I am obsessed with balding, and have been since a young age. If my own baldness progresses, I expect this blog will become increasingly more pedantic and bitter.
Contact Me with any comments, corrections, abuse, and suggestions on who to feature on the site.
About this Blog
This site is intended to be a sympathetic look at how celebrities deal with baldness. During my research on the subject it soon became apparent that some of them go to great lengths to conceal it. I firmly believe that if celebrities showed a bit more honesty when it comes to hair loss, there would be less stigma over the condition and the process would be a lot more bearable for the everyday man.
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Showing posts with label hair transplant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hair transplant. Show all posts
The madcap Italian Prime Minister has spoken openly about his hair transplants and plastic surgery. "I am very happy to have subjected myself to such pain" he bleated.
Back in 2004, he famously entertained the Blairs at his villa in Sardinia while wearing a post-operative protective bandana. An embarrassed and bemused Tony Blair begged his wife to stand in between them for photographs.
A successful billionaire, it is perhaps unusual that Berlusconi waited until his 60s before undergoing his first procedure. One drawback of this is the lack of 'donor hair' available to transplant. He was around a norwood 6 before his transplant, so he didn't have much hair left to move onto his bald patch.
This means the overall density of his transplanted hair is low and he is reliant on concealers to give the illusion of thickness.
A paedophilic incestuous rapist, it seems 74 year old Mr. Fritzl was affected by male pattern baldness.
Jibes from his sister in law prompted 'das inzest monster' to get a hair transplant a few years back. “Josef would be spiteful about my weight, but I would say, ‘better to be chubby than bald’. He is so vain that he went to Vienna for a hair transplant.”
The results are a strong but 'pluggy' hairline, with a massive bald patch at the back, much like American Vice President Joe Biden.
Bizarre godfather of synthpop Gary Numan started losing his hair quite young and talks about it candidly in his autobiography, Praying to the Aliens.
He had 2 hair transplants in the early 80s which he describes in fairly graphic detail. The hats he wore as part of his image around this time helped mask this. The surgeries didn't go particularly well and he claims to have had another procedure in 1993.
But there is no way that he got his current density from hair transplants, and what you're seeing now is surely a hair 'system'. This still from 1993 shows his old hairstyle, which is an unusual looking mixture of 'plugs', dye and judicious styling.
I suspect the transplant from 1993 was in truth a trip to one of those hair replacement centres that deal in wigs. This image from a year later shows the results of this and he has stuck with it ever since.
I have wondered why he appears to be so open about transplants but not the hair piece. Part of the reason may be that transplants are an expensive sounding, futuristic solution while there is still some stigma around wearing a toupee.
Numan seems quite happy with his hair these days, but if I were him I'd look at somewhere like http://www.toplace.com/ or http://www.hairdirect.com/ for any future hair pieces. Their wigs are quite undetectable and the forums are full of useful advice for hair 'wearers' (and no I am not affiliated with either site in any way!)
After posting about captain John Terry, Ashley Cole and Joe Cole, and taking into account the individuals below, it seems there is something foul in the air over at Stamford Bridge, with a large proportion of their players suffering from hair loss.
Peter Cech usually hides his receding hairline under that bizarre helmet.
Ricardo Carvalho, who is rumoured to have had a hair transplant.
Here he is more recently.
Michael Essien, receding.
Jose Bosingwa, receding but ironically sports a unibrow.
Alex, receding.
Nicolas Anelka, hides his baldness by shaving his head.
So that is 9 out of 20 or so first team members that are noticeably balding in some way, which seems quite a high percentage. In time I will compare this with other football teams, and I'm sure you will agree that the results will be fascinating.
So for now anyway, I hereby name Chelsea Football Club the most balding team in the English Premier League.
James Nesbitt is a Northern Irish actor who is a familiar face on British tv screens.
Back in the year 2000 he spoke candidly about his hair loss in an interview with The Independent, a newspaper.
"It's a great sign of mortality, the old hair," says Nesbitt, who is appalled by his rate of recession. "It's going, it's going... My dad has a thick head of hair, which is very irritating. It's not fair!"
"I use this stuff now that a French laboratory has produced for people with money: you spray it on. And I take vitamins. It's a terrible obsession."
I don't know what product he is talking about but it sounds like Haircubed or something like that.
