Julianne Hough's Post-Divorce Transformation Can't Go Unnoticed

Julianne Hough is one of those celebrities who is constantly evolving. The dancer makes major career moves at such a fast pace that keeping track of them all is an exercise in and of itself. As well as this, she also managed to squeeze in a short-lived marriage to former NHL player Brooks Laich, whom she wed in 2017. While the pair eventually snagged a spot on the list of 2020's most devastating celebrity breakups, Hough didn't lose a step career-wise following her split. During her post-divorce era, she experimented with some pretty bold looks while embarking on several new business endeavors.

Julianne Hough and Brooks Laich's relationship began in late 2013, and the former's list of career achievements during their time together was impressive. She returned to "Dancing with the Stars" in 2014, but this time as a judge instead of a dancer; she won an Emmy for her choreography on the show the following year; starred as Sandy in Fox's "Grease: Live!" special in 2016; and founded her Kinrgy fitness platform in 2018. Unfortunately, Hough wasn't as lucky in love as she was with her professional pursuits. Two years after announcing their split, she and Laich finalized their divorce in 2022.

In a 2024 appearance on the "Armchair Expert" podcast, Hough explained that she had come to view Laich as "more of a father figure," adding that one of their biggest challenges as a couple was being at two different places in their lives. "He was contracting while I was expanding. ... While he was changing, I was changing," she said. She's continued on that trajectory since the divorce, and fans have had mixed feelings about some of her changes.

When most fans picture Julianne Hough, they probably imagine her with a slightly wavy, luminous blond lob. However, she's experimented with her hair often over the years, even rocking a pixie cut that was one of those short celebrity hairstyles that stunned us. But after her divorce, she went the opposite direction. In March 2021, she debuted long, lustrous waves, courtesy of some extensions and her own dirty blond growth. "Julianne has been talking about growing out her natural hair color for years now, and we finally were able to do it," her colorist, Riawna Capri, said in a press release (via Allure).

While it's rare for fans to get a glimpse of Hough's hair with its natural hue, this wasn't what caught the attention of some of her Instagram followers when she showed off her new look in a selfie. Their eyes drifted to her smiling lips, which looked a bit swollen. "These thick lips do not look good," read one response to her post. "Girl what's up with the oversized lips and eyebrows? Seriously, not you!" another wrote. Others suggested that Hough looked less like herself and more like various other celebrities, including Khloé Kardashian and Sofia Vergara. The "DWTS" host later insisted in a 2023 Instagram post that no needles had touched her face, so perhaps her pout actually wasn't that plump and she had simply over-lined her lips.

One of Julianne Hough's more unexpected ventures was the launch of her own wine company in 2021, but it made sense when the health and fitness enthusiast revealed why she made the move. For one thing, Julianne Hough started the business with her best friend Nina Dobrev, and who wouldn't want an excuse to sample tons of wines with their bestie? Hough further explained to People, "We also live holistic and balanced lifestyles, and we wanted a wine that would reflect that." This meant keeping the calorie and sugar content low, and their Fresh Vine wines are also gluten-free and low in carbs. Of course, the health factor wasn't all that mattered to the oenophile entrepreneurs. "We wanted to make sure our wine had a premium taste," Hough told 1883 Magazine.

Hough acquired her wine-tasting skills later in life due to her Mormon background. During an appearance on "The Kelly Clarkson Show" in 2023, she credited her ex, Ryan Seacrest, for exposing her to alcohol at age 21 in a much healthier way than many other young people experience. She explained that he was very much a vino aficionado, so he got her to focus on quality, not quantity. "Growing up LDS, [alcohol] was usually associated with partying and getting drunk," she said. "But this was an education, and I'm such a geek. I love to learn things. And so he taught me ... how to smell and taste, and swirl the glass." Surely Hough sent Seacrest a few bottles as a thank you for that knowledge.

In a January 2022 Instagram post, Julianne Hough asked her fans if she should make another big hair change by getting bangs. She also explained why getting a new 'do is such a big deal for her, writing, "My hair is a form of expression. Sometimes I feel like I've grown or changed so much on the inside that I want to reflect that evolution on the outside." Apparently, she was inspired by Taylor Swift's signature bangs transformation over the years. Months later, Hough revealed that she had decided to go through with chopping a Swift-like fringe. "New bangs, who dis?" she captioned an Instagram video of herself showing off her trendy curtain bangs.

