Neil Patrick Harris Debuts a Shaved Head at the Tonys

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When you play one of TV’s most beloved pop culture characters for nearly a decade, people expect you to always look a certain way. And Neil Patrick Harris, who first warmed our hearts as the precocious pipsqueak on Doogie Howser M.D. and then gave us endless catchphrases as Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother, has cemented himself in the imagination of Americans everywhere as an eternally tousled bleach blonde. But on Sunday night at the Tony Awards, the actor surprised everyone with a fresh summer look, shaving off all of his hair.

Neil Patrick Harris Shaved Head
Neil Patrick Harris Shaved Head


Harris arrived at the Tony Award sporting a freshly shorn style, ditching his usual tuft of spiky blonde hair in favor of a stubble no longer than his 5 o’clock shadow. While the fresh style is the perfect complement to the warm weather we’re currently in the midst of, it’s more likely a practical choice Harris made on behalf of the character he’s playing in the upcoming Netflix film A Series of Unfortunate Events. Considering all of the makeup and prosthetics he has to wear to play the evil Count Olaf, including a prosthetic nose, receding hairline, and bushy eyebrows, a shaved head could probably also shave hours off his time in the makeup chair every day.

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While this look could easily be to hasten the transformation process, we prefer to think that this is a sign NPH is entering his serious dramatic actor phase. Like Sir Ben Kingsley, Daniel Radcliffe or Zayn Malik before him, the actor’s hair change can surely only mean one on two things: He’s either on his way to being knighted or he’s about to release a solo pop album, and either way we couldn’t be happier for him.

What do you think of NPH’s new hair?

–Emily Kirkpatrick