of sleep, chain-smoked, and ate mostly junk food. As a result her body and legs were covered with bruises, her skin was blemished, and she constantly looked tired.
  • Pauly Shore had his "trademark" dreadlocks shaved on-camera for In The Army Now.
  • Persis Khambatta shaved her hair for her role in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
  • Pete O'Hern grew a beard for the Peter Jackson film Bad Taste. Unfortunately for him, the film's low budget caused it to be filmed over four years, requiring him to keep the beard the whole time.
  • Similarly (and in reverse) Brad Dourif shaved his eyebrows off to play Grima Wormtongue in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and had to do it every time he was called back to New Zealand for re-shoots.
  • Natalie Portman had her hair shaved off on-camera for V for Vendetta (it's still short in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium and Hotel Chevalier, a short tie-in film with The Darjeeling Limited).
  • Catherine Zeta-Jones cut her long hair short to play Velma Kelly in Chicago (it's still short in a movie-within-a-movie in America's Sweethearts). Uniquely the role didn't actually call for the haircut; it was a decision on Jones's part so that there would be no doubt that she did her own dancing in the film (as long hair could hide her face and make people suspect it was a double).
  • Mandy Moore decided to cut her hair short for the film How To Deal because she felt it fit the character. Producers weren't happy but they eventually worked out a compromise: Moore would wear hair extensions for the first half of the movie and the character would get an Important Haircut.
  • Rhiana Griffith shaved her head to play Jack in Pitch Black
  • Sofia Vassilieva (of Medium) shaved off her eyebrows and long blonde hair for her role as a cancer patient in My Sister's Keeper. Her co-star, Cameron Diaz, wore a bald cap for the brief scene where she shaved her head. Vassilieva reportedly got the role after Dakota Fanning stepped down, refusing to shave her head for the film.
  • Steve Carell's body-waxing scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin was authentic- and very nearly caused the actor to lose a nipple (the actress playing the waxer did not realize that those particular body parts need to be covered in Vaseline prior to waxing). The results of the waxing are relevant to later scenes in the movie, so Carell had to have kept his chest hair in that condition for awhile.
  • Steve Martin has been iconically silver-haired since the 1970s, but has dyed it darker for very few films including Little Shop of Horrors and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.
  • Telly Savalas shaved his head to play Pontius Pilate in The Greatest Story Ever Told — and it became a trademark for the rest of his career.
  • Tom Felton, for his role in the Harry Potter movies as the blond Draco Malfoy, bleached his hair for ten whole years. James & Oliver Phelps dye their hair red to be the Weasley twins, as did Mark Williams to play Mr. Weasley.
    • The filmmakers initially had Daniel Radcliffe wear green contacts to match the book's description of Harry's eyes. Unfortunately, his eyes couldn't tolerate them and it was decided that making them green during post-production was too much of a hassle, so they dropped the idea. Emma Watson also was going to wear false buck teeth to match the book's description of Hermione, and like Daniel, the teeth were too much of a hassle, so they didn't stick.
    • Ralph Fiennes shaved his head and armpits to play Lord Voldemort.
  • Tom Cruise dyed his hair for the film Collateral.
  • Robin Williams:
  • Yul Brynner shaved his head for The King and I, and (like Telly Savalas) didn't grow his hair back. He also bulked up during The Ten Commandments (1956) because he didn't want to appear scrawny next to Charlton Heston... which is why he's so fit in The King and I.
  • Zachary Quinto shaved off most of his normally formidable eyebrows to play the role of Spock in Star Trek (2009). Also, his Spock bowl-cut was real.
  • GI Joe The Rise Of Cobra:
  • Star Wars:
  • Having your hair cut off is one thing but Vanessa Hudgens took this a step further by chopping of her own hair herself for the film Gimme Shelter.
  • Taylor Kitsch cut off his shoulder length hair in order to play a US Naval officer in the film Battleship.
  • Joseph Gordon-Levitt gave himself a buzz cut onscreen to play a cancer patient in 50/50 (2011).
  • There was a huge fan uproar when blonde Jennifer Lawrence and dark-haired Josh Hutcherson were cast to play the dark-haired Katniss and blonde Peeta in The Hunger Games. Director Gary Ross assured the fans that everyone would have the proper hair colors. Lawrence joked about it saying "I wasn't aware that everybody was so upset until after I got my hair dyed, and people were like, 'Oh my gosh, blond hair can turn brown. Wow. It's a miracle!' "
  • Works for horses, too. For The Black Stallion, the production team needed a solid black Arabian stallion. Instead, they found Cass Ole, who had a star and socks. Therefore, out came the dye.
  • The Wizard of Oz: the "green" horses in the Emerald City got their verdant hues from something like Jell-O powder. Problems occurred when the horses took to licking the sweet powder off their fur.
  • Molly Ringwald dyed her red hair black for the film adaptation of The Stand.
  • One of the director/producers of Airplane! tells the story of being pretty much a punk kid at the time the movie was made, and hesitantly approaching Robert Stack and asking if just possibly the actor would be willing to dye his hair for the movie. Stack laughed and made a comment to the effect of "Don't worry about it, kid, when you bought me, you bought the package."
  • When Sadie Frost was cast as Lucy in Bram Stoker's Dracula she dyed her brown hair red because producers felt she resembled co-star Winona Ryder too much.
  • Alex Pettyfer shaved his head bald for Beastly. Reportedly his hair had been a security blanket for him so the traumatic experience of getting it cut helped him understand his character's situation.
  • Defied by Ginnifer Goodwin, to an extent as she prefers having short hair. So she has it written into her contract that - if a role requires long hair - she'll wear a wig rather than growing it out.
  • Emily Browning went platinum blonde to play Babydoll in Sucker Punch. The process ended up frying her hair and she had to cut it short the moment filming wrapped.
  • It took 36 hours for Nikki Reed (a natural brunette) to bleach her hair blonde to play Rosalie in Twilight. As a result, she wore wigs for the remaining films. Ashley Greene wore wigs for the first two films to play Alice but cut her hair short (firstly in New Moon to help it fit under the wig better) for the remaining films.
  • Franka Potente dyed her hair red for Run Lola Run. As the color was so sensitive (and the entire film takes place over the course of twenty minutes) she couldn't wash her hair during production. Her hair was so badly damaged by the dye that she shaved her head afterwards so she could grow back her normal hair.
  • Simon Woods who played Mr. Bingley in Pride & Prejudice (2005) was asked to dye his hair ginger in order to match with his on-screen sister Miss Bingley (Kelly Reilly). The director said in the DVD commentary that Simon was slightly angry as the color stuck and his hair continued to grow as such.
  • Karen Gillan shaved her head for Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) (the hair was made into a wig she wore during Selfie). Later appearances by Nebula, however, just have Gillan's hair in a bun hidden by all the make-up.
  • The East: the blonde Brit Marling plays a brunette who changes her appearance by dyeing her hair blonde. She remains Marling's natural hair color of the rest of the film.
  • Nicholas Hammond underwent several painful hair bleachings (he is naturally brunet) to play Friederich in The Sound of Music.
  • Megan Fox dyed her normally black hair red to play April O'Neil in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014).
  • An accidental example for A Walk In The Clouds. Debra Messing's hair was meant to be dyed blonde but it was accidentally dyed red. Afterwards, Messing noticed she was getting more parts with red hair so she kept it.
  • In the film version of Gone Girl, Kim Dickens, normally blonde, became a brunette to play Detective Boney.
  • Dakota Johnson had to dye her natural blond hair to brunette for her parts in Fifty Shades of Grey and Need for Speed.
  • Dan Aykroyd wore baby blue contact lenses and dyed his hair and eyebrows blonde to portray Vic in the 1981 film Neighbors. The results are unsettling. It's fitting enough, considering the character is meant to be a little... off.
  • Taylor Swift dyed her famous blonde tresses dark for her role as Rosemary in The Giver.
  • The reason Richard Moll (who played Bull Shanon on Night Court) usually shaves his head dates back to early in his career when he played roles in low-budget horror movies. In one such film, where he played a bald, one-eyed mutant, he decided to shave his head rather than pressure the props department for a bald wig; he later thought he looked better bald and has seldom let it grow back. (Though he commented that one reason he took a guest role on Highlander shortly after the end of Night Court was because it let him sport a full head of hair and a beard.}
  • Divergent:
    • For Divergent, Shailene Woodley had her dark brown hair lightened to blonde. She later went blonde again for Adrift (2018).
    • In a rare case of another film affecting this one, Woodley had to cut her hair short for The Fault in Our Stars and didn't have time to grow it again for The Divergent Series: Insurgent. As Tris gets an Important Haircut in Insurgent, she opted to cut her hair into a pixie rather than wear a wig to match the book (where the haircut is only to chin-length). By The Divergent Series: Allegiant, the hair matches the books.
  • Helen Slater cut off her hair for The Legend of Billie Jean. She had elbow length blonde hair at the time and it was cropped almost completely short. Averted with Yeardley Smith, who refused to cut her hair off. Therefore she's wearing a wig in the short hair scenes - and an upturned collar hides the ponytail tucked into her jacket. Christian Slater (who, despite having the same last name, is of no relation) also bleached his hair blond to match Helen (they were playing brother and sister).
  • Keira Knightley cut her hair short for Domino and Bend It Like Beckham. Amusingly enough, both cases required her to wear extensions for the Pirates of the Caribbean movies she had to film immediately afterward. Keira later confessed that her hair got ruined from having to dye it so much for roles - she's resorting to wigs since 2013.
  • Dan Stevens dyed his normally blond hair black for the film A Walk Among the Tombstones.
  • Cinderella (2015):
    • Richard Madden had to have his hair chemically straightened and have extensions put it, as his hair was too short beforehand.
    • Lily James is naturally brunette but became blonde for the title role. Notably, although she was a blonde in Downton Abbey, she wore a wig there.
  • Matthew McConaughey shaved his head to give himself an unflattering bald patch for the film Gold.
  • DC Extended Universe:
  • Trainspotting:
    • Ewan McGregor shaved his head and lost two stone (around 28 pounds) to convincingly play the role of heroin addict Mark Renton. He even considered injecting himself with heroin to better understand the character, but ultimately decided against it.
    • Jonny Lee Miller bleached his hair blonde for his role as Sick Boy. This is particularly odd because Sick Boy is dark-haired in the original novel, as Miller is in real life.
    • Robert Carlyle had shoulder-length hair when the sequel T2 Trainspotting was greenlit. He cut it all off to reprise his role as Begbie. As a result, Rumpelstiltskin has short hair in Season 6 of Once Upon a Time, which he had to film immediately after.
  • Naveen Andrews is known for his long curly hair. He cut it short for the film Diana.
  • Much publicity for the film Dunkirk came from the fact that One Direction's Harry Styles cut his famous long curls short.
  • Song Kang-ho gave his black hair blond highlights for The Host (2006), to play a character who's not very bright.
  • Joanne Whalley dyed her brown hair fiery red to play Sorsha in Willow.
  • High and Tight's three male leads Bobby Calloway, Thomas Fitzgerald and James Healy all had to get military haircuts playing young soldiers. The latter two also had to shave their beards.
  • For the short film Victories, set during World War I, Andrew McNeil normally has the mustache he sports as Otto for the majority of the film. He shaved it off for the flashback scenes to Otto's pre-war life.
  • The Magnificent Seven (2016):
    • Haley Bennett is normally blonde but became brunette to play Emma Cullen.
    • Inverted for Martin Sensmeier - who was cast because of his long hair. Not knowing that was the reason, he cut it short right before filming began. They rolled with it by giving Red Harvest a mohawk.
  • Cillian Murphy first had to grow his hair and beard out for 28 Days Later and then sport a buzzcut once Jim gets an Important Haircut. His hair has grown out in the ending, which was filmed months later.
  • Sanaa Lathan first bleached her hair blonde and then shaved her head onscreen when her character did the same in Nappily Ever After.
  • Michiel Huisman cut his shoulder-length hair to match the 1940s setting of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. As a result, he had short hair for The Haunting of Hill House (2018).
  • Shawn Michaels shaved his head bald to play a cancer patient in the drama 90 Feet. He had previously offered to cut his famous long hair short for The Marine 6 but the director refused. Shawn ended up cutting his hair anyway later on.
  • Gina Rodriguez shaved the side of her head for Annihilation (2018).
  • Evangeline Lilly got a bob for her role as Hope Van Dyne in Ant-Man, to match how it is in the comics. However by the time of Ant-Man and the Wasp Hope's hair has grown out.
  • Jessica Alba bleached her hair blonde and wore blue contacts to play Sue Storm in Fantastic Four (2005). As the dye ruined her hair, she wore a wig in the sequel.
  • Kate Mara likewise dyed her hair blonde to play Sue in Fantastic Four (2015). At the time of re-shoots, she wore a wig. And it shows.
  • AJ Cook dyed her hair brown before playing Kimberly Corman in Final Destination 2, so that the audience would not confuse her with Ali Larter, who played Clear Rivers in both the original film and this sequel. Ironically, while this made it easy for audiences to distinguish Cook and Larter's characters, some of Cook's own fans had difficulty recognizing her as a brunette because they were so used to seeing her as a blond. And hilariously enough Ali Larter had sported brown hair as Clear in the first film.
  • Kristofer Hivju was pressured into cutting his long hair and beard drastically shorter for After Earth - something he wasn't pleased about. Then most of his scenes were cut.
  • Night Train to Lisbon: Mélanie Laurent dyed her blonde hair to play brunette Estefania.
  • Heathers:
    • Shannen Doherty is naturally black-haired, and was asked to bleach it blonde so that all three Heathers would be blondes. She refused, and they compromised by having her become a redhead.
    • Winona Ryder was still getting cast as Emo Teen characters and resembled Lydia from Beetlejuice, nearly getting denied an audition for not being pretty enough. She went to a local Macy's department store and was given a makeover to audition, and eventually won the part of Veronica in Heathers
  • Joan Chen had her hair shaved off for the 1993 film Temptation of a Monk in which her character Violet becomes a Buddhist monk. This resulted in her wearing wigs for Golden Gate, Red Rose White Rose and On Deadly Ground during which she was growing back her hair, thus the chin length bob she sported in The Hunted (1995) and Judge Dredd was her actual hair.
  • Peri Baumeister shaved her head to play a Looks Like Orlok vampire in Blood Red Sky.
  • Red, White & Royal Blue: Nicholas Galitzine, a brunet, dyed his hair blond for the role of Prince Henry.

