22-05-2025
Celebs whose famous hairstyles are NOT real: After Nicole Kidman's wig mishap, the other stars whose natural hair is very different from the look fans know so well
When we think of certain A-listers, it's often the signature hairstyle they rose to fame with that springs to mind first.
Jennifer Aniston 's hair was so famous at the heigh of Friends, it had its own name and spawned a generation of layered 'Rachel' cuts.
Meanwhile, Emma Stone 's unique auburn strands are a huge part of her identity as the 'cool girl' of cinema, while Katy Perry 's jet-black wavy mane - with or without a fringe - was a trademark of her vintage-style pop icon look.
However, with the best stylists at their disposal, Hollywood stars can do an extremely effective job at hiding their natural look - and create a strikingly different style bearing little resemblance to the locks they were born with.
Gwen Stefani is well known for her platinum blonde tresses from her No Doubt days and when she starred in the Hollaback Girl music video - but she is actually a brunette by birth.
Although Gwen's style was seemingly a choice, Sofia Vergara said that she dyed her hair darker to get more jobs in Hollywood, as did Olivia Wilde.
Meanwhile, fans might be surprised to know that Jennifer Aniston smooth blonde strands are actually naturally brunette and much curlier, while her namesake JLo also boasts curls and dark brown hair.
Katy Perry
Those who grew up listening to Katy Perry's music will find it difficult to believe that the raven-haired bombshell would have any other coloured hair.
However, the California Gurls singer, 40, was actually born a blonde.
Almost eight years ago, the star uploaded a throwback image of her singing into a microphone aged 13, with a short, choppy light sandy blonde bob.
As she got older, Katy's tresses seemed to darken which caused her to go a more mousy brown shade.
She told Glamour in 2015 that she finds her natural hue 'boring' and therefore turned to experimenting with her strands as a teenager.
'I'm naturally the most boring dishwater squirrel brown,' The mother-of-one said.
'So I've been playing with colours since I was 15. I loved the grunge green, and shocking blue was fun. Coloured hair is such a huge accessory that you don't even need to add extra stuff.'
When her 2014 single 'Birthday' came out in 2014, she posted a childhood snap on X, then known as Twitter.
It showed her as a blonde child back when she was 'Katheryn Hudson' - a Santa Barbara Christian School student raised by Pentecostal pastor parents.
Emma Stone
The actress, 36, is known throughout Hollywood as being the redhead and is cast as such in most films, such as Easy A and La La Land.
But despite how well she suits her auburn locks, Emma is in fact naturally a blonde, like Katy Perry.
The Cruella star told Refinery 29: 'My hair grows out blonde, but my colouring is similar to that of a redhead.
'So... I really like having red hair. I'm a natural blonde, but I really like the red.'
So although Emma's appearance in the Spiderman films as Gwen Stacey may have felt strange, the platinum colour is more in-keeping with her the strands that she was born with.
Although she admits that she adores her fiery hair, in 2023, Emma decided to go back to her roots and embrace her vanilla-toned hair - debuting the look on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Her hair stylist uploaded an image of Emma with light tresses at the time and many fans said they loved her new hairstyle, calling it 'gorgeous'.
Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Aniston was dubbed one of the biggest icons not just for style, but for her choice of haircut.
In the mid-1990s, when she appeared on Friends as Rachel Green, the Murder Mystery actress had numerous women in the nineties rush to their hairdressers with a picture of her begging stylists to cut 'The Rachel'.
The 56-year-old had a shoulder-length hairstyle with a lot of volume and distinctive layers, especially around the face.
Jennifer also had strands of highlighted blonde hair throughout her caramel-brown tresses.
And for the past 30 years, Jennifer has pretty much had a light brown mane with dirty blonde strands scattered throughout.
However, when she was starting out as an actress, she sported her natural hair colour, which is a dark chestnut brown.
Jennifer looks strikingly different in pictures from when she was 21 years old - often shocking her fans when they come across the vintage images online.
Angelina Jolie
Angelina has had many notable roles in films as the powerful brunette, take the Tomb Raider films and Mr & Mrs Smith as examples.
It's hard to imagine the 49-year-old with anything other than her signature cocoa-coloured hair.
When she starred in Gone In 60 Seconds and Life Or Something Like It debuting blonde hair, lovers of the performer barely recognised her.
However, Angelina was born with honey-coloured curls and allegedly said it was her mother who was the first one to dye her hair dark.
She reportedly told German magazine Das Neue: 'My natural colour is dark blonde. But when I was four or five, my mother dyed my hair dark brown, and she decided to keep it that way. And I stuck with that.'
