Science fiction has more than its fair share of fake barnets, from outrageous alien hairdos to monster-ific manes. Jayne Nelson takes a look at some of the worst wiggy offenders to find out who comes up (Donald) trumps...
The Trek Terrors
Janice Rand
Bad Barnet Rating: 5/5
Poor Ensign Rand. The unfortunate lass had to wander around the Enterprise wearing some kind of wicker basket/chessboard weave on her head that made her look as though her skull had elongated, HR Giger-Alien-style. Okay, so perhaps by the 23rd century women really could change the shape of their skulls to accommodate stylish 'dos; maybe it was all the rage? But honestly, it must have weighed a ton. Three years of that and the poor woman would've had a crushed neck. Let's hope Starfleet covered wig-related injuries in their pension scheme.
Elaan Of Troyius
Bad Barnet Rating: 4/5
Another Star Trek horror, this time from guest star France Nuyen as the titular Princess Elaan. Lord only knows how she heard a word anybody said to her with those woolly flaps hanging over her ears. On the plus side, however, apparently Captain Kirk had a thing for follicular fakery (can't imagine why) because they ended up doing the horizontal space tango during the episode. Result!
We do have one question: why hasn't Lady Gaga ripped off this look yet? It's so very her…
The Blond Bombshells
Lucius Malfoy
Bad Barnet Rating: 4/5
He's the heartless Death Eater who stands at Voldemort's side oozing menace and malevolence. Except… not so much, because whenever he's on screen it's all we can do to tear our eyes away from his spectacular fake mane. Lucius Malfoy's lustrous, flyaway 'do brings to mind that old Timotei advert with a pretty lady flinging her hair about in a meadow, only she didn't have a wand as far as we could see, and her hair wasn't made of synthetic fibres that would probably survive for a million years after her body had rotted away in the ground.
Ozymandius
Bad Barnet Rating: 3/5
The back-and-forth-in-time nature of Watchmen required a multitude of wigs for the entire cast, seeing as they all aged and de-aged over and again during the course of the film (Doc Manhattan aside, of course – he remained reassuringly bald and blue).
One thing that did remain a constant, however, was the terrible floppy mess they stuck on poor Matthew Goode's head. It just looked wrong. Too precise, too ordered, too... well, wig-like. Floppy fringes aren't supposed to look like the mane of a My Little Pony, are they?
The Emo Abominations
Bella Swan and Jacob Black
Bad Barnets Rating: 4/5
One day during the filming of the first Twilight movie, Taylor Lautner turned up for work and was fitted with a wig so rubbish it made him look as though a dead skunk had dribbled down the sides of his head. We weren't there, of course, but we can only imagine that he took one peek at himself in the mirror and thought, "Bugger. I'll never, ever have sex again after this."
Thankfully, in a transformation hitherto unseen in cinema history, Lautner was allowed to use his own hair in the later films and became happily skunk-free. But then co-star Kristen Stewart fell foul of several Wigs From Hell after cutting her own hair short for another film role, thus ensuring that Robert Pattinson officially has the best hair in the Twilight franchise. And that? That's really scary...
Locke's Locks
John Locke
Bad Barnets Rating: 4/5
It's always a tough call giving an actor we know is totally bald any kind of wig – you just can't help looking for the join, no matter how hard you try to accept it. Terry O'Quinn, alas, had to film numerous flashbacks in his role as Locke on Lost , several of which required the services of dome-covering rugs to show the passing of time.
Not all of the wigs worked. Some were downright distracting (perhaps the choice of colour – a sort of dirty-red-brown – didn't help). O'Quinn is an actor who can transcend a poor piece or two, though, and his Locke didn't suffer as a result – but only barely. Then again, his head-hoggers were nowhere near as bad as some of his colleagues, as you'll see later in this feature…
The Superheroic Failures
Storm
Bad Barnet Rating: 5/5
All we can say is thank heck they improved this monstrosity for the second X-Men film – although it's not as though they could've made it worse . The colour actually suits Halle Berry very well: we can see what they were going for, and obviously it copies the Storm from the comics. But holy cow, it's as if the hairstylist wandered into a joke shop and picked up the cheapo wig sitting on the counter beside the plastic poo. Berry, Berry bad.
Sue Storm
Bad Barnet Rating: 4/5
What is it with wigs for women called Storm, eh? Anyway, for the first Fantastic Four movie Jessica Alba graciously dyed her hair blonde and looked absolutely stunning. For Fantastic Four 2: Rise Of The Silver Surfer , however, her hair mysteriously turned into Nylon. We're pretty sure Mr Fantastic would get some major electric shocks if he ran his fingers through that mane, although seeing as he's effectively made of rubber, he has rubber soles already built in. Good thing, too.
Wigs In Spaaaaaaace!
