Celebrities Who Look Totally Different With Their Natural Hair

Meghan Markle

Celebrities tend to be style chameleons by nature, changing their looks to suit their latest roles. This means that, somewhere along the way, the celeb sheds their original look. And it all seems to start with the hair! What don’t stars do to their coifs? Coloring, cutting, straightening, curling — celebrities tweak their hair more than most people change their sheets. So, when their natural hue or texture makes the occasional cameo, it can, frankly, come as quite the shock.

On one hand, it’s almost impossible to imagine that certain hey dude stars’ iconic tresses aren’t natural (we’re looking at you, Mandy Moore). But, while the following celebrities could likely rock any kind of locks, there’s something undeniably cool about seeing their authentic hair. It’s like peeking behind the Great and Powerful Oz’s curtain.

Here are a few of Hollywood’s natural hair transformations that’ll surprise you — they very well may inspire you to update your own.

Mandy Moore
Mandy Moore before and after natural hair
Close your eyes and picture Mandy Moore. You’re thinking of Rebecca Pearson from This Is Us, aren’t you? Ever since NBC introduced the hit tear-jerking series, it’s become difficult to separate Moore from her TV mom persona. So difficult, in fact, that it’s rare for us to recollect that the star actually got her start as a teen belting out bubblegum pop in the ’90s.

Although Moore’s mane has been chestnut brown for more than hoka shoes a decade now, her hair’s original hue is closer to her circa 1999 “Candy” music video blonde. In an interview with PopSugar in 2017, Moore said those OG locks make her “shudder a little bit to myself” — her trademark brown “feels the most like me.”

It’s no wonder she never looked back after dying her hair darker for 2002’s A Walk to Remember. She told Entertainment Weekly. “It was transformative because it came at a time in my life when I was only seen from the pop music landscape and through that lens. There was a real significance to coloring my hair.”

Zendaya
Zendaya before and after natural hair
When you step into the spotlight as young as Zendaya did (she was barely a teen when she landed the role of Rocky Blue on Shake It Up), your “look” can become synonymous with who you are. For years, Zendaya straightened her naturally curly hair to align with her public image. “Growing up, I wasn’t very confident in my curls,” she told People StyleWatch (via Mic). “It wasn’t like the hair that girls around me had. And nobody really knew what to do with my hair.”

Fast forward to January 2017, and The Greatest Showman star shared insight into her natural hair journey: “When you’ve spent the past however many years growing your damaged hair back, avoiding heat, wearing wigs and trying every natural product in the world and you finally see a little curl pattern comin back,” Zendaya wrote on Instagram, underscoring the sentiment with multiple praise hands emojis. In the time since, she’s rocked it everywhere from award shows to movie premieres, and often doles out advice on caring for natural black hair.

Blake Lively

Blake Lively before and after natural hair

Blake Lively is a bona fide movie star, and the wife of Deadpool’s Ryan Reynolds. But to fans of the iconic teen drama Gossip Girl, Lively will always be Serena van der Woodsen. It was during her years on the show that Lively first elicited hair lust in, well, everyone. She had (and still has) the highly sought-after beachy blonde waves that hair dreams are made of.

Hair deity that she is, it wouldn’t be hard to believe she was born hey dude shoes with these enviable locks. In reality, though, little Lively was born with hair considerably darker than her signature blonde shade. She nearly broke the internet during her pregnancies when she stopped dyeing and revealed her real roots. Lively’s colorist, Rona O’Connor of the Lukaro Salon, confirmed to Allure in 2011 that, yes, Lively makes regular visits to maintain her “natural warm blonde” with “ivory highlights.”

That isn’t the only hair revelation Lively has hidden up her sleeve. At one point, it was even super curly — just like her daughter James’!

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