    Film — Weight change 
  • Andy Serkis, when he was cast to play Ian Dury in the biopic Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, spent time at the gym strengthening one side of his body so he could realistically emulate Dury, who had a crippled arm and leg as a result of suffering polio in his childhood.
  • Aishwarya Rai had to gain weight for her role in Guru. She then lost 22 pounds in three days for her role in Dhoom 2. She also gained 20 pounds for Bride and Prejudice, feeling Lalita needed to look like a real person and not a fashion model.
  • Benedict Cumberbatch has bulked up at least two suit sizes for Star Trek Into Darkness.
  • Benicio del Toro, for The Film of the Book of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, gained enough weight to become practically unrecognizable.
  • Billy Dee Williams started working out and losing weight in preparation for his return as Lando Calrissian in Star Wars Episode IX. This actually spoiled the film, since reports about it hit the internet before it was officially announced, and fans saw few other reasons for the 81-year old to start getting in shape.
  • Bradley Cooper put on about 25 pounds so he could look like he could convincingly tackle and injure Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers.
    • He gained about 40 pounds of pure muscle for his role in American Sniper.
  • Brett Kelly gained 50-55 pounds to play the grown-up version of the chubby kid Thurman Merman in the Bad Santa 2.
  • Chris Evans seriously bulked up and shaved to play Captain America in The First Avenger and The Avengers (and also dyed his hair golden-blond). Averted in the post-test-screen pickups for The Avengers after Evans had regrown his facial hair. Rather than have to shave all over again for just a couple of scenes, Cap's face was concealed by a prosthetic or by his hand — and he also wore a wig, as he now had a buzz-cut (most notably in the end-of-credits stinger in the shawarma restaurant).
  • Chris Hemsworth, to play Thor. He gained so much muscle that he actually had to lose weight mere days before shooting because the Thor tights were cutting off circulation. After that, he lost weight to play James Hunt in Rush so he could fit in the cars. Then he had to gain it all back for Thor: The Dark World. Then, he had to lose weight to play an emaciated sailor in In the Heart of the Sea. Then he had to gain it all back again for Avengers: Age of Ultron. He also grew out his hair for the Phase 2 films instead of wearing a wig before cutting his hair short for Ghostbusters (2016) and wore a wig instead of outgrowing his hair for Thor: Ragnarok (though not for long, Thor gets a forced haircut halfway through) and a cameo in the mid-credits scene for Doctor Strange (2016).
  • Kumail Nanjiani gained 25 pounds of muscle and became ripped almost beyond recognition for his part in Eternals. To the point where Pornhub made an photo of him the thumbnail image for their "Muscular Man" category.
  • Henry Cavill as Superman in Man of Steel gave Chris Hemsworth a run for his money in the bulking-up department, to the point that he's easily the most muscular live-action Superman to date. He had to lose some of the extra muscle for The Cold Light of Day and later for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), and then built himself back to Man of Steel shape and then some for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The latter also had Ben Affleck growing incredibly bulky to play the Dark Knight because he needed a physique that would make him even more imposing than Cavill's Superman!
  • Matthew McConaughey lost nearly 50 lb (22 kg) to play a man severely emaciated by AIDS in Dallas Buyers Club.
  • Chris Pratt went through a series of physical transformations in a relatively short period of time. He went from slim to pudgy to play Andy on Parks and Recreation. During that time, he lost weight and gained muscle for Moneyball and Zero Dark Thirty (and went back to pudgy for Parks and Rec right after each) and gained an enormous amount of weight for Delivery Man. He finally dropped 60 pounds of fat and put on muscle for his lead role as Peter Quill/Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and has maintained that physique since, even when he went back to playing Andy.
  • Christian Bale already had to buff up a lot for his role in American Psycho. A few years later he lost 63 pounds to appear in The Machinist (2004), making him unhealthily underweight. (He actually shot for the exact weight of the character in the script, even as the director and the producers told him he was skinny enough. He was eating an apple and a can of tuna per day.) He then gained 40 pounds above his normal weight to play Batman in Batman Begins (2005), but realized that he overdid it and had to lose a good chunk of that during production. Later, he again became underweight to play an inmate in a Vietnam War prisoner camp in Rescue Dawn. Then he bulked up again to play Batman for the second time in The Dark Knight. Then he went skeletal again to play a crack addict in The Fighter (2010). Then he played Batman again in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Then, he put on 43 pounds to play an overweight man in American Hustle (2013). Lastly, he put on a truly terrifying amount of weight to play an even more overweight man (former United States VP Dick Cheney) in the biopic Vice (2018), with most of his recognizable features buried behind an imposing (and real) double chin. After shedding all 70 pounds of the weight he gained for that film, so he could appear in Ford V Ferrari, Bale vowed to not try anything so extreme ever again. Let's just say Bale's refined Dyeing For Your Art to an art form itself.
  • Hayden Christensen ate six meals a day and spent hours in the gym in preparation for Anakin Skywalker's more muscular look in Revenge of the Sith.
  • Daniel Craig buffed up, gaining 20 lbs of muscle to play James Bond in Casino Royale (2006). However, he did refuse to actually Dye For His Art for Bond; he wouldn't dye his blonde hair to fit better with earlier screen Bonds' darker colors.
  • Donnie Wahlberg shed at least 25 pounds for his role as Vincent in The Sixth Sense, a character that was only on-screen for a couple of minutes early in the film.
  • Fergie and Penélope Cruz both had to gain ten pounds for their roles in the film version of Nine (Musical).
  • Forest Whitaker gained about 50 pounds for his role as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.
  • 50 Cent, known for his large physique, lost 55 lbs in 9 weeks by going on an all liquid diet and working out 3 hours a day in order to play a cancer-stricken football star in All Things Fall Apart.
  • George Clooney gained more than 30 pounds for Syriana, and reportedly lost some weight in the heavy\hot Batsuit worn in Batman & Robin.
  • Jared Leto resorted to fairly squicky methods (like drinking melted Haagen Dazs ice cream laced with olive oil and soy sauce) to gain the extra 62 pounds he needed to play John Lennon's killer Mark David Chapman in the film Chapter 27 - he wound up getting gout and being forced to move around in a wheelchair. Years later, Leto lost 30 pounds to play an HIV-positive transgender woman in Dallas Buyers Club. And finally, to play The Joker in Suicide Squad (2016), he grew incredibly ripped.
  • Jennifer Hudson gained 30 pounds to play Effie White in Dreamgirls. While Beyoncé Knowles lost 20 pounds to play Deena in the same film.
  • Jennifer Jason Leigh got down to 86 pounds to play a girl suffering from an eating disorder in the 1981 telefilm The Best Little Girl in the World.
  • Karl Urban, while already a bulky actor, gained some more muscle to fit better under Judge Dredd's armor in Dredd.
  • According to Word of God, Laura Linney ate donuts and gained 20 pounds for her role in Kinsey. It's barely noticeable.
  • Mikael Persbrandt, a Swedish actor, has lost more than 30 pounds and buffed up noticeably for his role as the title character in Hamilton In The Interest Of The Nation.
  • Rain spent 8 hours a day in intense physical training, while eating nothing but salad and chicken, to play the lead in Ninja Assassin.
  • Ralph Fiennes packed on about thirty pounds to play the portly labor camp commandant in Schindler's List.
  • Renée Zellweger put on weight to play Bridget Jones, then lost it all and then some to play Roxie Hart in Chicago before putting it all back on again for Bridget Jones 2. She didn't gain the weight again for the third Bridget Jones film, however, which has a Hand Wave with a line that Bridget is now at her ideal weight.
  • Richard E. Grant actually gained weight to match the script's description of Withnail in Withnail and I only to be told by the director that he had to lose a stone if he wanted the role.
  • Sylvester Stallone put on 40 pounds for his role in the movie Cop Land by eating pancakes at a local diner three times a day. By the time he was called back for reshoots he already lost the weight. He's also taken to using growth hormones to maintain his impossibly muscular physique for various roles.
    • For Rambo: First Blood Part II, he trained for eight months prior to the film's start date in late 1984, but he maintained a strict regimen during shooting as well. He would begin with a two- to three-hour morning workout, then he'd move on to the 10- to 12-hour shooting day on the movie. After that, instead of going home like the rest of the cast and crew, he'd cap off the day with another two- to three-hour workout. After six hours of sleep or so he'd be up and ready to do it all again.
  • Taylor Lautner (Jacob from Twilight), to avoid being re-cast in the sequel, worked out religiously and gained 30 pounds of muscle. Much shirtlessness ensued.
  • Taylor Kitsch lost thirty pounds of muscle — and took up smoking! — to play suicidally-depressed photojournalist Kevin Carter in The Bang-Bang Club. Kidney problems resulted.
  • Thomas Jane trained with the Navy SEALs for about half a year and gained more than twenty pounds of muscle for his role in The Punisher (2004).
  • Val Kilmer needed to look sickly for his role as Doc Holliday in Tombstone, so he spent weeks leading up to the shoot eating almost nothing but onions and tomatoes.
    • Ditto for Dennis Quaid for the same role in the competing Kevin Costner vehicle Wyatt Earp. Quaid lost so much weight that he lacked the energy to stand and had to take frequent rests between takes.
  • Tilda Swinton gained a significant amount of weight for her role in Michael Clayton. She didn't seem to mind, though, as it meant she could basically eat everything she wanted until she met her target look.
  • Vincent D'Onofrio gained 70 pounds of fat to play Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket. The added weight later caused the ligaments in his knees to tear up during the obstacle course scene. His next movie, Adventures in Babysitting, saw him far more cut and muscular.
  • 300: the actors look like they're capable of incredible feats of strength and endurance. They were trained by a mountaineer named Mark Twight not just to look like that, but to be like that. They weren't just playing humans honed to Batman-like levels of physical might; they actually were humans honed to Batman-like levels of physical might. However, this came at a major price. Gerard Butler has since revealed that he developed a major painkiller addiction in order to tolerate the sheer amount of strain this put on his body.
  • Tom Hardy (five-foot-ten, 180 lbs) put on forty pounds of muscle to play British prisoner Charles Bronson in Bronson. He got even bigger to play Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.
  • Mickey Rourke bulked up considerably for his role in The Wrestler.
  • Joseph Gordon-Levitt bulked up and trained with stuntmen for his role in Inception so he could perform the stunts himself.
  • According to this article, Robert Downey Jr. gained 20 pounds of muscle to play Tony Stark by adding weight training and significant diet changes to his usual Wing Chun training. Then he slimmed way down to play the title character of Sherlock Holmes (2009), bulked back up to play Tony Stark again, slimmed back down to play Sherlock Holmes again, and bulked back up to play Tony Stark again.
  • The already quite fit Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel both went through extremely intense training for their action-intensive roles in Blade: Trinity — working out 4 hours a day, 7 days a week, for several months.
    • Biel went on to lose a lot of that muscle mass, then gained a ton back for Total Recall (2012).
  • Pain & Gain:
    • Mark Wahlberg is no stranger to exercise or being in good shape regardless, but he really packed on muscle to convincingly portray a bodybuilder.
    • As did Dwayne Johnson, who could have played the role without doing so.
  • Linda Hamilton trained hard and put on a good deal of muscle to portray a physical, combat-obsessed Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and even learned to pick locks just so that she could do it for real on camera. In the end, she requested Sarah's now famous One-Handed Shotgun Pump scene to be added as she had gotten genuinely strong enough to pull it off, something even Schwarzenegger was unable to do.
  • For his role in Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal worked out for up to 8 hours per day and biked or ran to set every day. This helped him drop between 20 and 30 pounds so that he could best capture the character's gaunt figure.
  • Josh Hutcherson had to build quite a bit of muscle to play strong wrestler Peeta Mellark in The Hunger Games, though most of it ended up not showing on screen. For Mockingjay Part 1 he did however not lose a ton of weight to portray the emaciated and tortured version of the character. Peeta's weight-loss was achieved through CGI.
    • Jennifer Lawrence was also criticized for refusing to lose a ton of weight to portray Katniss as on the brink of starvation, to which she responded that she refuses to starve herself for a role.
  • For her role in The Force Awakens, Carrie Fisher lost 35 pounds to get back in shape as Princess Leia, which is no small feat, especially for a woman of 57.
  • Dan Stevens lost ten pounds for A Walk Among the Tombstones. He also worked out religiously to believably play a former soldier in The Guest.
  • Alexander Skarsgård grew incredibly ripped for The Legend of Tarzan in a test of endurance ("8 months of training, a very strict diet (...) And it drove me a bit crazy."). Once filming ended, he gleefully ate a huge pie production baked for him and spent a whole weekend eating everything his father could cook. And years later he was at it again to play a viking in The Northman, working out six days a week for six months.
  • Taron Egerton and Colin Firth, reportedly, had to go through six-months long training regimes in order to play superspies in Kingsman: The Secret Service as well as to perform more of their own stunts. At least Egerton had to do it again for the sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle.
  • Adam Driver reportedly lost fifty pounds to play a noticeably gaunt Portuguese Jesuit priest who travels to 17th century Japan in Martin Scorsese's film, Silence. Presumably, he had to immediately bulk back up in order to play his more physically demanding role of Kylo Ren in the Star Wars franchise.
  • Ultimately averted for J. K. Simmons for playing the DC Extended Universe version of Commissioner Gordon. When pictures of a buff Simmons working out emerged, it was speculated that it was in relation to his being cast as Gordon, but Simmons has stated that it was actually based on a decision he made to keep himself in shape during his days on Oz.
  • Christopher Reeve put on nearly 30 lbs. of muscle to play the Man of Steel in Superman: The Movie. Footage of him during his screen test, which is available on the DVD, shows how skinny he was when he was cast. In fact, he put on so much muscle, they were forced to reshoot a few scenes for the sake of continuity. By the fourth movie, Reeve decided he didn't want to have to go through the rigorous workout regimen again, and opted for a padded muscle suit instead.
  • Jungle: In order to portray extreme starvation accurately on screen, Daniel Radcliffe starved himself in real life. While speaking to The Telegraph, Radcliffe revealed that he survived on a diet of one chicken breast and one protein bar per day, supplemented by copious amounts of coffee and cigarettes.
  • Sammo Hung believed his normal size and body shape, whilst suited to his comedic characters in his other films, would be inappropriate for a soldier in Eastern Condors. In order to get into shape for the lead role, Hung lost 30 pounds in 3 months, by surviving on a diet of nothing but chicken and rice.
  • Chadwick Boseman worked out to get a superhero shape for Captain America: Civil War, lost that weight for Marshall, and then again got very ripped for his solo film Black Panther (plus Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame)... after discovering the terminal cancer that would take his life, meaning Boseman was keeping into shape in spite of his body not helping, specially consider how aggressive the treatment is.
  • Joaquin Phoenix got unhealthily thin for Joker (2019), to the point no reshoots could be done.
  • Ed Harris put on 30 lbs. of fat for the later scenes of Jackson Pollock bio pic, Pollock, where Pollock's alcoholism has basically consumed his life.

