1.
Miley Cyrus recently revealed that she wore “250 individual hair extensions” to achieve her signature look, best seen in the final seasons of Hannah Montana. “If it was under 250, my mom wasn’t having it. Tish [Miley’s mom] would say, ‘We need another row!'” she explained.
2.
Taika Waititi wore a wig to play Blackbeard on Our Flag Means Death. He actually hated wearing it, though, and said, “It was very annoying to wear the beard and the wig. No one ever likes it. Also, you can’t have a real conversation with someone because all the glue keeps your whole face tight, and as soon as you actually smile properly, it breaks all the glue, and things start peeling off.”
3.
Ted Danson wore a hairpiece on Cheers to cover his receding hairline. At first, he’d wear it all the time — even when he was at home — but eventually felt comfortable enough with his hair that he could leave the hairpiece at work.
4.
Rachel McAdams wore a wig when she played Regina George in Mean Girls. According to her costar, Rajiv Surendra, Rachel didn’t want to bleach all of her hair but agreed to lighten the front pieces so the wig could look realistic.
5.
Rachel Zegler wore a wig to play Lucy Gray Baird in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. She said that the wig was what helped her get into character each day. “I had really short brown hair, and I’m wearing a wig for the entirety of the film. And getting into that wig every morning was just kind of like … the last piece to flip the switch and say, ‘This is who we are today.’ So I absolutely felt that for Lucy Gray,” she said.
6.
Brandon Parea wore a wig in Twisters even though his character Boone wore hats for most of the movie.
7.
Robin Tunney wore a wig for The Craft because, at the time, her head was shaved for the movie Empire Records, which wrapped a month before.
8.
Tessa Thompson wore a $10,000 wig for Thor: Ragnarok. At the time, she was also filming the movie Sorry To Bother You, in which she dyed her hair neon orange.
9.
Kate Winslet wore a two-toned colored wig when she starred in Mare of Easttown. The makeup team added hair to her eyebrows too. “For this role, we wanted to change me, but not in obvious ways. It’s amazing what you can do when you change the hair and change the person’s clothes to what you’re used to seeing,” she said.
10.
Paget Brewster wore a black wig while playing Emily Prentiss on Criminal Minds. In 2018, she decided to cut off her dyed hair and let it grow in her natural gray color. She’s since donned her gray hair in Criminal Minds: Evolution.
11.
Sarah Paulson ended up wearing four different wigs to play Marcia Clark in American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson. When filming for the show wrapped, she asked if she could keep her “chia pet wig” so she could keep it in a box and put it whenever she wanted to.
12.
Bob Odenkirk wore hair pieces for the entirety of Better Call Saul. Since the series is a prequel to Breaking Bad, his character is supposed to be several years younger. Then, over the course of the series, as his character lost his hair, the wigs became thinner.
13.
Ariana Grande wore a wig in her series Sam & Cat. After bleaching and dyeing her hair red for Victorious, Ariana said the process “destroyed” her hair. The wig helped her avoid any more damage.
14.
Dacre Montgomery wore a wig to play Billy on Stranger Things. He explained in Season 2 that it was his actual hair on top and a wig for the sides of the mullet, but by Season 3, he wore a full wig.
16.
Jennifer Lawrence wore wigs for the final two Hunger Games movies because her hair was so damaged from dyeing it for the first two films. During her breaks between films, Jennifer would want to go back to blonde, so she’d spend hours bleaching it only to dye it dark again. She finally ended up cutting it into a pixie to get rid of the damage.
17.
John Krasinski wore a wig for a few episodes of The Office because he had to cut his hair to appear in the movie Leatherheads. At first, producers told him not to cut his hair because they didn’t want him to wear a wig, but he cut it anyway. Then, at a meeting, he showed up secretly wearing a wig that looked exactly like Jim’s shaggy bowl cut.
18.
Julianna Margulies wore a $10,000 wig for The Good Wife. She explained that since she has naturally curly hair, it would be much faster to style it with a wig. “My own hair is very curly, and they wanted her to look coiffed and have straight hair,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, 22 episodes a year, 14 hours a day,’ and if the weather changes, my hair starts growing like a Chia pet.”
19.
Finally, Ashley Benson wore a wig during Season 4 of Pretty Little Liars. She said she was “tired” of being blonde and dyed her hair brunette, but her PLL character was iconically blonde, so she was forced to wear a wig.