13 celebrities who dyed their hair for an iconic role

• Celebrities like Cynthia Nixon and Leighton Meester have dyed their hair to land a major role.

• Amy Adams said dyeing her strawberry-blonde hair a darker shade of red helped her get better roles.

• Sofia Vergara also dyed her blonde hair darker in order to please casting agents.

When it comes to landing an iconic role, some actors are willing to go the extra mile — and go to the salon.

From Mandy Moore to Riley Keough and Sofia Vergara, these celebrities have all changed their hair color in order to pass an audition or portray a character onscreen. Some kept their new looks, while others later reflected on how damaging the drastic hair-color changes were.

Here are 13 celebrities who dyed their hair for an iconic role.

Sophie Turner dyed her naturally blonde hair red to play Sansa Stark in "Game of Thrones."

According to Refinery29, Turner had to dye her hair twice every week while filming the show to ensure no blonde hairs peeked through.

"I feel different ways about each hair color," she told Refinery29 in 2019. "With my red, I feel very empowered, because with every character that I've played that has red hair, they've been such a strong and powerful character. I love it for that. But, my blonde hair gives me a new identity that's actually me. I feel more at home when I come back to my blonde hair; it also makes me feel a bit cooler and edgier."

Cynthia Nixon of "Sex and the City" is another natural blonde who dyed her hair red for a role.

"[I'm] not a redhead. [I'm] a natural blonde. A little enhanced at the moment, but a natural blonde," Nixon told the "Today" show in 2015. "Kim [Cattrall] and Sarah [Jessica Parker] were blonde, so we wanted to mix it up a little. Then it became like an emblem for the character — she's so fiery; she's a redhead."

Nixon sported gray hair for most of the first season of the "SATC" reboot "And Just Like That," but she dyed it back to her classic red in the finale.

KJ Apa dyed his naturally dark hair a burnt-orange shade for his role as Archie in "Riverdale."

"Probably the main thing I was really nervous about was seeing what I would look like with red hair and eyebrows," Apa shared with Teen Vogue in 2017. "It was definitely really weird to see, but now I can't really remember what it was like before. I heard that only 2% of the population of the world has red hair, so I'm feeling pretty good right now."

Leighton Meester is a natural blonde, but she dyed her hair to land the role of Blair Waldorf on "Gossip Girl."

Josh Schwartz, co-creator of "Gossip Girl," told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012 that they asked Meester to dye her hair darker when she auditioned in order to differentiate her character from bubbly blonde Serena.

"Leighton was a blonde when she came in to read, but Blake was the blonde, so we asked her to color her hair," he said. "A risky move on her part in the middle of pilot season, but she did a sink-rinse dye job to audition as a brunette."

Ariana Grande had curly brunette hair before she had to consistently bleach and dye it red for her role on "Victorious."

Grande has spoken openly about the damage she did to her hair with consistently bleaching and dyeing it to play Cat Valentine for four seasons.

"I had to bleach my hair and dye it red every other week for the first four years of playing Cat… as one would assume, that completely destroyed my hair," Grande explained on Facebook in 2014. "I wear it in a ponytail because my actual hair is so broken that it looks absolutely... absurd when I let it down."

"My real hair, which is the humongous, curly, curly poof, is kind of, I don't know … So few people get to see it and it's cute and it reminds me of me as a kid. But so is this," Grande told radio host Zach Sang in November 2020, gesturing to her signature ponytail.

"I wear my ponytail all the time too, but the curls are definitely something that I don't bring around much."

Bella Thorne is another actress who dyed her naturally blonde hair red for a role.

"A lot of people don't know I'm not actually a redhead," Thorne told Allure in 2014. "I'm a blonde. I dyed it for 'Big Love.'"

Thorne also explained how, at the start of her career with Disney, they wanted to make her blonde again — which she wasn't excited about.

"It started off more of a deep red, and Disney was like, 'Why don't we take Bella all the way to blonde again?' I don't know why, but I had a breakdown and so overreacted. I wanted to go back to red."

Robin Lord Taylor dyed his light locks jet black to play Oswald Cobblepot on "Gotham."

Taylor joked to Glamour in 2014 about having to constantly keep up with his darker look.

"When my roots come in, it starts to look like my hair is levitating off of my head," he said. "Because it's so light underneath, I'm like, 'Is my hair falling out? Oh no, I'm just blond.'"

Kate Winslet dyed her blonde hair red to play Rose in "Titanic."

Dyeing her hair flaming red wasn't easy, however, especially when she was in the water so much.

Winslet told InStyle, "It was quite damaged from all those water scenes and from re-dyeing it red so many times."

Winslet dyed her hair lighter soon after the Hollywood blockbuster was released.

Mandy Moore dyed her naturally blonde hair to get into character for her role in "A Walk to Remember," which would launch her acting career.

Mandy Moore was born with sandy-blonde hair, though you might have thought she was actually a brunette.

Amy Adams said dyeing her strawberry-blonde hair a darker shade of red helped her get better roles.

"Based on roles that I was getting called in for, people were responding to certain types of characters with me as a blonde and the minute I went red, it was quirky and fun instead of flirtatious and dumb," she said in an interview with The New York Times' TimesTalk in 2016.

Riley Keough dyed her hair red to star in "Daisy Jones & the Six," but she's a natural brunette.

Maryann Hennings, the hair stylist on "Daisy Jones and the Six," told People that the process to take Keough's hair to red was extensive. Keough has been blonde, strawberry blonde, and her natural brunette hair over the years.

"We made Riley this bright red. She's normally dark haired, so I lightened it, put this bright red on it, and then put a gloss over it that just made the whole thing shine," she said. "[Keough] would get it done every three weeks. Sometimes I would have a glaze or shades put over it to pop the red. I would use a lot of leave-in conditioners and products that left her hair in good condition."

Sofia Vergara dyed her blonde hair darker in order to please casting agents.

"I'm a natural blonde, like my siblings," she told Parade in July 2011. "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."

Sydney Sweeney dyed her naturally blonde hair a light auburn for an upcoming role.

"We really wanted a major change for this role. Everyone knows blonde Syd, so when she booked this, we really wanted to go for it. Like, let's switch it up and give people a different side," her colorist Nikki Lee told Allure.

"Initially, it was supposed to be a strawberry blonde, but after a couple flicks of the magic wand, we came up with this fun, fiery version."

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