Debating whether to throw away the paint?
From Dame Helen Mirren to Andie MacDowell, many celebrities prove that gray hair is gorgeous, and they’d rather celebrate than cover their silver strands.
Below are a few of our favorite salt-and-pepper stars who age like fine wine and embrace their natural beauty.
Jennifer aniston
She made “Friends” favorite “Rachel” a sensation in the ’90s and has since become known for her gorgeous curls – she even founded her own haircare brand, LolaVie, to capitalize on the public’s obsession with her hair.
Aniston flaunted some silver in her hairline to great fanfare as she wore her line in an Instagram Reel in June 2023.
“Well done for letting the gray pass – refreshing,” one person commented on his post, while another commented, “It’s so good to see. And it’s obviously still gorgeous.
George Clooney
Silver fox Clooney started turning gray during her “ER” days and instead of hiding it with dye, she turned to her new hair color.
“You have to accept aging and not fight it,” the Oscar-winning actress told BBC Radio 4 in 2015.
“I have great faith in the idea that you can’t try to look younger. You just have to try to do your best at your age and not worry about it.”
Christie Brinkley
While the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit fixture is famous for her sunny blonde curls, she periodically plays with the salt and pepper look.
“As soon as you see the white hair, the question comes to your mind, like when you cut your bangs..should you hide it or not?” Brinkley added a caption showing her silver roots in a March 2023 Instagram post.
“Thank God, both are just a personal preference or a fun change of pace. My son thinks it looks cool,” he added.
Salma Hayek
This brunette beauty isn’t afraid to embrace gray.
“Waking up and counting how many white hair and wrinkles ruined the party this morning,” Hayek wrote in a candid Instagram selfie in June 2023.
“Thanks for sharing! It helps everyone see that even the most beautiful and famous get older,” one fan commented; “Natural beauty has no age,” wrote another.
Tia Mowry
In her 2022 InStyle article, the “Sister, Sister” star recalled being scolded once for not covering her grays and holding her ground on a movie set.
“There are so many people who don’t get to the age where their hair starts turning gray every day. And so when I see my gray hair, it’s actually a blessing because that means yes, I’m getting old and I’m still here,” Mowry wrote.
“For me, beauty is self-confidence, beauty is feeling good, beauty is embracing all your flaws, and beauty is getting old.”
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Kristen McMenamy
Although the ’80s and ’90s supermodel was both redhead and brunette, she gained newfound fame in the mid-2000s when she decided to stop dyeing her hair and go gray altogether.
“The reason my white hair broke was because I thought I would never be able to work again and wanted to simplify my life. I didn’t want to keep running back to the gym to work out my roots,” McMenamy — covering magazines, slacking the catwalks and posing for campaigns with long silver strands front and center — told British Vogue in 2021.
“I wasn’t expecting it to look great, it was an accident. But now I want to help people understand that you can be over 50 and still be cool. You don’t have to comply, you don’t have to cut your hair. You are still yourself.”
Andy MacDowell
The “Four Weddings and a Funeral” actress, who embraced her gray hair during quarantine, attracted attention with her silver curls at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, despite the obvious objections of the management team.
“I somehow feel like I look younger because it looks more natural. I’m not trying to hide anything,” Vogue said of her decision to go gray.
“I think it’s a power move and I’ve been telling my managers that. That’s exactly what I need to do here.”
Jane Fonda
The beauty “Barbarella” caught the attention at the 2020 Academy Awards with her fresh silver pixie cut by star colorist Jack Martin.
“He wanted to have a completely new look for the Oscars and embrace his natural color at the same time,” Martin told Page Six Style at the time. “He tried two or three more colorists before he came to me and couldn’t find the right color.”
Fonda’s transformation took seven hours to complete, and the star looked very pleased with the results.
“I’m telling you, I’m so glad I let it be gray,” Fonda told Ellen DeGeneres in 2021.
Martin was also the brains behind Osbourne’s gray makeover for 2020.
“I was so sick of going and having it painted and painted and it was like I couldn’t do it anymore,” the TV personality told “The Talk” at the time.
“He’s been dyeing his hair every week for the last 18 years, and when he walked in, I could tell how tired he was from that commitment,” Martin told Page Six Style shortly after Osbourne released his new ‘do’.
“Imagine how many layers of color I had to go through to get her hair white while still keeping it healthy.”
Jamie Lee Curtis
The “Halloween” icon is proud of the gray pixie cut she’s had for nearly two decades.
“I tried to do everything you could to your hair. Personally, I felt humiliated. I would go to a hairdresser, the smell of chemicals, the feeling of that color in my hair, wearing those things, sitting under the hair dryer, ‘What for?’ I was like.” Curtis said in a 2021 interview on ITV’s “Lorraine” show.
The actress added, “I’ve been a longtime advocate of natural beauty, mostly because I went through the trial and error process of the other role.”
Sarah Jessica Parker
While the “Sex and the City” star hasn’t turned all gray yet, she’s a fan of “herringbone highlights,” a coloring technique that weaves them into strips of silver to make them less noticeable without covering them completely.
“I can’t spend time getting a base color every two weeks. I can’t do it. No. Parker recalled how a series of viral paparazzi photos last year sparked “months of conversations about how brave I am because I have gray hair,” Parker told Allure in 2022.
Since the “SATC” animation began production on “And Just Like That,” SJP has repeatedly responded to ageist comments about the looks of itself and its co-stars.
“I know how I look. I have no choice,” she said at Vogue 2021. “What am I going to do about it? Stop aging? Disappear?”
Diane Keaton
Keaton first went all gray at the 2014 Golden Globes, and it’s hard to envision the “Something’s Gotta Give” star with a different look these days.
“It’s better to have light around your face — I think it looks better on older people,” the actress told People in 2017 about the flattering silver hue. “Dark hair isn’t that smoothing.”
Helen Mirren
No one has more fun with her silver hair than Dame Mirren, who plays with temporary blues and pinks on the red carpet.
“I did it because I was lazy. To be honest, I’m very lazy with my hair!” Mirren told People in 2020 that she decided to go white. “It’s a lot of work and as great as many hairdressers are, I don’t want to sit in a salon for hours. I just can’t deal with it.
The Oscar winner added, “I think women were terribly afraid of having white or gray hair because that immediately put them in a different category. And of course you’re in that age group too. Sorry but you! So why don’t you embrace it, carry on with it for a long time, and be welcome.” • Do something positive as opposed to something negative.
Andy Cohen
Like his best friend Anderson Cooper, the Bravo king has sported a salt and pepper shaker for years.
“I’m not saying ‘Housewives’ completely bleached my hair, but they did,” Cohen joked on Instagram in 2021.
Tan France
It’s hard to imagine the “Queer Eye” fashionista without her signature silver cap.
“I feel like I’ve made a small space for myself where I am brown, I embrace my hair a lot and even how I turn gray prematurely, which is very typical for South Asian men,” France said. Refinery29 in 2018.
“I embrace all of this, and I hope it empowers other children of color to feel empowered to be who they are.”