    Film — Both/Other 
  • Generally whenever movies about the military are made, the actors playing the soldiers have to go through training to handle weapons and also get the regulation haircuts. Often on-screen - as in Full Metal Jacket.
  • Les Misérables (2012):
    • Anne Hathaway lost a significant amount of weight to play Fantine. She also did Fantine's Traumatic Haircut for real, on camera (as a result she has short hair in Interstellar which she filmed after). She refuses to say precisely what she did to lose weight because she knows it wasn't safe and she didn't want to risk fans emulating her methods.
    • Hugh Jackman also lost weight, grew a beard, and went 36 hours without water for the opening scenes, after Valjean left prison. He then gained weight for the later scenes... and after filming wrapped had to bulk up to a return to his trademark role.
  • Charles Grodin had permanent scars on his wrists due to the handcuffs he wore in Midnight Run.
  • Charlize Theron put on about thirty pounds, partially shaved and bleached her eyebrows, and had her actual hair thinned and damaged to play serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster. She gained weight again, by putting on 50 pounds in order to play a new mother in Tully, reportedly it took nearly a year and a half to lose the weight.
  • Choi Min-Sik, as the protagonist Oh Dae-Su in Oldboy (2003), gained and lost considerable amounts of weight (repeatedly) to simulate a man being held in captivity for 15 years. Oh Dae-Su also kept track of how many years he had been confined by literally tattooing tally marks onto his arm. Unable to pull off the special effects required to depict this, Choi actually applied some of the tattoos for real on camera... using a piece of hot wire.
  • Edward Norton gained a lot of muscle for American History X, and lost most of it afterward to play the insomniac, beaten down protagonist of Fight Club. Also for American History X, he as well as Edward Furlong shaved their heads to play convincing skinheads.
  • Elliot Page had his head shaved on camera for the film Mouth to Mouth. Amusingly the film was shot in near chronological order, so he had to walk around with half his head shaved for a whole day. He nearly starved himself to look like (and feel the pain of) torture victim Sylvia Likens while filming An American Crime. A special feature on the Juno DVD shows his audition, and his face is so gaunt it's no wonder he had to gain back the weight in order to play a pregnant girl!
  • Demi Moore buzzed her hair down to the scalp on camera for G.I. Jane, and worked out religiously to simulate the effects of going through combat training. She had long black hair at the time.
  • Gary Oldman lost so much weight to play Sid Vicious in Sid & Nancy that he was actually hospitalized at one point. He also shaved his head for at least three of his other films: Meantime, Immortal Beloved, and The Fifth Element.
  • Georgina Cates dyed her hair and pretended to be a natural redhead to win the lead in the film An Awfully Big Adventure. She also changed her name, invented a completely fake past from Liverpool (the same city as the character was from) and pretended to be a teenager when she was actually 21 so that the casting directors would see her for the role again - the first time she auditioned she was told she wasn't suitable.
  • Halle Berry didn't bathe and wore the same clothes for several days to convincingly play a crack addict in Jungle Fever.
  • Hilary Swank went into hard training, and put on twenty pounds of muscle, for her role as boxer Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby. She also cut her hair, lost weight, started binding (ie, flattening breasts) and generally acting like a boy for her role in Boys Don't Cry, to the point where her neighbors didn't recognize her and assumed that her brother must have been staying.
  • Jamie Foxx wore prosthetics over his eyes which made him blind for as many as 14 hours a day, and also learned Braille, in order to convincingly play Ray Charles in Ray.
  • Jim Carrey:
    • He put on a lot of weight for his role as Curly in the The Three Stooges movie. But then dropped out of the film because he was worried about his health.
    • He shaved his head for A Series of Unfortunate Events.
    • He also shaved his head and lost weight for scenes in the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon in which Kaufman was dying of cancer.
    • He also starved himself for two weeks to play Steven Jay Russell, a con artist purportedly dying of AIDS in I Love You Phillip Morris. The real Stephen Jay Russel didn't have AIDS either, he merely starved himself and falsified his medical records as part of an elaborate escape plan. Carrey also shaved off his widow's peak to expose more of his forehead and look smarter.
    • His Grinch make-up, which not only was full-bodied but hindered his breathing as the nose was covered, along with full-eyeball contact lenses and dentures, had the studio hiring a Navy SEAL who taught Carrey torture-resistance techniques (before that, his make-up artist noted he had a breakdown and was very unhelpful).
  • Keanu Reeves:
    • He shaved his head (including his eyebrows) as well as his body for the "real world" scenes in The Matrix. Those scenes were the last ones filmed and were shot altogether. The very last scene shot was the one where he first woke up in the real world, and he had lost considerable weight to give a slightly emaciated appearance. He would later shave his head again as well as shaving off his beard in the fourth instalment.
    • The producers of Speed demanded he have a more respectable haircut (he had long hair), but balked when he showed up with a buzzcut, trying to insist he wear a wig for the film. The director vetoed.
    • Gained 23 pounds to play a quarterback in The Replacements (2000).
    • He also gained weight for The Last Time I Committed Suicide.
  • To play the role of Dorita “Dottie” Perez in The Perez Family, Marisa Tomei had to do exercises to strengthen her arms and thighs, wear skin dye and go through a fattening regimen that added about 20 pounds, which gave her a figure more curvaceous and voluptuous that earned her enough praise in the press when the film was released.
  • Matt Damon:
    • He grew as an actor in order to play the lead in Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!
    • He lost a dangerous amount of weight to play a drug-addicted soldier in Courage Under Fire and had to be on medication for years afterward because of how it affected his health. This frail look almost made him lose the part of James Ryan.
  • Max Schreck shaved his head for Nosferatu and put some sort of hideous wiring around his eyes to make them bug out. Really.
  • James McAvoy
    • He bleached his hair blond to play punk Rory O'Shea in the Irish film Rory O'Shea Was Here.
    • For X-Men: Apocalypse, he shaved his head, unlike previous installments, to portray the trademark bald of Professor Charles Xavier. He had actually shaved his head for First Class, expecting that Charles would be bald. He was then informed that they wanted Charles to have hair to convey his youth — and he had to wear extensions.
    • Both Split and Glass (2019) forced him to become seriously ripped as a super-strong man — for the latter, McAvoy reportedly gained 16 to 20 pounds of muscle mass.
  • Natalie Portman:
  • Nick Nolte grew out his hair and facial hair to achieve a crazed loner look for Hulk. It was in this unfortunate state that his infamous mug shot was taken. He also gained 50 pounds to play a paunchy detective in Q & A.
  • Peter Sellers' hair began to seriously gray in the late 1960s, so in many of his films from roughly 1969 onward, his hair is a dye job of some sort. A key exception is Being There, where he had his wife cut his gray hair short (figuring Louise, Chance's maid, would have been cutting it for him all these years). He also gained a good deal of weight, despite pre-existing heart problems, to reflect Chance's sedentary nature. Sellers was sensitive about his appearance and actually hated how he looked for the film, but felt it was what Chance should look like. (Some think losing the weight afterward contributed to his early death.)
  • Parker Posey had a dentist attach "train track" braces to her teeth to play a yuppie caricature in Best in Show. Michael Hitchcock as her character's husband settled for fake ones.
  • Rita Hayworth was directed by husband Orson Welles to cut and dye her famous long red hair for The Lady from Shanghai.
    • What's more, Rita was already a Dyeing For Your Art Dye Hard, because she was a natural brunette who had to dye her hair red as part of a career Race Lift to cover up the fact she was Hispanic.
    • And more hilariously, Welles himself lost weight to play Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight. That's right. Orson Welles was SO OVERWEIGHT that he had to slim down to play freakin' Falstaff! if only for the simple practical reasons of having a consistent shape and fat-suit to allow for camera angles. Welles was in fact fiercely disciplined in terms of controlling his weight when needed.
  • Robert De Niro is another actor who puts the work in:
    • He famously gained 60 pounds to play Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull; he was one of the first actors to undergo such a transformation for an onscreen role. He gained the muscle training with the real Jake LaMotta until LaMotta decided he was ready to go pro — LaMotta later said that he thought DeNiro could have been in the Top 20 middleweights of all time.
    • He packed on thirty pounds and had his hairline shaved back and receded to play Al Capone in The Untouchables (1987). He went so deep into the role, he wore the same silk underwear the real Capone wore, something audiences would never actually see.
    • He also put on a little bit of weight for the scenes in The Godfather Part II where his character returns to Sicily.
    • For Cape Fear, he paid a dentist $20,000 to seriously screw up his teeth to play long-term prison inmate Max Cady. It cost him $25,000 to have the damage fixed after the movie was over. He was also tattooed with vegetable dyes, which fade after a few months, and worked out to the point of having almost no body fat.
    • Taxi Driver is a subversion, as he didn't really get his head shaved in a mohawk (they still had scenes to shoot with his hair, so a bald cap with a horse mane was put on De Niro's head). However, he did shed thirty-five pounds to play the role of Travis.
  • Russell Crowe gained weight and shaved his head to make room for a wig for The Insider, and gained lots of muscle for Gladiator. British film critic Mark Kermode points out that Crowe does this for a lot of roles and claims you can identify Crowe's 'serious' films based on his paunch.
  • Sigourney Weaver shaved her head for Alien³, and dyed her hair red for Avatar.
  • Tom Hanks grew a rather lengthy, unkempt beard and lost 30 pounds for Cast Away. He gained the weight he was expected to lose during filming in advance, and the movie was put on hold while he lost it. He also slimmed down drastically to play an AIDS patient in Philadelphia, as well as putting on 25 pounds of fat to play the drunken Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own. In recent years, he vowed to stop doing this as the constant weight gain and loss may have contributed to his type 2 diabetes.
  • Tom Hiddleston dyed his naturally blond hair black (and straightened it) to play Loki in Thor, lightened it to a reddish-blond for Midnight in Paris, and darkened it again for The Deep Blue Sea. His poor, poor hair.
    • For Thor, Hiddleston had originally auditioned for the title role, gaining 20 pounds of muscle in the process. Director Kenneth Branagh then told him he'd be more suited for Loki, and asked him to lose the weight in order to play a slim, pale younger brother.
  • Iron Man:
  • Sebastian Stan's appearance as Bucky Barnes was largely unchanged for Captain America: The First Avenger. However, starting in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, he noticeably bulked up but had to achieve Bucky's long hair with extensions (as there are also flashback scenes where Bucky has short hair). For Captain America: Civil War, he grew out his hair at chin-length.
  • The Lord of the Rings:
    • Orlando Bloom had a Mohawk during filming in order to accommodate the widow's peak hairline on his Legolas wig.
    • Brad Dourif had his eyebrows repeatedly shaved to play Grí­ma Wormtongue.
    • Sean Astin put on weight for Sam, too.
  • Spider-Man Trilogy:
    • Spider-Man:
      • Kirsten Dunst used a combination of her real hair (dyed) and a partial wig for the first movie, with the join between the real and fake hair being painfully obvious at times. She used her own hair (again dyed) for the second and third one.
      • Tobey Maguire had to gain some muscle to play Spider-Man. His worst experience was for the second movie because he had become very thin to play a jockey in Seabiscuit.
    • Spider-Man 3 had scored a hat trick of hair dyes when you factor in Elizabeth Banks as Betty Brant (blonde to brunette) and Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy (the opposite of Dunst: a redhead becoming blonde).
      • Topher Grace gained 24 pounds of muscle and bleached his hair to play Eddie Brock in Spider-Man 3.
      • Thomas Haden Church put on 28 pounds of muscle and dropped 10 pounds of fat for Sandman. In articles at the time, it was stated that they wanted him to gain more muscle weight but gave up on it due to Church pretty much hitting a plateau.
  • Emma Stone is known as a redhead, but reverted back to her natural blonde to play Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man - before her casting was officially announced, it was rumored she'd be playing the red-headed Mary Jane Watson. Before that Emma Stone's hair became red in the first place when she was asked to dye it for Superbad.
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home had three Spider-Men, all having to bulk up for the role - with Tom Holland having just come out from playing an emaciated drug addict in Cherry (2021), and both Maguire and Andrew Garfield noting getting back into shape was not as easy as when they were in their 20s. Willem Dafoe's return as the Green Goblin also counts as he demanded to have No Stunt Double in spite of being in his sixties, to feel the physical connection to the role.
  • Stand and Deliver: Edward James Olmos partially shaved his head so he could adopt Jaime Escalante's combover style.
  • Super Troopers: all the members of Broken Lizard grew mustaches and built up their forearms to give themselves a more stereotypical highway patrolman look. One scene features Kevin Heffernan using one of the workout tools they used.
  • Hairspray:
    • Zac Efron dyed his hair (dark) brown and put on 15 pounds.
    • Amanda Bynes took two hours to get her pigtails right, and risked losing her teeth from eating around 40 lollipops a day.
  • For the X-Men Film Series, Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, and Ryan Reynolds worked out to get ripped bodies, and Famke Janssen dyed her hair red.
  • To play Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's 2011 remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Rooney Mara chopped her long brown hair off and went to a dyed-black pixie cut, bleached her eyebrows, got both ears pierced four times, and got her eyebrow and one nipple pierced as well (lip and nose piercings were fake). Say what you will about her, she doesn't do things in half measures.