Angelina recently stepped out donning golden locks last week at the Cannes Film Festival after dying her hair lighter in February.
Nicole Kidman
The Babygirl actress, 57, recently raised eyebrows after suffering a blunder when her mesh wig cap became visible at the Cannes Film Festival.
She posed on the red carpet with the hairpiece despite her real hair being woven into it during the 2025 Kering Women in Motion Award event last week.
Nicole is often seen at events with light strawberry blonde locks but often wears her hair in a straightened blow-dry.
This is a far cry from the mother-of-four's natural hair colour and texture, as she used to have dark, ashy auburn hair which was almost brown in colour.
When looking back at throwback pictures of the rising star in her younger years, she has curly, ringlets and looks unrecognisable to recent appearances.
Nicola recently showed off her natural tresses when she enjoyed lunch in the French Riviera with The Last Of Us star Pedro Pascal earlier this week.
Jennifer Lopez
Jennifer Lopez has been sporting the caramel brown, popular with the likes of Jennifer Aniston and Sofia Vergara.
However, the singer and actress, who hails from The Bronx in New York City, has much darker hair than she is usually seen with.
Whereas JLo, 55, often steps out with expertly styled honey brown hair, Jenny From The Block naturally had dark chocolate-coloured curly strands in her youth.
Her long-time stylist Tracey Cunningham told Refinery29: 'Sometimes I add in more blonde highlights, which blend with the honey and light brown tones.'
However, going lighter when you were born a dark brunette means that you will likely have to invest a lot of money into maintaining the look.
Tracey added: 'I touch up her colour as needed, which is usually more frequently when she's filming.
'While this colour can work for anyone, it does require a lot of maintenance, which can be costly, so I suggest seeing your colourist every six weeks for a touch-up and gloss.'
Sofia Vergara
Best known as the hot-headed Colombian Gloria from Modern Family, Sofia Vergara has gone through the opposite hair colour journey to Jennifer Lopez.
Instead, she was born with naturally light blonde, which seemed to puzzle casting agents.
She explained that she was asked dye her hair darker when she got the role of Cici, a spitfire cocktail waitress, in 2003 film Chasing Papi.
Sofia, 52, told Parade in July 2011: 'I'm a natural blonde, like my siblings.
'When I started auditioning for American acting roles, they didn't know where to put me. A blonde Latina?
'In LA, they're used to Latin women looking more Mexican. But if you go to Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, everybody is blonde.'
Gwen Stefani
Gwen Stefani, 55, came onto the music scene as part of the band No Doubt with hits such as It's My Life and Hella Good in the early noughties.
She is now known for her bright blonde and it's challenging to think of a time when she did not have platinum tresses.
However, while Gwen has made her golden strands part of her signature images, lovers of the singer were amazed to find out that she was actually born a dark brunette.
She posted an old image of her as a brunette baby on her father's lap on Father's Day back in 2014 and many of the comments were from astonished fans who said: 'So you weren't actually blonde?!'
Her hairstylist Danilo Dixon previously told Refinery29 that he actually colours her hair every single week to keep her dark roots at bay with a bleach-free formula that he whipped up just for Gwen.
He said: 'I developed a high lift formula for her. I learned that I could get to a place of achieving the blond that I want, and the quality of hair that we need and want, by using a new product, as opposed to just bleach.'
Although she hasn't been seen for many years as a brunette, Gwen actually sported a shade more similar to her hereditary colour in her 'Cool' music video, where she plays a girl with wavy brown hair.
Olivia Wilde
The actress and director, 41, stepped onto the scene with natural champagned-coloured blonde hair in 2003.
She admits to dying her hair 'every single colour' in 2013, including 'purple, green, red' and 'sometimes a mixture of all three'.
Olivia told Into The Gloss: 'After that I was blonde for a long time; I've been bleached platinum blonde, I've been dark blonde, I've had black hair, I've had dark red hair…. I feel like I've actually done every single colour, and somehow my hair hasn't fallen out.
'Now, I only change it for work. I try to give it a rest, otherwise, but it still changes a lot. It's been, like, five colours in 2012.'
However, Olivia told the outlet that despite being a blonde by birth, she feels 'more like a brunette'.
She added: 'I spent the first couple years of my career as a very blond blond. And then I went brunette for a role, and suddenly all my offers changed — the types of roles people approached me with totally changed.'
Olivia said that she would get roles as 'the pretty girl' or 'the sexy hot chick' when she was blonde.
However, when she dyed her hair darker, people would approach her for role as 'doctors' or 'a waitress with a heart of gold'.
