How cinema helped villainise the bald man

As someone who has to strategically style their fringe in order to hide a rapidly receding hairline, I take particular exception to Mark Wahlberg’s new film, Flight Risk. In it, the actor plays a pilot tasked with transporting a US marshal and a government witness to a trial, only for him to eventually turn on the pair, take off his cap and reveal himself as a murderous villain. A bald murderous villain. Yes, it’s not often that we get to see Wahlberg portray a weirdo brute, but the second we do, someone (presumably director Mel Gibson) immediately deems it necessary to give him a Mr Burns haircut.

Ever a fan of authenticity, Wahlberg actually decided to shave his hair off for the role, rather than opt for a bald cap. Although the actor has shared a clip of his bonce being mowed on social media, it’s not entirely clear why such an extreme transformation was needed, creatively speaking. Unless, of course, the film is subscribing to an age-old and troubling notion: that traditional heroes typically have a healthy head of hair, while villainous creeps do not.

“You’ll never get a bald Superman,” hair loss expert Spencer Stevenson tells me. “The bald guys are always the bad guys.” Though there are a few notable exceptions to that rule, with the likes of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jason Statham and Bruce Willis typically playing tough guy heroes, history shows us that those without hair are far more likely to be depicted as freaks and outcasts. From Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Darth Vader to Lex Luthor and Lord Voldemort, the list of follically challenged antagonists is about as long as the history of storytelling itself.

“It dates back to Samson and the Greek gods, where having hair was a sign of virility,” says Stevenson, who offers hair loss and treatment advice through his company Spex Hair. “You were strong and manly if you had hair.” In other words, conventional male beauty standards don’t include baldness, therefore absence of hair is associated with undesirability – or general dodginess. Men don’t want to look like Dr Evil. They want to look like Timothée Chalamet or Ryan Gosling, or someone else with sickeningly luxurious locks.

Unfortunately, when it comes to crafting characters, baldness is often used as a visual cue to signal someone’s evil nature, making them easily distinguishable from the hero by showing off their menacing skull. That’s how you quickly transform a typical good-guy actor such as Wahlberg (who has a great head of hair, by the way) into someone you’re willing to hate. It may also explain why the Flight Risk marketing team decided to conceal the actor’s baldness by cropping the top of his head off its poster. The assumption being that the mere sight of Wahlberg’s bare cranium might, in some way, damage the actor’s image – and be considered too unattractive to whack on the side of a bus.

Wahlberg joins a long list of actors who have shaved their hair off in order to play a bad guy. Marlon Brando did it for Apocalypse Now. Hugh Jackman did it to play Captain Hook in Pan, even though the character isn’t traditionally bald. And Jeff Bridges buzzed his off for Iron Man, presumably to be comic-book accurate. But somehow it seems even more insulting when a naturally bald actor is forced to wear a wig in order to play a good guy. Corey Stoll did exactly that for his sci-fi series The Strain, yet remained bald for his villainous turn in Ant-Man. The message couldn’t be clearer.

Stevenson stresses that the negative connotations surrounding baldness are profound. “Hair loss has a stigma associated with it,” he explains. “Self-consciousness, depression, lack of self-esteem, unhappiness, resentfulness, bitterness and sadness,” all of which are more readily associated with evil-doers who dwell in hollowed-out volcanoes. Could hair loss even be a cause of villainy in some cases? “It has such a negative effect on a person’s self-confidence, self-worth and identity. It’s like a cancer of the spirit. These villains, these evil, unhappy guys, there’s definitely a link there – that hair loss has had an effect on them in some shape or form.”

To avoid those associations, the traditional hero simply has to be perceived as physically “perfect”. Look at James Bond. When Sean Connery was battling hair loss early on in the franchise, he quickly donned a wig to protect his and the character’s image (and presumably the audience’s eyes). More recently, a 71-year-old Michael Keaton chucked on a hairpiece to reprise his role as Bruce Wayne in The Flash, knowing full well that the world would never accept the sight of a bald Batman. Yuck.

Even the likes of Johnson and Statham, whom I’ve already acknowledged are definitely hairless heroes, have to compensate for the sparsity of their follicles with an abundance of toughness. They’re effectively typecast as meathead bruisers, which is just another negative stereotype to chuck on the pile.

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Outside of traditional hero and villain roles, representation of bald characters isn’t much better. Most are typically portrayed as losers, idiots, freaks or generally unpleasant people. For the comedic masterpiece that is Tropic Thunder, Tom Cruise sported a fat suit and bald cap to become an aggressive and grotesque studio executive aptly named Les Grossman – a character widely believed to have been inspired by Harvey Weinstein. America’s favourite (bald) dad Homer Simpson is an overweight moron. And in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David presents himself as a rude, clown-like curmudgeon who is openly bitter about his baldness.

But how is this kind of representation impacting bald and thinning audience members? In a 2020 study conducted by the British Journal of Dermatology, it was concluded that “the cinematic portrayal of hair loss in villains not only exacerbates the psychological burden, but also instigates negative societal views”. It added that people with alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that causes hair loss, can also experience “severe social anxiety and depression, and display a fear of negative perception by others”. And one of its suggestions? “The use of a wig might reduce an individual’s perception of a divergence from cultural norms and improve social confidence.”

Making matters infinitely worse are the scores of A-list celebrities who are undergoing hair-transplant procedures, taking medication and even wearing hairpieces in an attempt to hide the bald-faced truth. Anyone would think that male pattern baldness is a genuine rarity when, in fact, 85 per cent of men experience significant thinning by the age of 50. Stevenson, who privately consults a large number of high-profile celebrities on their hair loss treatment, says: “It needs to be talked about more. The negative connotations, the stigma that comes with losing your hair, sadly it’s always going to be there. But the more people and celebrities talk about it, the better representation will become.”

In a New York Times column from March 2000 entitled “Kiss My Head”, arguably the greatest baldness-related article of all time, Larry David wrote: “People are always telling bald men how good they look in hats. Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they? But what happens when they take that cap off? Have you ever seen the looks on people’s faces when the bald man takes the cap off? They’re dumbfounded.”

That was my exact reaction when I saw Wahlberg’s hat fly off to reveal his freshly shaven head. Not because it’s unsightly. And not because it doesn’t suit him. But because it sent a very clear and depressing message: the moment you become a baldie, you also become a baddie.