Did you ever think you’d see the top of George Clooney’s head blending in with the night sky? Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
When George Clooney sat down with Jake Tapper on April 16 to discuss the fallout of his Joe Biden op-ed from last summer as well as his Broadway debut in Good Night, and Good Luck, there was something … different about him. No, it wasn’t his signature velveteen voice, nor his well-established political views, but that the aging heartthrob had brown hair. What was going on here? Is he having some kind of midlife crisis? “First day at my new job dyeing George Clooney’s hair, how’d I do y’all?” asked one Twitter user. Other comments of a similar ilk trickled in: Why does he look like John Goodman? Why does he look Persian? Why does one of the most conventionally attractive-looking people suddenly look … old? Was the focus on Clooney’s politics in the interview supposed to distract us from his new ’do?
Well, fear not, and rest easy: George Clooney looks like this for his role on Broadway as Edward R. Murrow, American broadcaster and canonical brunette. Even David Strathairn, another legendary salt-and-pepper presence on the big screen, went full brown for his role in the film adaptation upon which the Broadway show is based. “Everything that counted in 1954 still counts,” Clooney told Tapper, which he meant politically but applies to hairstyles too. The effect is undoubtedly jarring, with Clooney looked a little bit like a store mannequin or worse, Tim Heidecker in the latest season of On Cinema. The general public hasn’t really been familiar with a dark-haired Clooney since his early years on ER alongside the internet’s favorite, Dr. Robby, in the early 1990s. Even then, however, the salt in his signature salt-and-pepper hair was plenty prominent. Thankfully for Clooney and his dark locks, Good Night, and Good Luck has proven one of the most successful shows on Broadway, so something is working about the haircut that doesn’t translate to the odd CNN still making the rounds on Twitter. When Clooney tells Tapper that he may have lost some friends over speaking out about Biden’s decline, at least he knows he didn’t lose them because of the hair.
