Blake Lively Is Nearly Unrecognizable With A Short Hair Look

Although Blake Lively is known to be daring with her red carpet fashion, she tends to be more conservative about switching up her hair. The actor has rocked her signature, golden tresses for several of her biggest roles, lending her style to the likes of New York fashionista Serena van der Woodsen in "Gossip Girl" and Bridget Vreeland in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." Part of that may be because she knows her staple style works. "I never changed my hair much. I have a look that I like, and it became quite distinct to me," she told Harper's Bazaar U.K. And it's understandable why. Blake Lively's long, blond hair is iconic. 

That said, the actor has embraced drastically different 'dos for a handful of gigs, including the 2020 thriller "The Rhythm Section." For the action movie, the star shared an Instagram snap wearing a jaw-length bowl-style cut wig in a mousy blond shade that did nothing to compliment her stunning face shape or bring out her usually piercing eyes.

The hairpiece featured uneven bangs with longer pieces on both sides of her forehead. The wig's dark color was also a far cry from the actor's usual sunny shade and beachy waves. It made Lively look almost unrecognizable as she portrayed Stephanie Patrick, a woman who battles addiction following a traumatic incident.

Blake Lively's shaggy, highlighted wig wasn't the only drastically different hairstyle she wore in "The Rhythm Section." She also looked nearly unrecognizable in a much darker hairpiece, with unkempt strands and piece-y bangs unlike any look we'd seen from the "It Ends With Us" star before. The black shade lacked dimension and movement and didn't compliment her skin tone like her usual blond, washing her out. 

Plenty of fans were taken aback by her far less glamorous look, with one writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, "Oh my Blake, that does not look like you! Had to take a double look !!" If it were real, this unkempt Lively hairstyle would undoubtedly have missed the mark. Speaking to Vanity Fair about her drastic transformation though, Lively shared that was intentional. "The whole point is, she's not supposed to look sexy," she said. "...She's a real human who's experienced tragedy and is terrified. But it was fun to look completely different."

In real life, the shortest we've seen Lively's hair go is shoulder-length. Sort of. In 2017, she stepped out with a lob that sent the world into a frenzy, but her hairstylist Rod Ortega revealed it was all an illusion. He told InStyle he'd used a pin cushion to make it look like she'd cut her locks. "The reason it looks real is because the faux bob isn't so helmut-y. It's loose," he explained. But we probably shouldn't expect to see her get a chop for real. "Honestly I am a shy person and my hair is a safety net for me, so I love to have it down and full and relaxed," she told Hello! (via Daily Mail) in 2014.