In the subsequent weeks, Hough continued sharing photos of her old-money blond hair, and fans couldn't get over how much she resembled Swift, especially when she was rocking sunglasses and the singer's signature lip color. Months before she cut her hair, Hough had declared her love for "a bare face and red lip" on Instagram, and had her pout painted a rich, highly saturated crimson when she hit the streets during Paris Fashion Week. As you can see, she looked like Swift's slightly more sophisticated twin in a black trapeze dress with poofy off-the-shoulder sleeves. The Khaite design also featured layers of tulle to create an even more exaggerated silhouette. With her Valentino gloves, black tights, kitten heels, and Saint Laurent bag ornamented with a gold tassel, Hough was putting those fashionable French girls to shame.

By 2010, Julianne Hough had proved she could sing, dance, and act. However, the "Burlesque" star didn't make her Broadway debut until over a decade later. When Hough took her talents to New York's biggest stage in 2022, she surprisingly didn't do so in a musical, but in the comedy "POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumba** Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive." She played a character who was pregnant with the president's baby — and who was not the first lady. Her cast mates included Vanessa Williams and Rachel Dratch, but it was one of Hough's scenes that really resonated with theatergoers. "The biggest surprise came from one of my lines, 'Affordable, safe reproductive health care is a basic human right,'" she told 1883 magazine. "The audience stood to their feet in applause." In addition to memorizing lines, Hough got to showcase another skill. She told E! News that the makeup she wore for her performances was her own handiwork.

Hough got a pad in NYC during the play's run, and fans got a glimpse of her apartment when she shared a photo of herself on Instagram seated on the floor with a bottle of her Fresh Vine wine. On "The Jennifer Hudson Show" in 2023, she explained why she needed that vino in an unconventional vessel, confessing that she had locked herself out of her place before she could even get her first sleep in it. She was clad in her nightgown and freaking out a little. "I had to call a locksmith at two o'clock in the morning my first night in New York City," she said. "So the girl from Utah."

In 2023, Julianne Hough's long tenure with "Dancing with the Stars" earned her a new position: She replaced Tyra Banks as co-host. When she joined her fellow host, "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" star Alfonso Ribeiro, for the Season 32 premiere that September, her blond locks were about chest-length. But a few months later, she made a dramatic change.

Hough took some scissors to her own hair and shared footage of her careful snipping in a January 2024 Instagram reel. In the caption, she explained how the weather played into her decision to change her hairstyle yet again, recalling how she had spotted a double rainbow during a sun shower. "It just felt like it was the right time to cut off some of the old energy and start fresh," she wrote.

While Hough only cut off a few inches in the video, a day later, she showed off just how much of that stale energy she had annihilated. When she hit the red carpet at the Creative Arts Emmys, she was sporting a bob that hit just below her ears. She had described the experience of lopping off her locks as "cleansing," so apparently it just felt too good to stop. Thankfully, when she was hacking away, she had hairstylist Riawna Capri ready and waiting to clean up the results of her cleansing and make it look sleek and chic.

When Julianne Hough releases a book, she can't just release a book. She made her 2024 work of fiction, "Everything We Never Knew," more of a sensory experience by recording music inspired by the story, including a titular track. Ryan Seacrest played a snippet of it on his show, "On Air with Ryan Seacrest," and the two exes chatted about the book. Hough told Seacrest she began writing it the year her marriage to Brooks Laich fell apart, saying of that period, "I had a very, very big transformation time where I was going through some major healing from my childhood." The writing experience also turned out to be transformative, inspiring her to resurrect her music career.

Hough explained that she had abandoned her career as a country music artist to make movies instead. "I never really followed through with my music, and that was my greatest regret," she revealed. In addition to revisiting that dream, she drew on personal experiences for her book, which is about a woman who discovers she can see and feel others' memories. While this supernatural element might sound like the most fictionalized component of the plot, Hough swears that something like this happened to her during a group meditation session. On "The Jamie Kern Lima Show" in 2024, she recalled, "I had this overwhelming feeling that I was in Europe. ... I felt my hair was wet, and I felt like I was between 3 and 5 years old." Afterward, she learned another woman in the group had been remembering being in Copenhagen as a child. She confirmed Hough's eerie sense that she had experienced the same memory when she recalled, "My dad was blow-drying my hair."

Julianne Hough's makeup-free moments often get her fans fawning over her, thanks to her flawless skin and bright blue eyes that don't need any cosmetic assistance to make them pop. But when she went bare-faced in a 2024 Instagram video chronicling her "Sunday Spa Day," all some Instagram commenters could focus on was her body. Hough was clad in a black bucket hat and teeny snakeskin-print bikini, showing off the results of her focus on staying fit. However, rude remarks were scattered among the praise for her appearance. "Where did your curves go?" one person asked. Others opined that she looked too skinny and offered their unsolicited advice to eat more.

