Every day more and more celebrities with gray hair are saying no to covering up their natural color.
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Gray hair, once a sure sign of aging that seemingly didn’t appear on famous women, is quickly becoming embraced by all kinds of celebrities. For Andie MacDowell, whose gray hair started coming in when she had to skip salon visits during quarantine, it’s about that salt-and-pepper look—just like the men in Hollywood, who have always been allowed to age without much fuss.
“At the very beginning of quarantine, my hair started growing, and every time my kids would see me, they kept telling me I looked [great] with my gray hair,” she revealed in an interview. “When I pulled it up in a bun, all you could see was the salt-and-pepper, which is what I am, you know, dark and silver. I like to compare myself to George Clooney because, why not? I’ve been saying for a while now it was time for me, personally, to make that transition because I felt like it was appropriate for my personality and just who I am.”
If you’re not ready to go all the way there yet but want to try incorporating gray into your look, there’s a process called gray blending that lets you do just that. It’s a transitional style that uses your natural grays kind of like highlights, while also preserving colorful undertones.
“In the past we have seen trends dominate fashion, such as the perm era, the highlight decade, balayage, vivid colors, and tonal work,” says Robert Eaton, technical director of Wella Professionals. “Now there is a move toward natural hair enhancement, and gray blending is the new movement in hair color.”
For inspiration on that look and more, here are some of the celebrities with gray hair who have embraced their natural color—and are totally pulling it off.
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Hayek, who recently shared her surprising trick for covering gray hairs, chose to embrace her natural streaks of white while sitting courtside at Wimbledon.
Katie Holmes
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The star showed off her gray roots with a chic side braid while out and about in New York City.
Jane Fonda
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Jane Fonda first debuted her short silver hair at the Oscars, like the legend she is. Fonda’s stylist said, “Her goal color was a silver icy blonde to surprise everyone at the 2020 Oscars.” The process to dye her hair completely gray took seven hours but was worth it.
Andie MacDowell
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The rom-com star’s curls are a part of her signature look, so her decision to transition to lowlights on graying hair made her managers nervous. “My managers had actually said to me, ‘It’s not time [to go gray],’” she said in July 2021. “And I said, ‘I think you’re wrong, and I’m going to be more powerful if I embrace where I am right now. It’s time because in two years I’m going to be 65. If I don’t do it now, I won’t have the chance to be salt-and-pepper.’”
Bonnie Raitt
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Making white-streaked hair a thing since the 1970s. Raitt has poliosis, a rare hair condition that zaps melanin from certain parts of her hair. The singer has said that the streak came in when she was 24 and started “expanding” as her career took off, so she dyed the rest of her hair red around the streak, making that front piece a part of her signature look.
Diane Keaton
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Forever an iconoclast, Keaton is the definition of aging with style. She had black-and-white hair for a while, but now prefers an allover light shade to complement her always kooky style.
Sarah Jessica Parker
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SJP made a bold statement appearing on the cover of Vogue with gray in her hair while promoting the Sex and the City revival, And Just Like That…. “‘Gray hair, gray hair, gray hair. Does she have gray hair?’ I don’t know what to tell you, people,” she said to Vogue of the ageism women face in Hollywood. “It almost feels as if people don’t want us to be perfectly okay with where we are, as if they almost enjoy us being pained by who we are today, whether we choose to age naturally and not look perfect, or whether you do something if that makes you feel better.”
Helen Mirren
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The quintessential sophisticated, mature woman. After seeing how she looked with gray powder covering her hair to play Queen Charlotte in The Madness of King George, she decided to just go for it. “I have to say it was very easy for me because my hair was always blonde,” Mirren told Vogue.
Jamie Lee Curtis
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Jamie Lee Curtis is all about keeping it real. “In the world, there is an industry—a billion-dollar, trillion-dollar industry—about hiding things,” she shared on Instagram. “Concealers. Body shapers. Fillers. Procedures. Clothing. Hair accessories. Hair products. Everything to conceal the reality of who we are. And my instruction to everybody was: I want there to be no concealing of anything.”
Meryl Streep
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She’s gone gray for roles—Miranda Priestly’s icy hair, the gray balayage in The Giver—and now she’s incorporating gray into her blonde on the red carpet too.
Originally published in Glamour.com