He wore a wig for his role in 'Jekyll' as these pictures for the Radio Times show. The use of hair pieces is widespread in the acting profession, and they are often undetectable.
Anyway some time after this, probably around 2007, he appears to have had a hair transplant. It was probably done using the FUE procedure which is less invasive than the strip method and leaves less scarring at the donor area around the back of the head.
When the Daily Mail newspaper ran a story on this, they used 2 'after' shots to illustrate his 'transformation', which shows their lack of research and knowledge on the subject. The Evening Standard did a similar thing and used the picture above. You can clearly see that his new grafted hair is in the process of growing in. Below is a picture taken before he had the procedure done.
Update : Nesbitt had his procedures done at the The Blackrock Clinic in Ireland. It looks like they did a good job, and he is obviously happy with the results. He has made a promotional video, which can be seen on their website.
Will Young was 23 when he won the first UK Pop Idol television show/contest in 2002. Here he is during the week that he won.
Even back then I remember thinking that he was receding a bit. You can see this in his audition video below.
2 years later in 2004 his hair loss was progressing as expected.
I'm not sure what the hell is going on here.
By 2005 it seemed as though he had accepted his fate and decided to shave his head.
Unusually for a celebrity, he is quite open about his hair loss and admits to taking propecia. His hair loss certainly seems to have improved somewhat since 2005.
To be honest though, I'm not convinced he hasn't had a small transplant too. He has denied having 'plugs', but this is an old method not used so much any more. So he's not necessarily lying, just maybe bending the truth a little. Here he is earlier this year.
Some people reckon he has a hairpiece but I don't agree with that. Anyway, I feel Mr. Young should be applauded for his partial honesty. Well done Sir.
The hair of 37 year old Mr. Affleck has been the subject of much debate for around a decade now.
He has always had thick dark hair which can look a bit wig-like anyway.
The Secretly Balding Moviestars website has been around for as long as I can remember, and was where this infamous photo of his hairline first surfaced. It does look suspiciously like a hairpiece.
He had a strange haircut in Shakespeare in Love, and some people have used this as an example of his changing hairline. However, it seems obvious to me that his hair has purposefully been styled in this way for cinematic reasons and should therefore be discounted as evidence.
Internet folklore says that Vince Vaughan pulled off his hairpiece while horsing around at a party. I believe this rumour started on the imdb message board around 2002. He denied this on the Jay Leno show, and pulled at his hair as if to prove it were real. However, this would prove nothing as the bonding methods used in modern hairpieces are very strong and will withstand a lot of stress.
He has had a variety of different hairstyles over the years so I am not sure what to think. But more recently his hair has been quite short, and I'm not sure whether it is possible to get a hairpiece this length.
Anyway he now has a significant bald patch forming, as this candid photo from late 2008 shows. He also has very short hair exposing what appears to be his natural hairline.
But where has it gone? In this more recent picture, it is only ever so slightly visible. He has probably either used medication like propecia and minoxidil, covered it with a concealer like Toppik or Dermmatch, or most likely a combination of both.
The high resolution image below was taken at the premiere of 'He's just not that into you' in 2009. There is no sign of a lace wig mesh, and the photo is so detailed you can even see where individual hairs are growing from if you are that way inclined. Click here to see it in full detail.
My personal theory on Mr. Affleck is that he may have employed a hairpiece in the early 2000s for certain roles while taking treatments for hair loss. As those treatments started taking effect, his hair loss was stopped to the extent that a wig was no longer needed, and what you are seeing now is his natural hair.
Another member of U2 who has had problems with hair loss, seen below in his younger days, second from right.
He started losing hair at quite a young age.
For many years he hid the hair loss under a variety of hats, while still appearing to keep his hair long underneath.
Some time in the 90s he eventually cut his hair short, but the hats remained. Here he is with the rest of U2 in 1997.
Seen here without his trademark hat, the very straight hairline pattern at the top seems to show signs of a transplant. It is possible that he was unhappy with the results and became a hat wearer to hide scarring rather than the hair loss itself.
He seems to have embraced his balding now that he is older. But his years of being a virtual 'hat prisoner' show that balding is a very serious matter to some men and it can significantly affect their lifestyle.
So think carefully next time you insult a bald man. One day it could be you. And you will never be as cool as 'the Edge'.
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