    • Noomi Rapace (the actress who played Salander in the original Swedish films) deserves mention also. In addition to performing image alteration similar to Mara's note , Rapace took up smoking for real during filming note  and took to dressing and acting "in-character" even when not on camera...to the point where family and friends began to worry as to her sanity. There's a very good reason she refused to do the role again for the American remake.
    • Claire Foy, the third Lisbeth, dyed and cut her hair (which made her young daughter very unhappy), and worked out a lot as her movie is more physical and required many stunts.
  • Averted in Once Upon a Time in the West. Henry Fonda, Playing Against Type as Frank, initially wanted to drastically change his usual appearance by growing a beard and wearing brown contacts. Sergio Leone told him not to do it, as the shock of seeing Fonda as such a character was exactly why he hired him, and it would work best if he looked like he usually did.
  • Lon Chaney Senior created innovative and uncomfortable prosthetics that turned him into monsters such as The Phantom of The Opera and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame.
  • Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story: To play Bruce Lee, Jason Scott Lee (no relation) trained with Jerry Poteet, who was a student of the real Lee.
  • The whole cast of The Wizard of Oz had to suffer from long shooting schedules and the hot lights required for early Technicolor. But three in particularly were fit most for the trope due to heavy make-up: Margaret Hamilton (could not eat and remained on a liquid diet, and the copper-based Wicked Witch make-up got burned by malfunctioning pyrotechnics), Bert Lahr (had the liquid diet before he decided to get his make-up redone every day, plus the Cowardly Lion suit made of real lion skin made him sweat profusely) and Jack Haley (the Tin Man suit was so stiff that he had to lean against a board to rest; the make-up needed some changes as it previously caused the actor Haley replaced to get hospitalized).
  • For his Paganini movie, Klaus Kinski demanded from his dentist to pull all of Kinski's teeth, since the real Paganini had lost them. The dentist declined, since pulling perfectly healthy teeth isn't a dentist's job. Kinski reacted with one of his tantrums but kept his teeth nonetheless.
    • Kinski shaved his head to play Dracula in Nosferatu. When he reprised the role (sort of) in Vampire in Venice he refused to shave his head again. In Woyzeck Kinski has the buzzcut one would expect a soldier to have, appearing to be this trope, but in actuality, the movie was filmed only five days after Nosferatu wrapped and that was all the hair he could grow in the five days.
  • Daniel Day-Lewis is the Mad Emperor of this trope, often engaging in obsessive levels of research and/or training to prepare for a role, sometimes completely vanishing inside them.
    • The Boxer: trained as a boxer to the point where he could actually have been ranked professionally if he were so inclined.
    • In the Name of the Father: lived in a prison cell and asked the crew to abuse him.
    • My Left Foot: refused to get out of character for the entire film shoot, actually suffering damage to his ribs from maintaining the same position for so long.
    • The Last of the Mohicans: rigorous period-appropriate survivalist training, learning to hunt and live off the land.
    • Gangs of New York: trained as a butcher and learned knife-throwing. Sought out old voice recordings to get as close to a period-appropriate New York accent as possible.
    • For the 1996 film adaptation of The Crucible, he built the house that John Proctor (his character) lived in in the film, and didn't shower or bathe at all during filming...and this was the film in which he met his wife, Rebecca Miller...
    • For his final film, Phantom Thread, he took dressmaking lessons for his role as Reynolds Woodcock.
  • For Apocalypse Now Marlon Brando shaved his head to play Kurtz. To Francis Ford Coppola's chagrin, that's all he did to prepare for the part. He was supposed to lose weight for the role of Kurtz, but he showed up extremely obese.
    • An unintentional example from the same film - when Martin Sheen punches the mirror, he actually cut himself and opted for a Throw It In! moment by spreading the blood across his face.
  • To play Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in the 2013 biopic Jobs, Ashton Kutcher followed a fruitarian diet similar to the real Jobs. At one point, he ended up being hospitalized for abnormal pancreatic levels (which is particularly unnerving considering Jobs had died from pancreatic cancer).
  • In-universe, the title character in Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star tells Rob Reiner that he's willing to dye his hair and have any necessary plastic surgery in order to play the lead in "Mr. Blake's Backyard" (after Reiner tells him he has the right basic look). He never gets plastic surgery, but during his time being treated like a child, he briefly dyes his hair in order to avoid being recognized by fans.
  • In the film version of For Whom the Bell Tolls Greek actress Katina Paxinou cut her hair and wore heavy make-up to play a Spanish woman who didn't look even remotely like herself.
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger lost some weight for his breakout role in Stay Hungry (as the director felt that despite the role being a bodybuilder, Arnold was too bulky, particularly next to co-star Sally Field).
    • Batman & Robin had him shaving his head, going through a long make-up process (complete with Icy Blue Eyes lenses) and wearing a 75-pound armor which he described as "suffocating". He also endured battery acid in his mouth as the LED that made a blue light come out as Mr. Freeze spoke would disintegrate after at least 20 minutes.
  • One of the reasons Robert John Burke was cast to replace Peter Weller as RoboCop in RoboCop 3 was because Orion was starting to collapse and they wouldn't put up the cash for building whole new suits for Burke to wear, so they modified the suits Weller wore in RoboCop 2 for Burke to wear, which he said would be painful to wear for a short time.
  • In Jurassic World, Bryce Dallas Howard plays a character who spends the entire movie on high heels. This includes trekking through a jungle and running from bloodthirsty dinosaurs. Howard "trained to run in heels like it was for the Olympics", with all the ankle-bursting difficulties this implies. The sequel avoided this, to the point its director "texted me '#noheels2018'. And I was like 'Ya boy!'"
  • For his role in The Force Awakens, Mark Hamill grew a beard to get into the role of a Jedi Master. He also lost almost 50 pounds for the role (which only physically appears in two scenes!).
  • DC Extended Universe:
    • As soon as they joined, Ezra Miller bulked up considerably, as well as cut their signature long black hair short to play Barry Allen.
    • Suicide Squad (2016) had plenty of it. Besides the above mentioned Jared Leto, Will Smith shaved his hair and trained with firearms; Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje went through a five hour make-up process; and the most complicated, Margot Robbie had to practice gymnastics and shooting firearms (and acknowledged she "didn't have the physical strength to allow myself to do those things, even the gun training."), endured a three hour make-up process that made her skin white and covered in tattoos, and an impractical Stripperiffic outfit with stiletto gym shoes.
  • Channing Tatum:
    • Early in his career for the film A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints he lost weight to play Antonio but didn't specify how much.
    • He's bleached his hair blond for three different films - Jupiter Ascending, Hail, Caesar! and Foxcatcher. In the last one, he also cut his hair off on-screen and trained to wrestle religiously.
    • He also describes the process of getting ready for Magic Mike as a lot of working out and "not eating anything good for three months straight". He and the rest of the actors playing strippers would have to lift weights between takes to maintain their physiques.
  • Jessica Chastain dyed her hair blonde and gained weight to play Celia in The Help. She did this by eating lots of soy ice cream.
  • The male cast of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen all shaved their heads so they could switch freely between the various wigs they wore, rather than wear bald caps.
  • DB Sweeney and Moira Kelly took skating lessons for their roles as a figure skating team in The Cutting Edge. Sweeney claims that Kelly got good enough to be performing jumps by the time filming started.
  • Margot Robbie had only experience with hockey skates prior to accepting the title role of I, Tonya, a figure skater. She also learned Tonya Harding's skating mannerisms to get even more convincing.
  • For her role in My First Mister, Leelee Sobieski got her nostrils, eyebrows, lower-lip, navel, and the cartilage of both ears pierced - her character is meant to dress in a "goth" style, and the script mentions her having many piercings. After filming completed, she removed the piercings and let them close up, but kept the jewelry itself around as a souvenir.
  • The Devil Wears Prada:
    • Emily Blunt (a brunette) dyed her hair red and claims she was constantly starving during production to achieve Emily's Hollywood Thin look.
    • Anne Hathaway initially was going to gain ten pounds, but then was told to lose that amount. And she was padded for Andy's pre-makeover scenes.
  • Emily Blunt also got very ripped for Edge of Tomorrow, where she and much of the cast suffered wearing heavy Powered Armor (during breaks, the battles suits would be suspended by chains from iron frames to take the weight of the suits off the actors' shoulders).
  • Dakota Johnson dyed her naturally blonde hair red, and toned her body to the muscularity expected of a professional dancer, for Suspiria (2018).
  • For Hellboy (2019), David Harbour, who'd never worked out before, did extensive training to get into shape to play Hellboy. He also created his own makeshift costume out of sports equipment so he'd be ready to better handle the extensive make-up and prosthetics he'd have to wear.
  • The Wizard of Oz had Dorothy's three companions and the Wicked Witch of the West going through long and cumbersome make-up, which in the latter's case also caused severe burns in the scene where the Witch does a Smoke Out. The costumes were also problematic - the Tin Man couldn't sit, only lean; the Cowardly Lion sweated profusely under the heavy studio lighting; and Dorothy had to tie up her breasts to still look like a pre-teen and only wore the ruby slippers when they were on-screen given the shoes wound up very uncomfortable.
  • Kabuki actor Ichikawa Ebizō XI shaved his head to play Sen no Rikyū in the 2013 film Ask This of Rikyu. In fact after the film wrapped, he kept the look, thus it became an Important Haircut for him, just three years before being ordained as a Shingon Buddhist monk.
  • Freddie Prinze Jr. was turned down for the part of Ray in I Know What You Did Last Summer for being "too soft". He hit the gym and bulked up, also getting a haircut to win the part.
  • For the film Larry Crowne, Bryan Cranston wanted to believably look like someone who could be married to Julia Roberts. As a result, he went on a strict diet and workout routine, while also having his teeth bleached white.
  • The King of Marvin Gardens has Ellen Burstyn as Sally cutting off much of her hair onscreen and throwing it into a bonfire.
  • In The Wild Child, Jean-Pierre Cargol's tangled mop of hair is cut on-camera.
  • Chevy Chase lost twenty pounds for Memoirs of an Invisible Man, knowing the effects work would be be physically straining - and indeed, he was covered in blue or green bodysuits under hot weather, and the scene where he's made up to become visible added uncomfortable lenses and a third source of heat in studio lights.
  • An even more suffering invisible man was in Hollow Man, which Kevin Bacon considered his hardest work given all the uncomfortable suits and make-up (which at times extended to lenses and dentures!) he wore so the effects team could erase him.
  • Rory Culkin couldn't use his own hair in Lords of Chaos because he lost faith in it coming out of Development Hell and cut it, just two weeks before it was announced to film. He still suffered for the role to learn how to look as if he's really playing Black Metal guitar, "a lot of bloody fingers by the end, a lot of scabs all over the hands."
  • Only Tom Cruise managed to ride in a fighter jet for Top Gun, as all other actors vomited as soon as they were in the air. To prevent his, everyone in Top Gun: Maverick trained to ride in F-18s and withstand higher G-forces, as they'd be filmed in the rear seat so that they can be pretending to be piloting while the aircraft is truly in flight. Quite a few actors wound up passing on the movie for that reason (and reportedly, only Monica Barbaro never threw up during the training process). For bonus points, the actors had to learn how to operate the cameras installed outside the cockpit and effectively direct themselves, given no crewmembers would be there to help in the air.
  • In the 1983 version of The Ballad of Narayama, to better portray Orin after she smashes her front teeth out with a grinding stone, Sumiko Sakamoto voluntarily had four of her front teeth extracted.
  • Dane DiLiegro, a former basketballer who started getting monster roles such as the Predator in Prey (2022), said that this is a constant for creature performers:
    You have to learn to live in discomfort. You’re glued into suits that are hot and heavy and absorb your sweat. You’re sitting and standing in them for up to 12 hours. It gets itchy and numbing and restricting. If the heat and the weight and the unpleasantness doesn’t get you, the claustrophobia probably will.
  • Most of the cast of Major Grom: Plague Doctor drastically altered their looks for the film:
    • To play the super fit, athletic Igor Grom, Tikhon Zhiznevsky overhauled his diet, lost 10 kilograms (22 lbs), and underwent a heavy training regimen (using both the Major Grom comics and Brad Pitt from Fight Club and Snatch. as body references). He also dyed his curly blonde hair dark brown and cut it short to remove the curls. Zhiznevsky stated that he took the role in part because of the challenge of undergoing a physical transformation.
    • For the role of Sergei Razumovsky, Sergei Goroshko lost roughly 33 lbs (also by overhauling his diet) and had his light-brown hair straightened and dyed the character's signature coppery red. Reportedly, the dye was so strong that his hair remained that color for months afterward. He also wore contact lenses to turn his eyes blue and, later, golden yellow.
    • To play the odious Nouveau Riche socialite Kirill Grechkin, Yuri Nasonov bleached his dark brown hair whitish-blonde, had fake tattoos applied, and wore gold veneers. The hair caused some issues: Nasanov was acting in a stage play at the time, and neglected to tell the director he'd changed his hair until after the fact. (Fortunately, he was able to wear a wig for the rest of the play's run.)
    • Aleksey Maklakov wore a fake mustache and dyed his hair light grey to give himself an older, more "fatherly" look as Fyodor Prokopenko.
    • Mikhail Evlanov was fitted with a full dental prosthetic that had rows of teeth, similar to a shark's mouth, in order to give him Strelkov's unsettling smile.
    • Lyubov Aksyonova dyed her light-brown hair apple red to play Yulia Pchyolkina.
  • Nicolas Cage had some of his teeth filed down for Renfield, so his Dracula fang prosthetics would fit better, and allow him better pronunciation.

