MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: James McAvoy accidentally shaved his head for the wrong X-Men movie!
A few months bad, James McAvoy did a fun teaser for X-Men: Dark Phoenix where he showed himself ostensibly preparing to get rid of his hair for X-Men: Dark Phoenix, following Charles Xavier finally going bald in X-Men: Apocalypse (after having a full head of hair in X-Men: First Class and the flashback sequences in X-Men: Days of Future Past).
At the time, reader Randy G. sent in a legend about McAvoy’s hair loss (or lack thereof) in the first film. He wanted to know if it was true that McAvoy actually shaved his head for X-Men: First Class, because he assumed that since he was playing Professor X, that he would need to be bald.
Surprisingly enough, that’s actually true. It came out when McAvoy was promoting X-Men: Days of Future Past with his “older self,” Patrick Stewart, back in 2014. He explained to Good Morning America, “I had showed up on the first day of X-Men: First Class, and I had shaved my head because I wanted to check what it looked like about a month before we started shooting — and it looked quite good — and they were like, ‘No, no, no, no, we want you to have long hair.’ ”
So McAvoy had to go through 15 hours of hair extensions for the first film.
Amusingly enough, he still had to go through a bunch of hair extensions for the next film, as Xavier’s hair is even longer than it was in the first film…
The legend is…
STATUS: True
Thanks for the suggestion, Randy!
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