Celebs That Transformed Their Look With One Small Change
Change can be good, bad, big, or small. Whether it's shifting one's career path, moving across the country, or splitting with a significant other, shaking up your routines, familiarities, and comfort zones is often jarring. When it comes to your look or image, making a physical change, like dyeing your hair or trying purple lipstick, can serve as an instant update that leaves you thinking, "Dayum! I make that look good." Or it can go in the totally opposite direction. A drastic change can render you unrecognizable and take a lot of getting used to. These eight celebs made seemingly small changes to their looks, and that made all the difference... both good and bad.
Jennifer Aniston
The actress meandered around Hollywood until she lightened her hair and lost 30 pounds, per her agent's suggestion. She told Rolling Stone that it pretty much sucked to listen to a member of her professional team dissect her body and tell her to drop weight. "My agent gave it to me straight," the actress told the publication. "Nicest thing he ever did ... The disgusting thing of Hollywood. I wasn't getting lots of jobs 'cause I was too heavy." Yes, those words may have hurt to hear. But there is no denying that her weight loss was a huge career game changer for Aniston, who eventually became America's most famous Friend. She flat out admitted such in that cover story.
Jennifer Grey
The Dirty Dancing star had a unique look in the '80s, with her bouncy curls and her charming, crooked nose. It was definitive. When Grey had a rhinoplasty in the 1990s, which was reportedly to correct some problems rather than for aesthetics, it transformed her face entirely. She was still beautiful, just much less distinct and much less, well, Jennifer Grey. She mused about her nose job causing her career slump to The Washington Post and even joked that every interview she does circles back to the "anatomy of a nose." It was as though her fanbase ceased to be able to look at her and think, "Nobody puts Baby in the corner." Grey went from unique to average, thanks to her nose job.
Lady Gaga
The New York City-born singer is a natural brunette of Italian heritage. You probably didn't know that, since she relies on wigs and swaps out cuts and colors on a frequent basis and to suit her mood or her album cycle. But when Gaga was scratching and clawing her way to the top of the pop music food chain, she made a major change and switched to blonde locks. Gaga's blonde ambition was simple: she wanted to avoid being mistaken for Amy Winehouse, who at the time was a fellow pop diva on the rise. As Gaga said, "I want to be known for my own look." She did so with flaxen follicles, which she often wore in giant bows sitting atop her head.
Kenny Rogers
The singer is known for his shock of white hair and matching beard. While those signatures have remained in tact, as they have for most of his public and professional life, Rogers still looks totally different since he had plastic surgery. He told Gayle King, "I was trying to hide myself. I had the money to do it and the time off." Rogers admitted to having eye surgery with "one of the world's best." The doctor felt the edge of the eye needed to be higher and performed the procedure on Rogers. While the new shape of his eye has made him unrecognizable, "The Gambler" singer has joked about what he might look like if he hadn't had the surgery. But he did it and he lives with it because he has to, even if he doesn't look like the Kenny Rogers of yore.
Lisa Rinna
The soap star's pucker is essentially synonymous with the "trout pout" look, thanks to injectibles and fillers. She admitted to the Today Show that "I never had a career before I had the lips. So my lips have had their own career." At 24, Rinna got silicone fillers, which harden. She regrets using that particular material, but she does not regret the injections themselves. They made her who she is and put her on the map.
Miley Cyrus
When Miley Cyrus chopped off her honey blonde locks back in 2012, it was the end of the topknot era for her. She went with a short, edgy, bleached out pixie and shed her girl-next-door, Hannah Montana image for good. She became pop music's rebel, identifying as gender fluid, smoking pot, twerking, and being a general bad girl. Cyrus was proud of chopping off her locks, telling The Daily Mail, "I'm trying to break out of that long hair, big boobs stereotype that women feel they have to conform to. I mean, we're not living in the freakin' 1950s — short hair is OK. Have people really got so little imagination?" The singer and actress felt her short coif was freeing and opened up a world of possibilities, saying, "Every morning I look in the mirror and I feel like a blank canvas and I choose who I want to be. In a normal job, you have to live by someone else's rules, but I'm in a job where my work is play and I don't have to pretend to be something I'm not." She may have cut off her hair, but she grew an entirely new style.
Renee Zellweger
The Bridget Jones actress looked incredibly different at an event in 2014. It sparked loads of media chatter that she went under the knife and had massive amounts of work done on her face. Zellweger took it all in stride and chalked it up to living a more pleasant, less-stressful life, which manifested in her appearance. She told People, "I'm glad folks think I look different! I'm living a different, happy, more fulfilling life, and I'm thrilled that perhaps it shows." She also suggested that the fact that she took a break from the brutal and exhausting Hollywood grind and reducing her workload made her less visible and therefore less memorable to the public. "People don't know me in my 40s," she noted, making an extremely valid point. If taking a movie-making timeout resulted in this sort of smooth skin and glow, perhaps more A-listers should follow her lead.
Zooey Deschanel
The New Girl star has a signature look — her eyelash-grazing bangs, which totally highlight her baby blues. Well, at the 2013 Met Gala, Deschanel turned up with her fringe swept to the side. She looked totally different, much less distinct, and sadly a bit "meh" without her forehead follicles. Deschanel's nerdy girl fringe has always been part of her cuteness and charm. When she ditched it, she blended in... in a way that we're not used to! Imagine if she never got her fringe in the first place? Perhaps she might never have been discovered by Hollywood types and would never have been an "it" girl. Deschanel's bangs make her stand out and probably played a part in getting her noticed, based on the fact that she looks so incredibly different without them.