Jean-Luc Picard
Bad Barnet Rating: 3/5
You know, it's not so much that Patrick Stewart's wispy little wig in the flashback episode "Violations" is bad . He's an actor renowned for being bald, after all, so any wig on him is going to look false because we're just not used to seeing him with hair. No, it's not that it's bad. It's just that it's... distracting. We're not looking at his face, only his rug, and that's not good. This is one Picard Mane-euver we could've done without.
Kes
Bad Barnet Rating: 4/5
How do you make someone look alien? If you're in Star Trek , chances are they'll give you a funny forehead. Occasionally they'll forego the funny forehead for some slightly funny ears, which is what they did for Kes in Star Trek: Voyager . Except that her ears were the least of her worries. Check out that wig! It looks like someone dropped a tea cosy on the poor girl's head!
To make matters worse, Kes's fake follicles also suffer from a common problem when adding a mop to someone who quite clearly has a full head of hair already established on their head. Her wig sits too high on her skull as it makes room for the sneaky locks concealed underneath, making it look as though she's got an unnaturally large head. Awful.
The Dog's Dinners
The Matrix Twins
Bad Barnet Rating: 5/5
We've got nothing against dreadlocks, although the fact these guys' foreheads seem to stretch on forever is a bit weird.
However…
Can YOU take the Twins seriously now? Thought not.
The 'Subtle' Approach
Jareth, The Goblin King
Bad Barnet Rating: 4/5
Labyrinth has gone down in infamy for two reasons the filmmakers may never have envisioned: David Bowie's incredibly tight trews and his extraordinarily spiky nonce. It's as though a Tribble mated with a can of hairspray and this was their mutated offspring – the kind of hirsute horror only a man of Bowie's insanity can actually get to work. Because it does, so help us, it does… although it would be nothing without the complementary eyeshadow.
Lt Gay Ellis and colleagues
Bad Barnet Rating: 3/5
UFO 's Moonbase girls didn't just function as SHADO's first line of defence against an alien horde: they were also afflicted with peculiar identikit purple wig-contagion. The colour isn't too bad, we suppose (well, as long as you aren't expected to believe it's really growing from their noggins in that shade). What's REALLY bad is the bizarre 'V' cut into their fringes, which makes it look as though their mums gave them a bowl cut before they left home but used a bowl with a large chip in it. So not a good look.
Chipped fringe aside, however, it's nice to see Hit Girl reviving their colour scheme in Kick-Ass …
The Flashback Failures
Jack Shephard and Boone Carlyle
Bad Barnets Rating: 4/5
Bad Beard Rating: 5/5
Lost 's flashbacks must have been an amazing challenge for the show's hair stylists (see also: Locke), but they didn't always rise to the occasion. Sometimes, in fact, they failed so spectacularly the results had audiences in stitches.
Take these two howlers: Matthew Fox struggling to emote under some kind of backwards-facing doormat in the episode "Man Of Science, Man Of Faith" – one of several episodes which saw him fighting to be taken seriously while bewigged. How the hell could anybody concentrate on what was going on in that scene? His wig wasn't so much the elephant in the room as the honking great woolly mammoth.
And here's Boone in the episode "Abandoned". All we can say is, "WTF?"
Nothing, however, comes close to the facial faux-pas that was Jack's beard. Speechless, that's us.
Monster Manes
Spike and Angel
Bad Barnets Rating: 5/5
We're sure you're [engage sarcasm font] stunned and amazed [disengage sarcasm font] to see these two offenders on our list. Yes, during the runs of both Buffy and Angel poor James Marsters and David Boreanaz had to endure hair-mops so diabolical we're surprised Buffy didn't swing by to stake them for threatening the safety of the world. It's bad enough the guys had to wear plastic fangs, have prosthetic foreheads and sport fake accents (some more fake than others, eh, Irish Liam?), without having these dollops of fictitious thatch on their heads.
And it's not as though these ridiculous wigs only showed up once, either: time and again we were witness to hair crimes the like of which would kill Nicky Clarke stone dead in horror. For shame!
Cage's Many Crowns Of Glory
Every Wig Ever Worn By Nicolas Cage
Bad Barnets Rating: 5/5
Don't think we're having a go at Nicolas Cage for going bald halfway through his illustrious career – we'd never do such a thing. Baldness is a fact of life and, may we add, rather attractive to certain ladies. However, going bald and then spending years hiding the fact under a succession of frightwigs isn't what we'd call 'dignified', as Mr Cage has shown us time and again.
From his unconvincing jet-black mop in Ghost Rider to his scraggly Sorcerer's Apprentice mullet, Cage has been gleefully keeping wig-makers in employment and seems content to carry on retaining their services, nabbing a new look for every movie. (Not all of them bad, we hasten to add. Just most of them.)
Actors are meant to be chameleons, and Cage's dazzling array of syrup-styles is proof that he's taking that claim seriously. Either that or his head just gets really, really cold and he hates it. Who knows? Whatever the reason, his carnival of hairpieces make him the undisputed Wig King.
