Famous people aren't immune to the common phenomenon of male pattern baldness. Despite
their wealth and connections, otherwise perfectly groomed studs have the same mediocre options as
everyone else, and the following celebs do not want you to know they're going bald.
The name "David Beckham" might as well be English for "gorgeously groomed man."
But the former Manchester United footballer is apparently just as mortal as everyone else.
His signature swoop has gone through many phases, but his blond coif allegedly started to wane in
2018, when he reportedly sought a hair transplant, according to the Daily Mail. If that rumor was
true, the procedure was a great success, as he was later seen sporting thicker hair.
However, by May 2020, the Daily Mail reported that Beckham's hair was, quote, "drastically
thinning" when he was spotted out shopping in the UK. Despite the quick shift in follicular
fortunes, the transplant rumors may be unfounded. According to hair restoration expert Craig Henton,
"It could be that David has paused a medical hair program involving
medications and laser treatment. His hair would then revert to its genetic pattern."
Beckham has denied having a transplant, and back in 2012, he was quoted as saying,
"There is definitely nothing wrong with doing that, but I don't think personally
I would. If I do start showing signs of going bald, then I will shave it off."
Given the cone of silence around this issue in celebrity circles, the truth remains mysterious.
Ben Affleck's mysterious scalp situation has garnered more speculation than almost any other
Hollywood star. Simply put, the chiseled Batman actor is quite often accused of wearing a wig.
As famed Los Angeles hair transplant surgeon Dr. John Frank told Inside Edition in 2014,
"You can see the way the hair is exiting the scalp. Ben Affleck has,
in my mind, become sort of the poster boy for a bad hairpiece."
Several photos of Affleck's alleged "before" style also purport to show both a very noticeable bald
spot in the back and a receding front hairline collapsing like a nuclear bomb strapped to an
asteroid. All of these rumors started when his supposed toupee was allegedly knocked off his
head during a play fight at a Hollywood party with Vince Vaughn in 2002, when Affleck was only 30,
at least according to the National Enquirer. A similar report further claimed that he made
witnesses swear not to reveal his secret. However, his Daredevil co-star Colin Farrell
came to his defense with an unintentional pun the same year the rumors began when he said,
"I tell you now, straight off the bat: Ben Affleck does not wear a toupee.
He has a great head of hair. You can literally pull it — it is not coming off. It's no toupee."
For now, much like Bruce Wayne, Afleck's true hair identity remains the stuff of legend.
Jamie Foxx is enjoying life in his fifties, as he told Jerry Seinfeld during his exuberant
appearance on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. But his enduring energy doesn't mean he hasn't
had follicular issues. Around 2007, the year Foxx turned 40, some fans noticed that his hairline was
making a comeback. The before-and-after photos are quite dramatic. Foxx has never commented himself,
but the YouTuber Hairliciously believes this result was no doubt surgical. As he put it,
"Sometime between 2006 and 2007, Jamie Foxx underwent a hair transplant via
FUT to increase density in the mid-scalp, but I don't think that it was really that successful."
An FUT transplant is performed by removing a strip of the patient's scalp from the back
of the head from a fuller "donor area" that isn't as affected by male pattern hair losses.
This strip is then turned into grafts and added to the hairline. Observers have pointed
to Foxx's tribal tattoo, which he added to the back of his dome for his 40th birthday,
as it apparently perfectly aligns with the shape and placement of scarring caused by an
FUT procedure. However, by 2012, Foxx's high hairline could supposedly still be seen in
movies like Django Unchained. Hairliciously believes that the actor then underwent further
procedures to achieve better results by 2019. GQ Australia implied in 2019 that Foxx may
have even resorted to a hairline tattoo, but as per usual, no one knows for sure.
Colson Baker, better known as rapper-slash-actor Machine Gun Kelly,
is a tall drink of water who makes fans weak in the knees. But by the time he was 19,
he was sporting a bit of a sawed-off hairline in music videos like "Chip Off the Block" that he
mostly kept hidden under his hat. According to hair expert and prominent YouTuber BluMaan,
early promotional photos of MGK illustrate the classic male horseshoe pattern,
which indicates significant hair loss at a young age.
"Yep. Classic horseshoe pattern. I've seen a lot of this."
The rapper's 2012 mugshot after an arrest for disorderly conduct
added another round to the chamber of online speculation. Then in 2015,
he showed up to the BET Awards looking very different. According to BluMaan,
"In terms of the hair transplant method used, you can see a scar on the back of
MGK's head, which is consistent with follicular unit hair transplant."
Several videos have been created by another hair-focused YouTube channel called
Transplant Planet, which illustrated this transformation by highlighting the supposed
telltale scar. But for now, Machine Gun Kelly is keeping the truth holstered.
Matthew McConaughey turned 50 in 2019, and his hairline is still looking alright, alright,
alright. But if you go back more than two decades, when he was infamously busted in 1999 for playing
bongos without any clothes on, he posed for a mugshot that proved his hairline was also
under arrest. But then in the 2000s, his mane made as big a comeback as his career. And yet,
he's denied any surgical intervention. When he was asked if his hair was in fact
natural during a 2017 episode of Live with Kelly & Ryan, he replied,
"Yeah, that's- that's- that's, that's what I got."
McConaughey went on to admit that he was,
in fact, losing his hair in 1999, so he used an over-the-counter product called Regenix.
