Cynthia Erivo has become instantly recognizable on any Hollywood red carpet, largely due to her distinctive and striking shaved head. This bold aesthetic, a powerful personal statement, initially began as a practical necessity for her starring role in the highly anticipated Wicked films.
Erivo, an Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress, took on the iconic role of Elphaba, the green-skinned witch, in director Jon M. Chu’s cinematic adaptation of the Broadway musical. Preparing for the extensive physical transformation required for Elphaba, she faced the prospect of wearing multiple wigs for both Wicked (2024) and its 2025 sequel, Wicked: For Good. Shaving her head completely presented the simplest solution for managing the numerous hairpieces and full-body green paint.
Yet, what started as a functional choice quickly transformed into a deeply personal one. Erivo was so enamored with her new look that she chose to maintain it even after filming wrapped on both Wicked installments. She sees it as a genuine expression of her identity. "This is how I want to look," she told Harper’s Bazaar in October 2025. "I love heels, I love nails, I love a defined jawline, I love a shaved head, I like a good outfit. It is, legitimately, a way of expressing parts of myself."
Her embrace of the look extends to her eyebrows, which she shaves herself. She even incorporates bleaching or shaving them to achieve what she describes as looking like a "pretty thumb."
Erivo had long harbored a desire for a radical hair change, but her hairstylists often hesitated to fulfill her wishes. She shared with Slate in 2023, "My hairstylist just cut some of my hair off. So I walked away with a cut I didn’t want." She reflected on how she "allowed her fears, or something she was projecting onto me, to influence how I made my choices."
The actress confessed that her previous shoulder-length hairstyle had inadvertently served as a barrier, allowing her to distance herself from others both professionally and personally. "I was doing it for a long time," she recalled. "I remember saying to myself, ‘I’d like to walk into a room and have people just see my face.’"
Despite some public opposition to her shaved head, Erivo remains undeterred by external fashion advice. She confidently stated to Elle in 2024, "I keep seeing people say, ‘Why is she bald? She needs to put on a wig.’" She added with a laugh, "Why does it bother them so much that I don’t want to walk around with blonde hair? I like my shaved head. There’s nothing wrong with my hair; it grows very fast. I just like my face."
She concluded, "When I walk into a room, I’m not pretending. I’m going to walk in with my nose ring, my earrings, my many piercings and my nails, and a long time ago I made the decision to just be me."
The decision to shave her eyebrows followed a similar path. It was initially for Wicked, but she found she liked the result and kept it for her everyday life. "I don’t have eyebrows. I shave them on purpose," Erivo confirmed to W Magazine in October 2024. The absence of eyebrows was specifically required for her portrayal of Elphaba. Frances Hannon, Wicked‘s makeup and hair designer, explained to People in 2024 that they used custom-made eyebrow stencils because Erivo shaves her eyebrows.
Beyond her hair and eyebrows, Erivo underwent an extensive physical transformation for Elphaba. Each day on set required several hours in the makeup chair, depending on the amount of green body paint needed for particular scenes. Before filming even commenced, she participated in numerous "green tests" as the makeup team meticulously searched for the perfect shade for her skin. Erivo told Vanity Fair in 2024, "Some greens really didn’t work. We had some that were very alien, just too much." The team ultimately selected a green hue with a "phosphorescent yellow undertone," which they found appeared most realistic on camera. "On brown, it looks like skin," Hannon clarified. To complete her Elphaba costume, Erivo also donned colored contact lenses and lipstick.