The choice to grow out your hair and embrace your grays is a very personal one — it can also feel extremely empowering. More and more women are ditching the hair dye and constant upkeep in favor of celebrating their natural roots. And the results are super flattering: those bright whites and distinctive grays give an almost-halo like appearance at times — while simultaneously giving older women a more distinguished, sophisticated look. Gray hair also screams confidence: there’s just something about a woman who feels comfortable in her skin that inspires other women to follow suit.
If you’re looking for a little gray hair inspiration, you’ve come to the right place. These 11 celebrities are embracing their grays and looking like a million bucks while rocking them.
Salma Hayek
At age 56, it should come as no shock that actress Salma Hayek has some grays in her dark brunette hair. What is unusual for Hollywood is that the star has no qualms about taking to social media to show them off and talk about how she is only covering up her white roots for roles. “It’s my natural color, and it’s my natural white hairs,” she told The New York Times. “One of the reasons I don’t dye my hair is because I don’t have the patience to sit through it. My hair is curly and wild when I’m not working. I use Nuance hair oil to take down the frizz.”
Tia Mowry
Gorgeous actress Tia Mowry isn’t taking ageism sitting down. The 44-year-old shared, “[…] maybe about four or five years ago, I was working on a film, and someone on set told me, ‘You really need to cover those gray hairs! Girls shouldn’t be seen that way. ‘ And I said, ‘No. I’m going to keep my gray hair.” She also told Shape that she embraces a healthy attitude about aging and her changing hair: “I’ve always had this perspective that it is a blessing to get old. There are so many people on a daily basis that are not making it to the age where their hair starts to gray. And so when I see my gray hair, it actually is a blessing because it means that, yes, I’m getting older and I’m still here.”
Allison Janney
At 63, Allison Janney is a vision of total confidence and glamour. And she absolutely rocks her natural gray strands, as well. Chatting with Drew Barrymore, Janney said, “I cannot tell you how amazing it is to feel free. Free from hair color and hair extensions and hair tapes and blah blah blah. It’s just, to be able to run my hands through my hair and hopefully sometime a man will be able to run his hands through my hair, appreciate—it’s just, it’s heaven.”
Andie MacDowell
Andie MacDowell made headlines when she began appearing on red carpets and star-studded events with her natural, gorgeous gray curls. The former model and actress also handled critics of her look with total grace (some rudely shared on social media their thoughts about it making the 64-year-old look older). In an interview with Katie Couric, she said: “How old do you think I look? I'm going to be 65. What do you think I look 75 just because I let my hair go gray? I don’t care. I want to be old. I’m tired of trying to be young. I don’t want to be young. I’ve been young. And to be an older person trying to be young, what an effort. I just can't keep up the charade! I can't!"
Diane Keaton
A few years back, actress Diane Keaton, who is now 77, made is known to the world that she has zero intention of dyeing her hair again. In fact, she defended her choice as a wise beauty tip, saying, “My hair is now white. It's better to have light around your face–I think it looks better on older people. Darker hair is not as softening.”
Jamie Lee Curtis
Gorgeous actress Jamie Lee Curtis is now 64 and proud of her cropped gray ‘do. She also has no time for anyone’s opinions about older women and the need to keep up with ever-changing beauty standards.
"I tried to do everything you can do to your hair," Curtis said. "Personally, I felt it humiliating. I would go into a hair salon, the smell of the chemicals, the feeling of that color on my hair, the wearing the things, sitting under the hair dryer, I was like, ‘For what?’ So very early on in my career, I had a perm, and then had to dye my hair for a movie, and it burned my hair off my head. And the first time I cut my hair short, I went, ‘Oh, oh, my God. Oh wow, I look like me.’"
As far as anti-aging procedures go, you won’t find Curtis at the plastic surgeon’s office any time soon: "I have been an advocate for natural beauty for a long time, mostly because I’ve had the trial and error of the other part," she said. "I did plastic surgery, it didn’t work. I hated it. It made me feel worse.”
Julia Fox
Julia Fox is only 33, but the actress has shown that she isn’t scared of going gray. After making the decision to temporarily go gray as a beauty choice she said, “This is a love letter to getting older. We’re embracing getting older.”
Lily Allen
During lockdown, Lily Allen, 37, shared on social media that she was struggling to keep up with her hair care, including taking care of “bald patches” and grays (the Instagram post has since been deleted). She posted a gorgeous photo of herself with grays sprinkled throughout her hair and, despite admitting she was going to get them covered, many fans begged her not to and said she looked absolutely gorgeous with her gray hair.
Meryl Streep
Who can forget Meryl Streep’s icy-gray hair when she sashayed across the screen as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada? The 73-year-old legend was only in her fifties when she took on the role, but you could tell she felt supremely confident in her skin, which made a lot of us think differently about silver and gray strands. Since then, Streep has gracefully allowed gray strands to grow and mix with her blonde hair, giving her an absolutely gorgeous, sophisticated look.
Sarah Jessica Parker
When Sarah Jessica Parker, 58, reprised her role as Carrie Bradshaw in And Just Like That, a ridiculous amount of attention was placed on how she and her cast mates had chosen to age over the years. And Parker’s decision to allow some of her grays to blend in with her blonde hair received so much more chatter than she was comfortable with. "I can't spend time getting base color every two weeks. Can't do it. Nope. Too much,” Parker shared with Allure. "It became months and months of conversation about how brave I am for having gray hair. I was like, please please applaud someone else's courage on something!"
Stacy London
Stacy London is known for her trademark gray streak in her hair, and it’s one that she has had since she was 11 and it grew in after an illness. But the beauty has not thought once about covering it up.
"I've never felt uncomfortable about it,” London once shared. “I think it puts me in the same category as Cruella de Vil or Rogue from X-Men. That's pretty iconic! There are actually easy ways I could hide it — I could part my hair a certain way and it wouldn't show. But I would never. It's a part of me."
