Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

At Movieline, Elvis Mitchell marvels at the transformative power that a pair of hair scissors and a wet comb can have on an actor's persona and impact.

Specifically, on Owen Wilson in the new Farrelly brothers comedy Hall Pass, where he looks as if he's ready to receive First Communion:



...the magic touch that redefines Wilson in Pass is that his shaggy hair has been pushed back. His forehead gives everything away ? as if it?s a screen where he?s compulsively texting exactly what he?s thinking and feeling. It?s the real surprise in Pass; suddenly Wilson?s transparent, so easy to read that you?d want to play poker for pink slips with him. He?s gone from being boyish to childlike. Savvy filmmakers know how to exploit this quality; in Brick, Rian Johnson gave Joseph Gordon-Levitt the sheepdog coif that Wilson usually sports, which made Gordon-Levitt furtive, while in A Single Man, Tom Ford?s slicking Colin Firth?s hair back had the opposite effect ? Firth?s forehead reveals nothing, a high-beamed implacability.



That's the inscrutable look I go for, too, forehead-wise, ever since I cut my russet bangs.

Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2011/02/from-hair-to-eternity.html

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