wig | I-want-my-IWTV

I answered this more fully in this post right here, but just concisely:

Yes, Tom Cruise was wearing a wig. Thinking about it now, I think it was a partial wig and blended with his own hair somewhat.

Admittedly it wasn’t the “glorious mane of pampered yellow hair” as described in book!IWTV, but I think his performance really made up for any of his physical shortcomings (pun intended, lol), like not being blond enough.

New thoughts, too:

In fact, he was a brighter blonde as we can see in some stills from what appear to be cut scenes, and they modified his hair and makeup, so that may be a reason why those scenes had to be cut. This one looks oversaturated but you can still tell that his hair is very different from the movie, and his eyebrows are bigger and brighter. Pastier white skin, too.

^I think this would have been the scene Lestat makes Louis watch him take a victim to make sure Louis reeeeeeally wants to vampire. Or it’s the scene Lestat bashes open Louis’s wife’s coffin to show him the decaying corpses of his wife and child to remind him what death actually looks like and it’s hella not fun.

Compare the above to the hair and makeup he had in the movie ~~before the murder attempts~~:

Tom’s hair was fabulous like c’mon. I mean, maybe not the EXACT “glorious mane of pampered yellow hair” as described in book!IWTV, but I think his performance really made up for any of his physical shortcomings (pun intended, lol), like not being blond enough.

So yeah it was indeed a wig, but you know, there are a lot of reasons that the costume ppl put a wig on someone instead of dyeing the actor’s hair, and it’s not just because the actor doesn’t want to dye it. I bet Tom would have been willing to dye it if they’d asked him. He’s grown it out pretty long (the Last Samurai) and shaved his head bald (Minority Report) for roles.

For one thing, Lestat’s hairstyle and color had to be very consistent. It took 2 weeks to shoot the scene where Lestat kills the 2 women in front of Louis. Having a pre-styled wig is much faster to get on the actor than having to style their hair freshly every single time. Where Brad’s hair only had to be long and silky, that’s just an easy blow-dry; Tom’s had to have a fairly consistent shape.

Christopher Reeve wore a wig as Superman for similar reasons.

… and in Lestat’s case, it would have been inefficient to have to repeatedly dye Tom’s roots for however long his time was during the shoot lasted (I think it was several months). The vampire makeup effects took hours to apply, tracing the veins alone took 30 min EVERY ~~DAY~~ NIGHT:

… so saving time on Lestat’s hair styling and coloring was probably a huge help!

All that said, yes, Brad Pitt had magnificent hair during that time in his life.

He did a number of movies around that time with his own hair worn long, to the point where men were making fun of him for basically being TOO feminine (pretty eyes + big pouty lips + long silky mane = girl).

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was Tom Cruise wearing a wig when he played Lestat or was this his real hair dyed blond?

I know that in IWTV (the movie) that Brad Pitt did not wear a wig and that was his actual hair but what about Tom Cruise? Was that his real hair or a wig? But may I just say that even if it was a wig that blonde hair was fabulous but not as fabulous as Louis/Brad Pitt’s hair.