    Literature 
  • Shtetl Days: In-Universe, Kristina/Bertha shaved off her natural blond hair for the role of an Orthodox Jewish woman, and presumably, the other actresses at the park did too.

    Live-Action TV 

Hair change:

  • Amybeth McNulty is a natural blonde and dyes her hair red to play one of literature's most famous Fiery Redheads: Anne Shirley in Anne with an E.
  • Mollie Sugden, who played Mrs. Slocombe in Are You Being Served?, had to have brightly-colored hair which changed color every episode. At the start, this was done by actually dyeing Sugden's hair, but the treatment caused reactions and hair loss so the production switched to a series of brightly-coloured wigs from then on.
  • Linda Thorson joined The Avengers (1960s) as a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Emma Peel. She was supposed to dye her hair blonde to differentiate her from her predecessor, Diana Rigg. The treatment made her hair fall out, so in some early episodes she's wearing a brunette wig, while in others (e.g. "All Done With Mirrors") her hair is very short.
  • Bruce Boxleitner grew a beard that he found very annoying for the last season of Babylon 5, at J. Michael Straczynski's insistence that his character be visually different to reflect his development.
  • Sacha Baron Cohen's actual facial hair is used for Ali G and Borat. He also shaved his body hair to play Brüno (2009).
  • Kasey Rogers, the second actress to portray Louise Tate on Bewitched, originally dyed her red hair dark brown to more closely resemble Irene Vernon, the actress she replaced. In later episodes, she reverted to her natural hair color.
  • Mike Lookinland, the auburn-haired child actor who played Bobby Brady on The Brady Bunch, was forced to dye his hair jet black to more closely resemble his TV father and brothers. In later seasons though, his natural color returned.
  • Bryan Cranston shaved his own head on camera for Breaking Bad, though the scene was cut out. For the pre-shaving scenes, he dyed his hair a duller shade of brown in keeping with his character's dull wardrobe and lifestyle.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel:
    • James Marsters dyed his hair platinum to play Spike. He once mentioned the bleach would often blister his skin.
    • The three leading actresses on Buffy all had brownish auburn hair when they were cast. Sarah Michelle Gellar became gradually blonder and eventually bleached blonde by season 2 (producers wanted the character to look more like a Valley Girl). Alyson Hannigan went full redhead to be Willow. Charisma Carpenter at the time had blonde highlights but darkened hers to play Cordelia.
    • Seth Green dyed his red hair both brown and blond at several points in the show. It became a quirk of his character's.
  • Castle has an in-universe example with Natalie Rhodes. In order to be closer to Beckett's style (since Nikki Heat was based on her), she dyed her hair from blonde to brunette.
  • For Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Kiernan Shipka sports Sabrina's iconic bob from the comics - in contrast to the sitcom that gave her long hair. Ross Lynch is normally blond but became brunet to play Harvey.
  • Club der roten Bänder: Actors Damian Hardung and Tim Oliver Schultz shaved their heads to portray their roles as cancer patients.
  • Léonie Berthonnaud, playing Aelita in Code Lyoko: Evolution, had her hair sprayed pink for filming.
  • Stephen Colbert had his head shaved to show solidarity for the troops when he took his show to Baghdad. It was hyping up having President Barack Obama give the order to shave it, which was carried out by Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the American forces in Iraq at the time. He made a Running Gag out of complaining about how slowly it was growing back.
  • William Petersen kept his almost-white hair dyed darker to a gray shade for the later years of his role as Gil Grissom on CSI. It does appear a bit more natural in his season 11 cameo, however.
  • Jodelle Ferland dyed her dark brown hair blue for Dark Matter - one of the reasons was for her to stand out visually from her co-star Melissa O'Neil.
  • Many current Disney Channel Stars sport a hair color different from their natural color. It's still probably too soon to know whether they're Dye Hard or doing it for their art, but to name a few.
    • Debby Ryan dyed her hair auburn for the role of Jessie.
    • G. Hannelius, a natural brunette, dyed her hair blonde to do Dog with a Blog, possibly to match her mom's blonde hair, who was a redhead in a flashback.
    • Good Luck Charlie has a major dose of this. Leigh-Allyn Baker is blonde as Amy Duncan, but was a redhead on Will & Grace.
      • Bridgit Mendler also has blonde hair as Teddy but showed an old school photo of herself in an episode with red hair, and complained about not being able to get a suntan in another episode. That is a common complaint for redheads.
  • Doctor Who:
    • Nicholas Courtney's Brigadier moustache was fake at first, but after his first couple of seasons, he decided to just grow it for real.
    • The Fourth Doctor's sideburns. They started out as the normal sideburns everyone had in the 1970s, but when the costume designers decided the character should take on a Byronic appearance, they were grown out into long Victorian muttonchops which very few people had in the 1970s.
    • Louise Jameson wore brown contacts during her first season of playing Leela. At the end of "Horror of Fang Rock", the first story of her second season, an in-show reason was given to have her eyes change from brown to blue (her natural colour).
    • Tom Baker's Doctor went a bit blond in the 1980s, though this was to disguise his grey hairs. He went from dark brown to golden brown.
    • Peter Davison had his hair highlighted to play the title role. This is particularly noticeable as it is considerably darker during his brief appearance at the end of "Logopolis" than it is in "Castrovalva", despite the fact that the latter is supposed to follow on immediately after the former.
    • Mark Strickson, when playing Vislor Turlough, was required to dye his blond hair red. This was to avoid him being confused with the blond Peter Davison in long shots. This was a particular worry of the producer's, who also feared the audience would confuse Tegan (a twenty-something woman who normally wore a lilac air hostess uniform) and Adric (a teenage boy usually to be seen in a yellow and red pyjama-like costume). Well, they do both have brown hair.
    • They must have loved this trope in The '80s: naturally auburn Colin Baker was blonded up, too. He actually gets slowly blonder and blonder during his run, with big jumps in colour between stories which happen immediately after each other, which again makes it very noticeable. At least it would fit the vain personality of the Sixth Doctor to bleach his hair — in the game The Eternity Clock, River Song suggests that he does.
    • Honorable mention: When he auditioned, Paul McGann had a similar hairstyle to the one he has as the Eighth Doctor, but then he decided to shave his head. They made him wear a wig (which he absolutely hated) to get back the long curls, which had to be glued to his head, and his scalp had a reaction to the glue so his skin started flaking off. It's not an intentional example, but still, the poor guy's skin started coming off. It counts.note 
    • And a Doctor from blond to dark — Christopher Eccleston's hair colour is naturally a blondish light brown, but he dyed it black to play the Doctor.
    • John Simm grew a Beard of Evil for the return of his Master in "World Enough and Time"/"The Doctor Falls". Notably, he wasn't asked to; he just turned up for rehearsals with it, and Steven Moffat agreed it worked.
    • Jodie Whittaker is naturally brunette but goes blonde as the Thirteenth Doctor. Unfortunately, she still has visible dark roots, resulting in an Improbable Hairstyle.
  • Downton Abbey: Michelle Dockery cut her hair into a bob for Season 5 when Lady Mary finally does so.
  • Kevin Tighe, naturally auburn-haired, bleached his hair for earlier Emergency! seasons, to a lighter blonde with more red. It returned to its natural darker color later on. Randolph Mantooth and Tim Donnely had to cut their hair to meet fire dept. standards. Randy always favored longer hair back then and kept pushing things during the series. Gage being told to get a haircut was put into an inspection scene. Donnelly favored his bushy, curly hair and Porn Stache and had them back by series end.
  • Virginia Hey shaved her head and eyebrows to play Zhaan in Farscape. She was eventually forced to leave the show because the huge amounts of makeup were causing her serious skin and kidney issues.
    • The beard Crichton sports in the fourth season premiere was real. Ben Browder grew it during the hiatus between seasons and shaved it during production of the episode when Crichton shaves his off.
  • Mark Hamill dyed his hair purple for his The Flash (2014) cameo as an alternate-universe Trickster, then had to have it dyed back to its natural color; it reportedly took three doses.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • While most of the actresses wore wigs when their natural hair didn't match the character's, natural blonde Sophie Turner dyed her hair red to play Sansa Stark. There came a time in the show when Sansa had to disguise herself by dyeing her hair black, meaning Turner was a blonde playing a redhead pretending to be a brunette. She also wasn't allowed to wash her hair during this period, to add a touch of realism to her character being on the lam. Eventually she grew tired of keeping with the dye and wore a wig like the others.
    • Although Emilia Clarke wore a wig for the first seven seasons to play Daenerys, she dyed her hair platinum blonde for the final season.
    • Conleth Hill shaved his head every year to play Varys, and was pleased that fans didn't recognise him with his hair, allowing him some anonymity.
    • Peter Dinklage and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau are natural brunets but initially bleached their hair blond to play Tyrion and Jaime Lannister. Both however stopped dyeing because of the hassle. The latter also grew his hair and beard for Seasons 2 and 3, and then cut it short for Season 4.
    • Kit Harington was also contractually obligated to keep his hair long for the role of Jon Snow, not cutting it short until the final season had wrapped.
    • Maisie Williams learned to swordfight with her left hand, despite being right-handed herself, in order to properly portray Arya Stark. She also cut her hair short for the second season.
  • Good Omens (2019): Michael Sheen bleached his hair white-blonde to play Aziraphale while David Tennant dyed his red to play Crowley. The different hairstyles Crowley has during flashbacks are wigs but all present-day scenes are Tennant's own dyed hair. For the second season Sheen also had to shave off the beard he'd grown during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
    Sheen: (reading a Tweet) DAVID WHAT HAS HAPPEN TO YOUR HAIR!?
