Some of us may like to go shorter in summer, but a few stars nearly took it all off. From Anne Hathaway’s Fantine pixie cut to Miley Cyrus’s much-discussed punky platinum do, see which celebrities went to shocking new lengths (and colors).
What a summer it’s been for Miley Cyrus. First, with her announcement that she plans to marry boyfriend Liam Hemsworth, she got set to become the latest in a long line of teen celebrity brides; then her look went from Miss “Party in the U.S.A.” to Sid Vicious’s little sister. The dramatic punk cut drew more than a few unwelcome comparisons to Draco Malfoy’s white-blond do from the Harry Potter movies, but so far, Miley seems to be loving it. At least, so we gather from her nearly daily Twitter photo record.
John Mayer’s A-list love life may look like a revolving door, but his apparent breakup with his latest ladyfriend, Katy Perry, seems to have affected him more than usual—some are saying it actually got him to cut his hair. Mayer had been sporting long, grungy locks since going into hiding after his disastrous Playboy and Rolling Stone interviews in 2010, but at an appearance at a Hollywood Reporter party for Mindy Kaling’s upcoming show, The Mindy Project, the singer debuted a new, spiffier hairdo.
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Is that you, Peggy?! Mad Men actress Elisabeth Moss pulled a Miley and debuted a peroxide-blonde pixie cut last week at the New York premiere of For a Good Time, Call ... We’ve sure come a long way from the excruciatingly wispy bangs phase.
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Miley Cyrus may have sparked a mini-uproar among her fans with her surprising new do, but in terms of drama, it’d be hard to top Charlize Theron’s haircut. The Prometheus star went completely bald in June for her role in her upcoming film Mad Max: Fury Road.
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Arrested Development actress Portia de Rossi went for drama this summer too, cutting off her long blond hair into a much shorter bob. Though de Rossi’s wife, Ellen DeGeneres, said she wasn’t a part of the decision-making process, she gave the cut her seal of approval and said de Rossi’s new look was “adorable.”
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John Mayer may not be the only one sporting a breakup hairdo this summer. A month after Desperate Housewives’ series finale aired, Teri Hatcher channeled her inner Lois Lane and chopped her locks into a bob reminiscent of the one she wore during her Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman days.
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Poor Anne Hathaway. First, as she explained to Allure in June, she “went into the gym for 10 months and didn’t come out” in order to fit into her “psychological terrorist” of a Catwoman suit for The Dark Knight Rises. Then she subsisted on a 500-calorie diet of just hummus and radishes to achieve the emaciated look of Fantine, the character she’ll portray in the upcoming Les Misérables. And then, also for Fantine’s sake, she chopped off her gorgeous long locks. “I wasn’t expecting it to be a big deal,” she said last month while on Live! With Kelly. “It was my idea to do it, since it was something the character did … [But then] I realized I couldn’t take it back.” She added that the full realization put her in tears. “[I was] a mental patient level of crying … I was inconsolable.”
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Singer Alicia Keys has been through more than a few hair phases—remember the braids?—but her hair usually stays long. Not anymore—the R&B chanteuse tweeted a photo last month of her new, versatile bob, styled up into an ’80s-inspired do. “Look what I done did,” she wrote.
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The exact extent to which Justin Bieber has affected planet Earth probably can’t be measured, but it does say something when even fellow teen idols are rocking the Bieber do. Liam Payne, member of boy band One Direction, was rocking a suspiciously familiar sideswept haircut until this month, when he trimmed his hair into a shorter, more grown-up look—which, come to think of it, also looks kind of familiar …
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X-Men: First Class actress Zoe Kravitz also cropped her hair into a pixie cut this summer and classily premiered the choppy do at a Chanel event in June.
Marion Curtis / AP Photo; Larry Busacca / Getty Images
And finally, our award for best haircut of the summer goes to … Ellen DeGeneres! Just kidding. The talk show host Photoshopped Miley Cyrus’s controversial cut onto a photo of her head—and we must say, it looks pretty good on her.
