Last Updated on July 29, 2020 by Robert Price
Have you ever wondered why so many middle-aged and older celebrities have hair?
Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Michael Douglass, Robert DeNiro, the list goes on forever.
At least 50% of men experience some degree of male pattern baldness by the age of 50 (source). Yet a ridiculously high percentage of men in Hollywood seem to defy the odds and retain their locks well into their golden years.
It isn’t fair. How come these lucky, beautiful men keep their hair forever while the rest of us go bald? The answer is fairly simple and three-fold:
1. They have better genes as a group.
We want our celebrities to be pretty, the men and the women. So they naturally have superior genetics in the appearance department. That means less baldness, more symmetrical faces, exquisite jawlines, flawless teeth, etc.
Charles Darwin, the godfather of evolution and a member of the bald hall of fame.
Natural selection is one primary reason there are so many beautiful celebrities who are seemingly impervious to the balding gene. They come from long lines of gorgeous people, and in a shallow society, they have a distinct advantage of the rest of us average-looking, balding slobs.
2. It’s Easier to Break into Show Business if You Have Hair.
Think about it. Most celebs start their careers their early to mid 20s. And most men who are destined to be severely bald start to thin and recede before their 26th birthday.
Simply, men with hair get more opportunities to achieve success out of the gate in Hollywood. So there’s a perpetual disparity between balding and non-balding 20-something male celebrities — and that imbalance continues through the decades.
We’re a superficial society, what can I say. Hair (or the lack thereof) makes no difference in the vast majority of other professions.
3. When Celebs Go Bald, They Often Do Something About It – Obviously. This is the best time in history to be a balding man, so you don’t need to be a celebrity to take advantage of the many effective hair loss treatments on the market, like Propecia, minoxidil, and laser therapy, to name a few.
Hair transplants are super common too! But yeah, celebrities go bald, they’re human. And when they do, they often seek treatment quickly, before the general public can detect that there’s a “problem.”
While most entertainers won’t acknowledge their own hair loss or the products they use to retain their locks, there are exceptions to the rule, as I discuss in my post chronicling 8 reported celebrity finasteride users.
So there you have it. That’s my Hollywood hair theory, and I’m sticking to it. I contend that celebs have better genetics as a group than the general population, that it’s easier to break into show business if you’re not balding, and that celebrities are more inclined to seek treatment than you or I or Joe Sixpack. Agree or disagree? Leave your comment below.
Robert Price is a writer, consumer advocate, and hair loss researcher with thousands of hours of experience in the field. His goal is to keep you out of the hair loss rabbit hole, underworld, or whatever you want to call it. He founded Hair Loss Daily, the unbiased hair loss blog, in 2016. You can learn more about Robert in the my story section of this website.