"And damn if I didn't bring it back."
But that claim may be a little skeptical, because Regenix contains no drugs certified
by the FDA to actually combat hair loss. Furthermore, McConaughey was photographed
in 2010 after the birth of his child during the middle of his supposed hair renaissance,
and his scalp had seemingly regressed to its late-90s level. Another photo from 2017 shows
a similar regression despite looking fuller on red carpets. This back-and-forth fluctuation is
indicative of a high-quality lace hair system, according to hair loss expert Joe Tillman. Lace
systems are essentially custom wigs that blend seamlessly with your natural hair. But because
of the stigma around male hair loss, McConaughey is apparently keeping this one under his hat.
Although male pattern alopecia is the monster in most balding sagas, Twilight star Robert Pattinson
may very well be facing a different follicular foil known as alopecia areata,
also known as spot baldness. This autoimmune condition causes a patchy kind of hair loss and
usually first strikes before the age of 30. In photos illustrating Pattinson's supposed case,
he was exactly 30 and had the telltale signs of the condition,
which also affects hair pigment, meaning new growth will often appear white.
Experts say this kind of hair loss can often be stress-related and is therefore temporary.
This isn't Pattinson's only preview of the long night that comes after a young man's hair briefly
shimmers in the sun. In 2012, he thought his vegan vampire vamping was done as he shaved his head for
another role. But then suddenly Twilight: Breaking Dawn — Part 2 needed re-shoots and he was forced
into a wig that he described during a Comic-Con panel as looking like "Frankenstein's monster."
He also noted that the orange hairpiece was a combination of six different wigs.
James Franco is rarely mentioned on mainstream list videos about celebrities with hair loss.
But maybe that's because, as has been speculated in hair loss forums and Reddit threads,
he just got a really killer transplant. The before-and-after photos that have been submitted
are fascinating. Franco has always been adventurous with his hairstyles, but by 2015,
when he was in his late 30s, some observers claimed that photos proved his hairline had
begun to wane. When compared to the luscious locks he sported at the 2018 Golden Globes, some
sleuths were convinced something had been done. As hair restoration expert Hairliciously put it,
"I'm pretty confident that James Franco ended up with
a hair transplant and not some type of hairpiece."
He also claimed Franco's minimal hair loss, which was limited to the temples and frontal hairline,
made him an ideal candidate for a transplant, contributing to what the YouTuber described as,
quote, "one of the best hair transplant results ever."
When a man starts losing his hair early in life, it doesn't feel like a joke. But that's
what happened to Ashton Kutcher, who's admitted that his floppy hair started to fall out at the
age of 25. That was a problem because he was still playing a teenager on That 70's Show.
He talked about his hair during an appearance on Conan in 2018.
"I went and met the g- the doctor, the hair guy doctor. And he was like,
he put me on this medication called Avodart. Have you ever heard of this stuff?"
Avodart is a drug used to treat male pattern baldness that has been shown in clinical trials
to potentially be more effective than the gold-standard Finasteride. In other words,
Kutcher was in good hands, and his hair loss was halted. However, in 2014, he and his wife Mila
Kunis were expecting their first child, and oral hair loss drugs can be hazardous to a male fetus.
So Kutcher, being the good dad that he is, stopped the treatment immediately.
"So I stop taking the stuff about three years ago, and now I'm experiencing the hair loss."
"Right."
"It's like, it's starting to go. But I'm a baseball cap guy, so I think I'm okay."
Of course, that's easy to say when you look like Ashton Kutcher.
The Office star Steve Carell's televised hair transformation is so legendary that
it's become the stuff of countless memes. Interestingly, the high hairline look was
an intentional part of creating the original version of his iconic character, Michael Scott,
at least in season one. Audiences initially didn't get on board with the balding boss,
though, and the show was nearly canceled in 2005. But when Carell came back in better
shape for Season 2 following the success of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Michael got an
image makeover more in line with the likable direction taken for the "world's best boss."
This also supposedly gave Carell an opportunity to paper over his own
hair loss, and experts claim he had medical assistance. According to Dr.
Bernard H. Cohen of Miami's Hair Restoration & Dermatology clinic,
"Mr. Carell has had hair transplantation. Full-sized hairs from the back and sides
were surgically transplanted via tiny skin grafts to the top areas
of the head where the follicles and hair were no longer present."
To achieve a result this good, experts advise that it's often necessary to use
a combination of treatments, with Dr. Cohen speculating,
"Carell is undoubtedly using daily Minoxidil, Finasteride, or laser as well."
Joel McHale is a tall handsome man who also has a fantastic head of hair.
At least he does now. But if you go back to the 90s when he got his start on the Seattle-based
sketch comedy show Almost Live, he had a lot less going on up top than he does
now more than 20 years later. All the way up to shooting 2004's Spider-Man 2,
his temples appear quite bare. But then something wonderful happened. The oldest existing clips on
YouTube of him hosting The Soup circa 2004 feature him with the dashing style that he sports today.
McHale hasn't publicly revealed how he achieved this dramatic effect,
but as journalist Joel Stein put it in GQ in 2015,
"I'm not saying that Joel McHale had a hair transplant,
but millions of people who use the Internet sure as hell are."
Indeed, the Community star has appeared on endless listicles with titles like,
"10 Celebrities with obvious hair transplants." Maybe this is a case for The Soup Investigates.
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