    Tennant: It's called hair dye. I'm an acting chameleon.
  • Leighton Meester, a natural blonde dyed her hair chestnut brown because Blair Waldorf is described as a brunette in the Gossip Girl books.
  • Adrian Pasdar grew a beard for the second season of Heroes. It was so impressive it had its own nickname.
  • Adrian Paul used hair extensions for the first season of Highlander: The Series and then grew it long for the next four. He cut it for season six because he was tired of caring for it.
  • For the scene in El internado: Las Cumbres where Paz's long hair is buzzed off as punishment, Paula del Río agreed to have her own hair buzzed, and even recorded the process in a time lapse video.
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022): Sam Reid, a redhead note , grew out his hair and dyed it blond for the role of Lestat de Lioncourt. He also waxed his chest (this is a rare pic of the actor where some of his chest hair is visible) so that his character has a smooth torso.
  • It (1990) was filmed in the late 80s so naturally Brandon Crane, who played the young Ben, had long floppy '80s Hair. As the child portions are set in 1960, the hair had to be all chopped off.
  • Daniel Roche, a child actor known for having long hair in sitcom Outnumbered, got a short back and sides to star in Just William.
  • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Diane Neal, as Casey Novak, never had the same hair color two seasons running, ranging from painfully Alex Cabot-esque blonde to bright red.
  • Eva Habermann dyed her hair blue to play Xev Bellringer on Lexx. Due to hair damage from the dye, she had to switch to a wig in the second season.
  • Tom Hiddleston grew out his blond hair and dyed it black to play the title character in Loki (2021). This marked the first time since Thor that he played Loki with his own hair as his appearances in the sequels and Avengers movies had him wearing wigs or extensions.
  • Pasquale Finicelli, an actor with naturally dark brown hair, had to dye it blond with a red forelock in order to play Mirko in the Italian teen soap opera Love Me Licia (a live-action sequel of the manga Ai Shite Night, where the male lead Go had Anime Hair like that).
  • Katie McGrath dyes her naturally blonde hair very dark and "stays out of the sun" to play Raven Hair, Ivory Skin Morgana in Merlin (2008).
  • Mimpi Metropolitan: Madkucil cuts his iconic curly hair for the role of straight-haired Bambang.
  • Jason Lee grew Earl's trademark 'stache for My Name Is Earl because he felt like the character needed one.
  • Mackenzie Crook, who played Gareth in The Office (UK), said that he has his character's unflattering bowl cut in his wedding photos, captured for posterity.
  • Once Upon a Time:
    • A marginal example with series lead Jennifer Morrison. She is actually a natural blonde but had been dyeing her hair brown for House. She went back blonde to play Emma Swan. Midway through filming Season 6 she opted to cut her hair to shoulder length, and just wore hair pieces for the remaining episodes.
    • Emilie de Ravin initially just wore a wig to play Belle in Season 1. When she was bumped up to series regular in Season 2, she dyed her hair brown. Notably, in the season premiere, which picks up directly from the finale, her hair is a couple of shades darker. When she became pregnant in Season 5, she reverted to her natural blonde and just wore wigs again.
    • Merrin Dungey dyed her hair blonde to play Ursula.
    • Elizabeth Lail is blonde but became a redhead to play Anna from Frozen (2013).
    • JoAnna Garcia Swisher is a blonde who became a redhead to play Ariel.
  • Eleanor Tomlinson is naturally blonde - she dyed it red for Poldark as she felt it would fit Demelza's character better.
  • Jennifer Ehle cut her hair short for the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, to help it fit under the wig better. The wardrobe people said it actually made it more difficult, as little wisps of blonde hair kept escaping from under the wig - and it would have been easier to pin all the hair up if it had been long.
  • Chloë Annett, The Other Darrin in the role of Kochanski on Red Dwarf, had her long light brown hair cut short and dyed dark brown so that she'd look more like her predecessor Clare Grogan when she took the role in Series VII. In Series VIII, she had her own natural hair (despite the fact that the series premiere took place a matter of minutes after the previous series' finale - the change in appearance was never commented on).
  • Riverdale:
    • KJ Apa has dark brown hair but dyed it red for his role as Archie.
    • Cole Sprouse is blond but dyed his hair black to play Jughead.
  • Melissa Joan Hart had bobbed her hair for the Pilot Movie of Sabrina the Teenage Witch to match Sabrina in the comics. But then she grew her hair out for the actual series (save for the third season).
  • Mark-Paul Gosselaar, whose hair color had darkened as he went through puberty, had to dye his hair and have touch-ups before each episode of Saved by the Bell. His dark roots usually showed though.
  • For Schitt's Creek Annie Murphy dyes her brown hair blonde to play Alexis Rose. In fact, Dan Levy took her to get her hair dyed during the audition process because his father was insistent that Alexis be blonde.
  • Maxim Roy (a brunette) and Sofia Wells (a blonde) dyed their hair red to portray Jocelyn and Young Clary Fray on Shadowhunters, respectively.
  • In Sherlock, both Benedict Cumberbatch (as Sherlock Holmes) and Mark Gatiss (as Mycroft Holmes) dye their hair black. They're both naturally ginger.
  • In the Granada Sherlock Holmes series, David Burke, the first Dr. Watson, dyed his grey hair and mustache auburn to make himself look much younger.
  • Anna Hutchinson had to cut and dye her long blonde hair brown and into a mullet for her role in the soap opera Shortland Street. She was eventually allowed to let her natural hair grow out. Ironically averted for her role in The Cabin in the Woods where her character Jules has just dyed her hair blonde.
  • Skins:
    • Lily Loveless, naturally brunette was bleached twice and toned to peroxide blond.
    • Megan Prescott's hair was dyed bright red to match her twin Kathryn, who had walked in with her hair already dyed red: The stylists decided to Throw It In!.
    • Dakota Blue Richards cut her hair short for the role of Franky Fitzgerald.
  • Michael Rosenbaum shaved his head multiple times a week to play Lex Luthor in Smallville, as well as having to go extensive makeup to create the illusion that he had been bald for most of his life. When he returned for the Grand Finale, he opted for a bald cap. The actress for Maxima also dyed her hair from gold to red. Unfortunately, no one did anything for Lana Lang or Lois Lane.
  • For the initial seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Paramount insisted that Avery Brooks maintain his hair before relenting and allowing him to shave his head starting with the fourth season of the series.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series: Walter Koenig had to grow his hair out to play Chekov, as the creators wanted the character to have a Monkee-like hairstyle due to the band's popularity at the time. (Notably, his first episode, "Catspaw", was shot before his hair had reached the desired length, so he had to wear an extremely obvious wig.)
  • Young actress Millie Bobby Brown had her long hair shaved off for the role of Eleven on Stranger Things.
  • Ashley Tisdale had her hair dyed from brunette to blonde when she did The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. She later went back to being brunette after the High School Musical movies, but when she reprised her role as Sharpay in Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure, she instead used a blonde wig, averting the trope. She later went back to blond in mid 2011 and has stayed that way since.
  • Melissa Benoist is a natural brunette. She went partially blonde for Supergirl (2015) when she had to play Kara Danvers.
  • Natalie Dormer is a natural blonde - she dyed her hair black to play Anne Boleyn on The Tudors. Dormer later claimed that the producers wanted her to keep her blonde hair, but she insisted on the historically-accurate black hair.
  • Jon Cryer was rapidly balding during the last few seasons of Two and a Half Men, so the hair and makeup department used a powdered hair loss concealer to make it seem as though Alan Harper still had a full head of hair. Cryer himself was open about the hair loss and shaved his head shortly after the show ended.
  • Ed Bishop dyed his hair white-blond for the role of Commander Straker in UFO (1970), as the character's look was based on a character voiced by Bishop in Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Captain Blue, but soon switched to a wig because the dye damaged his hair.
  • Poppy Montgomery decided to become a redhead for Unforgettable.
  • Ariana Grande dyed her hair the color of red velvet cupcakes when she was cast as Cat Valentine on Victorious, to avoid having a cast composed entirely of people with dark brown hair. She kept the color when she moved on to Sam & Cat. Years of dyeing her hair wound up severely damaging it (she chose to wear a wig instead of dyeing it for the later episodes) to the point where she started wearing it in a ponytail to cover up all the split ends — which quickly evolved into her defining hairstyle once she went on to pop stardom.
  • From Xena: Warrior Princess, Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Conner are both natural blondes. Lawless dyed her hair brown for the show's run (black for the character's first appearances on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys), while O'Conner dyed her hair red.
  • Gillian Anderson was asked to cut and dye her naturally long blonde hair into an auburn bob for the part of Dana Scully on The X-Files. It was left long and blonde for the 2008 movie I Want to Believe, which fit well with the character (who was supposed to be in hiding), but outraged fans at the change from the Scully they knew.
  • Groucho Marx never had a mustache most of his career; the comedic one he's always depicted with was a fairly obvious greasepaint job. When You Bet Your Life came along in his late career, he refused to do the old greasepaint routine but agreed to grow a real mustache so that fans would recognize him.
  • Keri Russell's infamous haircut in Felicity was written into the script, and the actress went through with the Important Haircut.
  • A mild example with Sarah Chalke in Scrubs. By Season 3, the network demanded a sexier female character to market to the young male demographic. She was then given a makeover to bleach-blonde hair (she's a natural blonde but was a few shades darker in the first two seasons) and shorter haircut (plus a lot more makeup). While the makeup was toned down in later seasons, she kept the hair colour.
  • To play the brown-haired Fabian Rutter on House of Anubis, Brad Kavanagh had to dye his naturally silver hair dark for all three seasons.
  • Young Sheldon: Iain Armitage is a natural blond, but dyes his hair brown to look like Sheldon.

