Julia Roberts’s New Hair Is the Shortest It’s Been in Decades

• The new trailer for Julia Roberts’s latest film, After the Hunt, was released on July 16.
• In it, we see Roberts—who plays college professor Alma Olsson—alongside Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield with her shortest and blondest hair in years.
• Roberts has been a redhead, a brunette, and blonde, with a variety of cuts over the decades—and it appears that her hair in After the Hunt is not a wig, but really cut and colored for the role.

For her latest project, Julia Roberts’s hair has gone from long and darker to short and blonder.

In her new film After the Hunt—which comes out in October, and which just released a trailer ahead of its opening—Roberts stars alongside Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield sporting the shortest hairstyle she’s had in decades. Roberts has a blonde bob, a side part, and loose waves for her role in the psychological thriller, where the Oscar winner plays a college professor who is faced with her star student (played by Edebiri) making an accusation against her colleague (played by Garfield)—while also struggling with a secret of her own.

Julia Roberts in ‘After the Hunt’.

Amazon MGM Studios

As opposed to other actors who wear wigs for parts (and no shade to them), Roberts seems to have fully dialed in and both cut and dyed her hair for the role of Alma Olsson, People reported.

Julia Roberts in ‘After the Hunt’.

Amazon MGM Studios

When it comes to her appearance, the actress credits “good genes” and “leading a life that is fulfilling,” according to a 2024 British Vogue interview. Referring to her husband of 23 years, Danny Moder—with whom she shares 20-year-old twins Hazel and Phinnaeus and 17-year-old son Henry—Roberts added, “I do believe in the love of a good man. I believe that my husband loves me and cares for me in a way that makes me feel deeply, deeply happy. And anytime you see someone who’s happy, it doesn’t matter how old they are.”

Of hair transformations in the past, Roberts told British Vogue, “I think there’s something in me that’s always [let] people feel they’re comfortable, or they see something familiar. If someone sees me in a grocery store and they say, ‘Why did you cut your hair like that?’ it’s not because they’re trying to be rude. It’s because they feel they know me, that I sit behind them in church every Sunday.”

“It’s that sense of feeling that you understand someone that you don’t know,” she added. “I guess looking relatively like myself in most parts takes me out of the character-actor lane. But I never feel like I’m playing myself.”

Julia Roberts.

Getty

For most of the past 20 years, Roberts has balanced her career with motherhood, but told the publication that she found it important for her three kids to see her go to work: “There’s also something to my kids seeing that my creative life is meaningful to me,” she told British Vogue. “I want them to understand that. Going outside of the house and being creative is really important and vital. And it doesn’t take away from my love of home. It’s another level of my life.”

Roberts—perhaps best known for her auburn hair—has gone through many hair transformations over the years, from curls to a pixie cut to bangs to brunette and many iterations in between. Roberts’s longtime hairstylist Serge Normant told Refinery29 in 2020 (via Hello!) that “There’s no doubt that Julia’s hair is iconic.”

Julia Roberts.

The Image Direct

Julia Roberts on September 22, 2023.

Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images for Gucci

“After her breakout role in Pretty Woman in the early ‘90s, everyone wanted that curly, wavy red hair—it was emblematic of the decade,” he said. “So, of course, when I started working with her regularly, my other clients asked me to give them ‘Julia Roberts hair.’ She’s been a brunette, a redhead, a blonde, and has had long hair and short cuts—she’s not afraid to experiment. Her hairstyle has to be something that’s easy and effortless, not contrived.”

Normant continued that “The magic of Julia’s hair is that people catch a feeling from it. They look at a picture of her—whether it’s bright blonde and sleek or messy and held up with a claw clip—and there’s something that people identify with. It’s her glow, and it’s infectious. You might love her blonde and think that the color is amazing, but then the next day she could be back to red and you forget about the blonde. She’s magical that way.”