A brief visual history of bowl cuts in movies

The bowl cut

Some things just won't die.

Like "Duck Face" or that sexy KFC fried chicken sandwich Halloween costume, the bowl cut just keeps slithering back into our current cultural discourse. Why? We asked Oscar-winning hair and makeup designer Alessandro Bertolazzi, who gave Timothée Chalamet his bowl cut in Netflix's The King, to find out.

"It's become so popular because people like changing it and it's a continuing evolution," he says. "People like it to be...an imitation of becoming like [the stars]."

There's not much to the bowl cut. It's the look after your parents place a bowl on your head as a kid and trim the hair around the edges. It's been around since medieval times, which is why it also makes a comeback in The King. Director David Michôd told EW, "There's really only one existing portrait of Henry V. It's a famous bowl haircut."

Throughout Hollywood history, the bowl cut has mostly remained the same, though the context continues to change. Here's a brief look at the hairdo's onscreen evolution.

Moe Howard in The Three Stooges (1922–1970)

Given its once goofy, juvenile look, the bowl cut was often used for comedy, most notably by Moe Howard of The Three Stooges, the eponymous comedy troupe that graced the small and big screens for decades.

Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek (1966–2013)

Leonard Nimoy's severe edges reflect the no-nonsense man that is Spock on the Enterprise deck.

Agnès Varda in life (1950s–2019)

Film icon Agnès Varda gets all the passes until the end of time for embracing the bowl cut, as seen in such documentaries as Faces Places and Varda by Agnès.

The Beatles in A Hard Day's Night (1964)

The Beatles and their bowl cuts make their feature film debut in this borderline mockumentary-style look inside a day in the life of the bandmates.

Barret Oliver in The NeverEnding Story (1984)

The saddest part about The NeverEnding Story, other than everything around that Artax scene, is the look Barret Oliver is serving as Bastian.

Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber (1994)

The bowl cut's comedic comeback came again with Jim Carrey's Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber, which spawned more bowl cuts in Dumb and Dumberer and Dumb and Dumber To. It became referred to as "The Lloyd." In 2014, Carrey proceeded to ruin other people's lives by giving pedestrians bowl cuts on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Eric Lloyd in The Santa Clause (1994)

Eric Lloyd's Charlie, son of Scott Calvin turned Santa Claus (Tim Allen), became the bowl cut poster child for '90s millennials.

Nicholas Hoult in About a Boy (2002)

Talk about a glow-up for Mr. Nicholas Hoult.

Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men (2007)

This one is borderline bob and bowl cut, but however you classify it, Javier Bardem reportedly said when he saw it for the first time: "Now I won't get laid for the next two months." Paul LeBlanc, the head hairdresser for No Country for Old Men, told The Guardian he translated the look from the Crusades, "when knights and Muslims were murdering each other, and this was a typical haircut. It was a dangerous time and we wanted to make Javier timeless and dangerous at first sight."

The character Vector in Despicable Me (2010)

Even animation welcomed the hairstyle in the form of the villainous Vector, as voiced by Jason Segel.

John Goodman in Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

John Goodman takes credit for his look in Inside Llewyn Davis, modeling it after saxophonist Gerry Mulligan.

Ezra Miller in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

Ezra Miller, the Hedwig of the red carpet, may have ditched the bowl cut for the Fantastic Beasts sequel, but no manner of memory wipe charms can clear this image from the first of the Harry Potter prequel movies.

Katherine Waterston in Alien: Covenant (2017)

Miller's look had a bigger impact on the history of the bowl cut in cinema than you might think. During a press event for Alien: Covenant in 2016, Katherine Waterston revealed she copied her Fantastic Beasts costar's styling for her sci-fi film. "I'd been hanging out with Ezra Miller on that film," she recalls, noting that she loved her fellow actor's "dumb haircut from that movie." At least she admitted it looked dumb.

Timothée Chalamet in The King (2019)

Not much workshopping went into Chalamet's look—cinema's freshest bowl cut—in The King.

"The Middle Ages was really simple," Bertolazzi explains. "There are no rules. The only rules were made by the church. So, with the Vatican, there's no sense of the beauty, no sense of aesthetic, no sense of harmony. Nobody cares about looking good at all. The church decides how the men are to be. There's just one cut."

Michôd wanted to transform Chalamet, who plays the young prince who would become King Henry V.

"I really loved the idea of taking some kind of facsimile of that character from Call Me by Your Name and plunking him in the Middle Ages, but then suddenly this monumental burden is placed upon his shoulders and the transformation begins," the director said. "It felt important to me that the transformation be visible and stark."