Weight change/Other:

  • Princess Agents: Zhao Li Ying lost eight pounds to play Chu Qiao.
  • Nicholas Brendon put on a noticeable amount of weight in the later seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer because the producers apparently asked him to stop working out, having been too fit to play a nerd in the first few seasons. James Marsters also let himself go a little in the last season because he was tired of doing so many nude scenes when he was much leaner.
  • Jewel Staite was asked by Joss Whedon to put on 20 pounds to play Kaylee in Firefly, which she did. She lost it when the show was canceled but did not regain it for Serenity. She also dyed her hair to play Dr. Jennifer Keller in Stargate Atlantis.
  • Kiefer Sutherland got a real tattoo for 24. In one season, Jack Bauer gets a gang tattoo. In order to avoid hours of makeup every time, Sutherland just got the real thing done.
  • Margaret Cho, shooting her short-lived sitcom All-American Girl (1994), was forced to lose weight to play herself. She lost 30 pounds in three weeks and her kidneys collapsed as a result.
  • Pauley Perrette got a number of her NCIS character Abby Sciuto's tattoos done for real (but not all of them).
    • She already had a lot of tattoos. The spiderweb is not real, although she hates it with a passion because of how sticky it gets.
    • Her hair has also been dyed from her natural blonde to the more well-known black - for the past seven years. In 2014 she developed an allergy to the dye that was so severe that doctors told her if she kept dying her hair it would kill her.
  • Summer Glau was accidentally hit in the face with a brass casing that left a small scar while training to handle weapons for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Rather than have it removed by makeup, Summer instead kept it to help make the character of Cameron more convincing.
  • Tim McInnerny, in the fourth series of Blackadder, gave his character Darling an eye twitch that became a real tic over the repeated takes. He didn't lose it until months after the series ended.
  • Tom Fontana, series creator of the prison drama Oz, volunteered to be the man receiving an upper-arm tattoo of the show's logo. He even asked for the tattooing to be re-shot so as to get it perfect, but the tattoo artist refused, claiming if he applied the needle any longer, Fontana might die.
  • Tricia Helfer dyed her dirty blond-brown hair platinum to play Six on the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, but she switched to a wig a few episodes into the first season because the bleach was causing hair issues (namely, falling out in chunks), which explains how she was able to be both natural haired Gina and platinum Six.
    • In the same series, Edward James Olmos wore blue contact lenses and Jamie Bamber dyed his dark blond hair brown so that they would look more like father and son. For the first post-miniseries episode "33", Olmos consulted with a sleep deprivation expert and reduced his sleeping hours so he could report the effects to the rest of the cast.
    • Jamie Bamber dyes his hair brown for many of his roles.
    • Katee Sackhoff grew her hair out between the second and third seasons. She did Starbuck's Important Haircut for real and on camera.
    • Several of the male cast grew beards during the same gap between seasons to reflect the conditions on New Caprica and the Cylon Occupation.
  • Shea Whigham lost weight in between seasons of Boardwalk Empire to look appropriately gaunt after his character served 18 months in jail during a Time Skip.
  • Rob McElhenny (Mac) did this twice for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
    • He gained 50 lbs for the seventh season and lost most of the weight as the season progressed. He has explained that making his character get fat was part of the sitcom deconstruction that the show is aiming for but was told to lose weight at the advice of his doctor.
    • For the thirteenth season, he did the opposite and spent seven months in a hardcore workout regiment, getting ripped enough to take part in the elaborate dance sequence at the end of "Mac Finds his Pride."
  • In addition to dyeing his hair, Benedict Cumberbatch also lost a lot of weight for the independent film Third Star instead of opting to shave his head. He kept it this way for Sherlock, which he justified by pointing out that Sherlock almost never eats unless he has to, but regained a bit by the second series.
  • Michael Rooker lost 20 pounds to reprise his role as Merle Dixon on The Walking Dead.
  • Barbara Goodson got hit with this hard when she voiced Rita Repulsa for Power Rangers: she was getting jerked around by Saban during pre-production of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. She was given the part and told to voice Rita like the Wicked Witch. She did and was fired. They decided to try to make Rita sound angrier, and rather than let Goodson try, they forced her to reaudition. According to her, she did, and said, "You want angry? [Rita's screech comes out of nowhere] I'LL SHOW YOU ANGRY!" Not knowing she would have to do the part for six years. She mentioned going through a lot of water and cough drops, and we thank her for suffering through.
  • Filming of the HBO film The Normal Heart, about the very early days of the AIDS crisis, actually had to be halted for a month so Matt Bomer could lose 35 pounds for his role as Felix Turner, who contracts the disease; he actually lost so much muscle mass that he barely had the energy to move for the latter half of the shoot.
  • Daredevil (2015): Vincent D'Onofrio put on thirty pounds and shaved his head bald to play Wilson Fisk.
  • The Dropout: To portray the COO of Theranos, Sunny Balwani, Naveen Andrews put on 25 pounds, in addition to wearing prosthetics and putting grey streaks to his hair.
  • Carly Chaikin, while filming Suburgatory, dyed her hair blonde and got a spray tan. In her everyday appearance, she looks a lot more like her character in Mr. Robot, Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette, a role she landed after Suburgatory ended.
  • Katie Cassidy lost a considerable amount of weight for Arrow Season 2 to properly portray her character's descent into alcoholism/drug addiction. She then had to bulk back up in the gym, as the following season her character became the Black Canary and she had to physically fit the part.
  • Band of Brothers:
    • All the main cast endured a grueling two-week boot camp to properly prepare them for playing World War II heroes. All of them adopted 1940s haircuts too.
    • About fifty extras voluntarily shaved their heads to play inmates in a concentration camp for the ninth episode.
  • Pedro Pascal gives the title character of The Mandalorian a raspy voice by screaming into a pillow before speaking.
  • Eric André alters his physical appearance for each season for The Eric Andre Show. In the fourth season, he bleached his skin, outgrew his fingernails, and didn't bath for weeks to achieve what he describes as an 'Eraserhead look'. In the fifth, he shaved all his body hair, tanned his skin and gained weight to portray a more 'decadent' version of himself.
  • The Boys (2019) has Antony Starr dyeing his hair blonde to play Homelander, and Dominique McElligott becoming auburn-colored for Queen Maeve. Both, along with Erin Moriarty's Starlight, also said their costumes fit the trope: Starlight's "squeezed my torso until I couldn't feel my organs" (Moriarty added being skintight gets even worse as she's padded both in the front for the cleavage, and the back to enhance the Heroic Build), Maeve's corset prevented McElligott from properly bending, and the muscle padding in Homelander's suit made things very hot during the Toronto summer (Starr carried around a bag with iced water hosed onto his suit to keep himself cooled, joking he should've put in a pole to pretend it was an IV drip).
  • When she was cast as Paige Matthews on Charmed (1998), Rose McGowan opted to gain about ten pounds to "look super non-threatening".
  • David Suchet in Poirot wore a rubber suit beneath his clothes to portray the chubby Belgian detective, then took it off and wore a corset to portray Poirot during his younger days as a police officer. In the final episode (of the final book, naturally) he took off the bodysuit and lost weight to portray Poirot dying of heart failure.
  • Pam & Tommy had the two main characters portrayed through extensive make-up sessions. Lily James's Pamela Anderson emerged from a prosthetic forehead with thin eyebrows, dentures, blue contact lenses, a prosthetic chest, and a blonde wig. Sebastian Stan at least could keep his hair, even if longer and dyed, for Tommy Lee, while adding in brown contacts, fake tattoos all over his body, and prosthetic pierced nipples. (not to mention a prosthetic penis in the one episode with full frontal nudity...)
  • Saturday Night Live had an In-Universe example. In one sketch, a method actor (played by episode host Woody Harrelson) gains over four hundred pounds to play a morbidly obese man in a film called The Hippo. (He wasn't told that a fat suit was an option.) Unfortunately for him, the film is cancelled because it's a line-for-line copy of The Whale.
  • Red Dwarf: Upon learning that the episode "Terrorform" would involve him being chained to a pillar wearing only a loincloth, Chris Barrie began regularly working out in the gym. The result was a somewhat more jacked Rimmer than one might have expected (much to the surprise of his castmates, who hadn't known what he was doing).

    Music 
  • Enforced with the rather shameful example of castrati. Back in the earlier days of Opera, when prepubescent boys with good singing voices would be castrated so that their voices wouldn't break (and therefore ruin their ability to hit the high notes that composers were so fond of putting in their compositions). This practice eventually died out: castrati were frequently cast as women—which made sense in an age where few women took up acting or singing in operas, which was seen as unladylike somehow. When female opera singing became more socially acceptable and stealing the manhoods of little boys was not, the practice gradually disappeared, and was finally banned in its primary center (Italy) in 1861 (shortly after unification). Only one castrato, Alessandro Moreschi, lived long enough to have his voice recorded during his career.
  • Till Lindemann got a hole pierced in his cheek so he could run a LED light through it for most of Rammstein's "Ich tu dir weh" video (It closed up during filming when he lost the plug keeping it open.).
  • Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance bleached his hair white to portray a dying cancer patient in The Black Parade era.
  • Vocal fold operation is quite common for professional cante flamenco singers.
  • It's rumored that some ballerinas will have their toes broken and reset to be better "en pointe," or to have their ribs removed to be thinner or change their body shapes.
  • Tina Turner famously fried her hair while dyeing it. She's worn wigs since the early 1960s.
  • Both singers of t.A.T.u., Yulia Volkova and Lena Katina. Their manager, Ivan Shapovalov, did many things to make them look younger for his own fetish material. They both bleached their eyebrows, and Lena became blond for "Ya Soshla S Uma/All the Things She Said." Eventually, Lena would brighten her natural red hair, and Yulia had to dye her blonde hair black.
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic had his hair braided for his Bad Hair Day album cover. In his own words, it was "excruciatingly painful".
  • Eminem:
    • After Eminem's album Infinite flopped, Eminem created his Slim Shady persona for his next album, and signalled how serious he was about it by getting "Slim Shady" tattooed on his arm and experimenting with drugs he normally wouldn't have touched, getting Lost in Character to an extent that freaked out his friends and family.
    • Eminem bleached his hair platinum blond to portray Slim Shady and it became his signature, even long after he went back to his natural colour. It also became an iconic '90s Hair look, emulated by many young men.
    • To portray the Serial Killer version of Slim Shady on Relapse, Eminem (who had become obese in 2006) slimmed down to a very low body fat percentage, to the extent of even losing the fat on his face that gave him the cute, boyish appearance he'd been known for previously, giving him Villainous Cheekbones. He'd wanted to look like Christian Bale in The Machinist, but found his body refused to go that low. He still makes a point of showing off his extremely slim new body in the Shirtless Scene and Blood Bath scene in the music video for "3 a.m.", and celebrated finishing off the video by holding a pizza party for himself and the crew.
    • For The Marshall Mathers LP 2, Eminem went blond again, remarking at the time that he felt he'd grown out of it and only planned on keeping it for this particular album. He ended up liking it enough to keep it until 2017, when he reverted to his natural colour and grew a beard.