There was enough negativity that Hough felt compelled to respond to it in the comments. "My body has never been healthier," she wrote. "I was full of inflammation in my 20's and had a marker for an auto immune that I addressed and committed to over a year and a half ago." She also explained her actions in the video, which showed her wearing a red light therapy mask in a sauna. "Might as well kill two birds with one stone," she wrote, further informing her fans that the hat was to protect her hair. She also said that she jumped on a mini-trampoline and did a cold plunge after her stint in the sauna to improve "lymphatic drainage." As for the rest of her attire, she explained, "Being in a bikini is the best outfit for these activities."

Julianne Hough started wearing so much black that she joked in a 2024 Instagram post, "I promise I wear color ... sometimes." She also revealed in another Instagram post that most of her "favorite evening looks" from 2023 were black, including the elegant, strapless Maticevski gown she wore to Elton John's annual Oscars party. It had a timeless quality, while her hairstyle turned the clock back to Hollywood's Golden Age. Many of her Instagram followers pointed out that she resembled Audrey Hepburn with her dark hair color and baby bangs.

In a 2025 interview with PhotoBook Magazine, Hough mused that she'd be more at home in the Hollywood of yesteryear. However, instead of competing with Audrey Hepburn for the lead in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," she'd ideally be hot-footing it with Fred Astaire. Of the character she was cast as in "The Bride," Maggie Gyllenhaal's fresh take on the "Bride of Frankenstein" story, Hough said, "It was very much a Ginger Rogers type role. The Golden Age of Hollywood was really the era that I felt like I should have been born in with the triple threat, singing, dancing, and acting." The movie marked the "Rock of Ages" star's first big acting project since her 2019 appearance in the Netflix special "Dolly Parton's Heartstrings." Hough expressed excitement over getting to work alongside A-list talent, including Jessie Buckley, Penélope Cruz, Christian Bale, and Jake Gyllenhaal. "I definitely moved into another room with this project, and just witnessing everyone's excellence puts me in a position to grow," she said. "I think that's just my whole motivation for life, to continue to grow and to learn."

In a May 2024 Instagram post, Julianne Hough declared, "I think I 'look' better at 35 than I did at 25!" She added that she was also feeling a great deal healthier after a series of annual getaways at We Care Spa in Desert Hot Springs, California, a retreat that offers various holistic treatments, including a liquid detox program, colon cleansing, hypnosis, and sound baths with crystal singing bowls. "My gut and inflammation issues that I could never figure out have healed," she wrote. Her post included footage from a cupping therapy session.

It soon became clear that Hough was really feeling herself when she began sharing some spicy GRWM videos with her followers. In many of them, she could be seen wearing her underwear or going topless. One Instagram video began with a close-up shot of the dancer wearing lacy black lingerie, and in another, she twirled her bra over her head after removing it. She even shared footage of a team coming to her rescue when she was struggling with the crotch snaps on a bodysuit.

Some of Hough's followers found her racy videos too hot to handle, with one Instagram user writing, "Stop with the taking your clothes off for attention. Cheap and trashy — is that really what you want?" However, her playful sensuality also received an outpouring of praise, and it seemed that her body confidence was blocking all the blows her haters were so desperate to land. In fact, she even started stepping out in lingerie-inspired looks, such as the slinky slip dress she wore to an Emmys party.

In a 2024 video that set her followers' tongues wagging, Julianne Hough filmed herself makeup-free in the kitchen, cooking in a bikini. "What's the opposite of #tradwife," she quipped in the Instagram caption. The video featured a cameo from her canine companion, Sunny, whom she adopted in 2023. Two years later, the "DWTS" host told People that she was still Sunny's only dog parent at the time, and she very much takes her pup's well-being into consideration when trying to make a love connection. "I went on a date once and they said they didn't like dogs, and I was like, 'The date is over,'" she recalled.

Hough has made it clear that she'd love for her fur baby to have a human sibling someday, revealing that she has frozen her eggs to potentially extend her pregnancy window. Baby fever also hit her hard when she learned that her brother, Derek Hough, and his wife, Hayley Erbert, were expecting their first child in 2025. "My ovaries are screaming. I'm ready to be a mom," the dancer said on "The Jennifer Hudson Show" in 2025.

But as she noted, she's no tradwife. Hough has big plans beyond starting a family, and they involve making the top of her head a bit baby-like. "I have this thing on my list of things I want to do. ... I want to go to Bhutan and shave my head with a monk," she said on a 2025 episode of the "Not Skinny But Not Fat" podcast. So, good luck predicting what's in store for the multi-hyphenate, who summed up her life best when she told PhotoBook Magazine, "I am on a constant, transformational wheel."