    Professional Wrestling 
  • Anytime someone loses a Hair-vs-Hair match.
    • One of the first famous cases was actually a hair vs mask, which Bobby Segura lost to El Enmascarado Rojo in on January 4th, 1942 in the now storied Arena Modelo in the main event of an EMLL show. Despite this humiliating setback, Segura would continue to go after the masks of luchadors, though he would never get Rojo's and would go on to be shaved again by Golden Terror in the main event of La Arena 'Canada Dry' show in 1947.
    • In in 1969 NWA Hollywood introduced a USA audience to lucha libre concepts through a feud between Apache Bull Ramos and Mil Mascaras that included a two out of three fall hair vs mask match. Given you're on this page it's no spoiler that Ramos lost.
    • In 1983, All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling introduced a Japanese audience to lucha libre concepts through a feud between Jaguar Yokota and La Galáctica, which included a hair vs hair match that also involved the WWWA Singles title.
    • When the Mexican Box y Lucha Libre comision decided to once again acknowledge luchadoras, one of the first women's hair vs hair matches to take place on a national stage was Medusa's against Irma Águilar at EMLL in 1987. Two years later, Águilar would go on to shave the legendary Martha Villalobos while Rossy Moreno would continue to cement her legacy by shaving Vicky Carranza.
    • Arguably the best example was Molly Holly. Originally during Wrestlemania XX, a Women's Championship match was not on the card. She decided that she needed to do something to get the Women's Title on Wrestlemania, so she offered her hair for it.
  • Molly Holly did this more than anyone. When she initially debuted as Miss Madness in WCW she bleached her hair blonde and glammed herself up to look like a pageant queen. When her character underwent a Face–Heel Turn she darkened her hair to autumn brown and cut it (half symbolic to fit the new character, and half practical as her hair had been fried from years of bleaching). Then came the head shave...
  • John Tenta had his LSU tiger tattoo changed to a shark to fit his new gimmick. Later as part of an angle, he shaved one half his head bald, leaving the other half skulleted.
  • Bodybuilder, fitness model and nWo Girl April Hunter has red hair, of an auburn shade. Because this tends to appear brown on camera, she took to dying the ends a brighter orange-red. (which can be contrasted with SoCal Val, another red who sometimes appears alongside her and doesn't do so)
  • For a while after he became the Hurricane, Shane Helms dyed a strip of hair on top of his head green. To get the green to stand out, he had to bleach his hair first. All the dyeing fried his hair and he had to stop.
  • Kurt Angle, after losing a Hair-vs-Hair match, wore a (bad) toupee for a while. In true heel fashion, he would freak out when someone pointed out it was a toupee. Once the toupee comedy ran its course, he debuted his bald look by whipping the toupee off and smiling until the fans quit heckling him. Like Jon Cryer above, Angle went through with the idea because he was losing his hair anyway.
  • For a good amount of time, Natalya Neidheart dyed her naturally blonde hair red, because there were too many blonde Divas in WWE. She's since gone back to her natural hair color, but with pink streaks as part of her new gimmick embracing her Hart heritage, whose signature colors were pink and black.
  • Jillian Hall felt she wanted to get breast implants when she was in OVW and Jim Cornette decided it would become her gimmick so she bleached her hair blonde as well and the storyline was that the implants leaked into her brain and turned her into a Dumb Blonde.
  • Roxxi Laveaux in TNA dyed her hair various colors to fit with her Voodoo Queen gimmick. The dye ended up stripping her hair which led to another example of the trope - where she infamously had her head shaved at the 2008 Sacrifice PPV.
  • Zack Ryder initially debuted in WWE with long red hair. When he was given his "Long Island Iced Z" gimmick, he cut his hair short and bleached it, as well as tanned excessively, to fit the character.
  • Serena Deeb had her head shaved bald on her Smackdown debut when she joined CM Punk and his Straight Edge Society. Reportedly, producers had gone around asking all the developmental Divas and Serena was the only one willing to have her head shaved. Punk himself later followed through on this and had his head shaved as a result of losing a match. Adding to the effect was the fact that the shaving had to happen while he had staples in his head from a cut during the match.
  • Madison Rayne went a few shades lighter to platinum blonde and gave herself black streaks when she joined The Beautiful People in TNA. When she switched gimmicks to a Rich Bitch instead she dyed her hair brown.
  • Snitsky (a.k.a. Gene Snitsky) revamped his WWE gimmick to be more psychopathic, and to that end, he not only shaved his head but dyed his teeth dark yellow.
  • Some noteworthy body transformations:
    • When Davey Boy Smith first came to the WWF in 1985 as 1/2 of the British Bulldogs tag team, he was a muscular but not-too-big 245 pounds. After they left and Davey returned on his own in the early 1990s, he had begun using steroids and had gained 30 pounds of muscle.
    • Chyna first came into the WWF in 1997 with huge muscles, especially in her biceps and had very masculine facial features. She was so much bigger than the other women (she was billed as weighing 201 pounds, but actually weighed around 180) that she was assigned to wrestling with the men. By late-2000, she had shed 20 pounds of muscle mass in order to achieve a more feminine look and received several cosmetic surgeries as well as wearing skimpier outfits and more makeup. Her new look succeeded in getting her a Playboy pictorial, but she now lacked the size to be a believable opponent for men and was reassigned to the women's division.
  • Most WWE Divas get breast implants before or during their time in the company, either because they are asked to or due to insecurities. You could probably count on one hand how many women do not have them.
  • Leah Van Dale is naturally brunette and pale. But to portray Carmella, she dyed her hair a mixture of light brown and blonde before eventually going fully blonde and applying Brownface.
  • Inverted with Paige. She'd been dyeing her naturally dark blonde hair black for years and reverted back to it for a try-out. She was unsuccessful but tried out a second time with black hair and was signed instantly.
  • Becky Lynch was blonde when she was signed to WWE. Shortly before she debuted on live events, she dyed her hair red to fit the Oireland character they wanted for her. Although she dropped the character pretty quickly, she kept the red hair - and even lightened it to bright orange as part of a steampunk look.
  • Downplayed by Alexa Bliss, who was fully blonde when she was signed. She first added purple into her hair, then blue and then red.
  • Eva Marie was signed to WWE with dark brown hair. Management wanted her to change her color to avoid being mistaken for the Bella Twins. She first got a few red streaks in, and the next day was told to become platinum blonde. Eva balked at that idea and became fire engine red instead. Luckily for her, management liked it and 'All Red Everything' became her catchphrase.
  • Enzo Amore had a rather low-key hairstyle when he was first signed to WWE. He eventually became known for outrageous and impressive adjustments to his coif - notably shaving a leopard print design into the sides. In 2015 he also bleached his hair blond as a tribute to Dusty Rhodes.
  • Aksana was blonde when she first arrived in WWE. Management abruptly decided to change her character from a Dumb Blonde Funny Foreigner to a Femme Fatale. She had to dye her hair black for this. The character was actually the idea of fellow Diva Maxine, who also had to do this to distinguish her from Aksana's new look - she dyed her black hair blonde. She later went red and then eventually back to black.
  • Sasha Banks had dark blonde hair when she debuted in WWE. Upon adopting 'The Boss' persona, she later dyed her hair red and eventually to pink.
  • Naomi added green tips to her hair when she adopted her 'Feel The Glow' gimmick. The hair glowed in the dark as a result.
  • Adrienne Reese gave herself blonde tips and eventually silver when she adopted her Ember Moon character on NXT.
  • Jay Lethal had his head shaved by Bullet Club towards the end of 2015.
  • Bill Goldberg shaved his head because he found his previous mullet to be incredibly irritating. Many believe he did it to copy "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, which he stated was not the case.
  • Subverted by Aliyah who dyed her brown hair black after getting signed to WWE (in what many fans assumed to be an attempt to look more stereotypically Arab). However, she reverted to her original color by the time she debuted on TV.
  • Krissy Vaine claims that she had about five tryout matches with WWE and was told they couldn't hire her because she looked too similar to Torrie Wilson (their exact words: "we already have one of those"). She darkened her hair slightly and was hired immediately. Then after a few months, she opted to go back to her original color and was told she was going on the road. And would debut in a segment with Torrie Wilson.
  • Cameron had black hair when she debuted in The Funkadactyls. Apparently, because people had trouble telling her and Naomi apart, she first dyed the ends light brown and then went fully blonde. She added purple into the hair shortly before her release.
  • The Bella Twins may be identical twins, but Nikki claims that she has a naturally more voluptuous body than her sister. So in order to match Brie's waifier frame, she had to do daily ab and cardio workouts. In 2013 this was abandoned as she got into bodybuilding and developed a more muscular physique.
  • Angela Fong lightened her hair when she was called up to TV to avoid being mistaken for Gail Kim.
  • Kazza opted to become blonde in 2015, to distinguish herself from Katey Harvey and Valkyrie as the other women in Irish wrestling. She added purple into her hair in 2017 for a bit.
  • When Big Show debuted in WCW as "The Giant", he permed his hair, presumably to look more like André the Giant, since he was supposed to be André's Kayfabe son. He stopped doing so around late 1996 once he joined the New World Order.
  • Early in his career, Mark Calaway was sometimes billed as "Texas Red" because of his reddish-brown hair. After signing with WWE, he dyed it black as part of his Undertaker persona.

    Theatre 
  • Tim Curry dyed his hair blonde during the stage production of The Rocky Horror Show.
  • Carolee Carmello was cast as the takeover for Carla in the Musical Nine they had no time to make a wig, so she dyed her brown hair red. She kept the colour ever as she received more parts because of it.
  • Megan Hilty dyed her hair brown near the end of her Broadway run as Glinda in Wicked, and kept it through her run as Mary in The Musical of Vanities, but wore blonde wigs for both characters.
  • In We Will Rock You, the Character of Scaramouche has Purple hair which is very obviously dyed from brown or black, the actress, depending on the production, may be asked to dye, or have their hair dyed purple for the role.
  • David Thaxton dyed his hair a lighter shade of blond when he was playing Enjolras in Les Misérables

    Theme Parks 
  • At Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights 2010, all of the actors in the Havoc: Dogs of War house were required to shave their heads to more accurately play genetically-altered super-soldiers, including the girls. This has led to some surprisingly good reviews of the house so far, despite being predicted as that year's flop, as the cast arguably consists of the most dedicated performers in the whole event. Some of them have gone slightly nuts in their performances and risked damaging sets.

    Web Originals 
  • Jermaine of The Awkward Compilation got his buzzed mohawk look to look authentically douchey. He had to keep it that way for two months.
  • Cracked has a few maligned examples here (except number one, which is more Method Acting).
  • Jodi Behan the titular bride in the famous viral video "Bride Has Massive Hair Wig-Out" did indeed cut off her hair for the video. She actually got the starring role because she was the only one of the four actresses willing to do so.
  • Homestar Runner: Parodied in the commentary for "In Search Of... The Yello Dello", where Strong Bad explains an Off-Model Homestar by claiming "Homestar gained a hundred pounds and shrank two feet for this role."
  • According to The Nostalgia Critic commentary of Turbo, they filmed in a heatwave and Doug could have passed out in his skintight outfit (and heavy helmet) but wanted more retakes because his tie didn't look right.
  • Whateley Universe: The Transfer Students:
    "Desdemona is normally played by a blonde," he said with a sheepish grin. "Would you have any aversion to dyeing your hair for the production?"
    "I never have…" I told him hesitantly. "Couldn't I just wear a wig?"
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd: James Rolfe mentioned in his commentary of The Addams Family video that for the role of Gomez, he did grow out his moustache and purchase a real cigar to look as authentic as possible.
  • Caddicarus: In "The Depressing World of Bad Crash Bandicoot Games, Caddy shaved off his beard for the first time in years for the sake of a three second joke where he places a "C" on his chin in response to Velo having a "V" on his chin.

    Western Animation 
  • Matthew Lillard permanently damaged his vocal cords perfecting his Shaggy Rogers voice after he took on the role full-time post Casey Kasem retiring. His voice is so irreparably changed that even when he's just giving interviews, there's a noticeable, Shaggy-like tinge to his voice that's missing from appearances before he took on the role long-term. Reportedly, he managed the raspy timbre by screaming himself hoarse before takes, including doing so in his car before auditioning for the role. Now imagine being in the next car over in the parking lot...
  • Referenced in-universe in The Simpsons. In one episode, Rainier Wolfcastle is seen coming out of a convenience store, grossly overweight and in the middle of gorging himself further. Wolfcastle informs his onlookers that he's preparing for a role as a fat secret agent.

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