16 celebs who have embraced their gray hair — and clapped back at criticism
16 celebs who have embraced their gray hair — and clapped back at criticism
Kathleen PerriconeSat, May 30, 2026 at 12:45 AM UTC
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Patricia Heaton; Steve Carell; Whoopi Goldberg
Credit: Monica Schipper/Getty; Phillip Faraone/Getty; TheStewartofNY/WireImage
Gray hair? These celebrities genuinely don't care. So many of Hollywood's biggest stars, supermodels, and rock stars have decided to ditch the dye and embrace their natural roots — online trolls be damned.
Here are 16 celebs who are aging authentically and stepping into their "Silver Era."
01 of 14
Patricia Heaton
Patricia Heaton in 2025
Credit: Monica Schipper/Getty
The Everybody Loves Raymond star is the latest celeb to clap back at online criticism over her changing appearance. After one commenter sniped the 68-year-old was "too young for grey old lady hair," Heaton jumped on Instagram to defend "the silver in my hair."
The actress, who fully transitioned from brunette to gray in 2025, got right to the point: "Let me just say: there's some things that come along in life that I've just decided to embrace, and that doesn't include boxed hair dye. The people in my life love me no matter what color my hair is, and maybe we could all use a little more of just accepting what is and being grateful."
02 of 14
Sarah Jessica Parker
Sarah Jessica Parker in 2026
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Going gray became even more fashionable once the Sex and the City star joined the movement. But her decision to age naturally was met with an unfair double standard.
"'Gray hair gray hair gray hair. Does she have gray hair?'" Parker lamented to Vogue in 2021. "I'm sitting with Andy Cohen and he has a full head of gray hair, and he's exquisite. Why is it okay for him? I don't know what to tell you people! Especially on social media. Everyone has something to say. 'She has too many wrinkles, she doesn't have enough wrinkles'... I know what I look like. I have no choice. What am I going to do about it? Stop aging? Disappear?"
03 of 14
Steve Carell
Steve Carell in 2026
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When the comedic actor debuted his new salt-and-pepper look while promoting Despicable Me 3 in 2017, the viral reaction established the rise of a new Silver Fox in Hollywood. "Move over, Clooney," declared HuffPost. "Nothing will prepare you for these hot photos of Steve Carell," gushed Bazaar.
Luckily, the heaps of flattery didn't go to his head. "Oh, I just stay up all night scouring the Internet to see more coverage," he confessed to SiriusXM's Entertainment Weekly Radio, with a laugh.
But it's at home where he's getting the most significant extra attention. "My wife finally said she's in love with me," Carell joked on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. "I'm very excited."
04 of 14
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg in 2026
Credit: TheStewartofNY/WireImage
The View host has always been outspoken — even when it comes to aging in Hollywood. In 2016, Goldberg and Joy Behar debated their differing opinions on going gray. The redhead argued she wouldn't have a job on television if she didn't dye her silver strands, to which the comedian quipped, "Okay, Lucille [Ball]... I don't mind the gray," explained Goldberg, showing off the salt-and-pepper accents beneath her locs. "I push my hair up all the time."
Goldberg's embrace of aging isn't limited to just her hair color. "My stuff's going to sag and fall and I will be fine," she told The Times of London. "My chest is gonna do what it does. I can age the way I age."
05 of 14
George Clooney
George Clooney in 2025
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The OG silver fox in Hollywood started going gray at the ripe old age of 25. So that's why, four decades later, when Clooney dyed his hair black for Broadway's Good Night and Good Luck, it was not only shocking to fans but also the actor and his family.
"Oh, it's not good. It's not good," Clooney said on CBS Mornings in 2025. "I'm not used to it. You never get used to it… I've been gray most of my life. So it's not my favorite look, and my wife? She thinks it's funny. [My kids] laugh at it, because nothing makes you look older than being 63 and dyeing your hair."
06 of 14
Salma Hayek
Salma Hayek in 2026
Credit: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty
The actress has been dipping her toe into the gray game the last several years. "The white hair of wisdom," Hayek, now 59, captioned a selfie in 2020. In between film roles, the brunette regularly lets them be — she's been photographed everywhere from the Golden Globes and Paris Fashion Week to Wimbledon proudly showing off her "wisdom."
And any time she does want to temporarily cover up her silver streaks, she reaches into her makeup bag for a quick fix. "I just put mascara" on the gray hairs, she shared in a 2024 beauty tutorial. An added bonus: “All the rebellious little ones that stick up not only go black, but they stay flat.”
07 of 14
Andie MacDowell
Andie MacDowell in 2026
Credit: Maya Dehlin Spach/FilmMagic
At the age of 63, after years of wanting to let her silver hairs go wild, the actress finally ditched the dye with the encouragement of her two daughters. But not everyone was thrilled. "My managers had actually said to me, 'It's not time,'" MacDowell recalled to Vogue in 2021. "And I said, 'I think you're wrong, and I'm going to be more powerful if I embrace where I am right now…' I always wanted to be salt and pepper!"
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As she transitioned from brunette to gray, she occasionally wore a wig "to please people," MacDowell, now 68, admitted. "But then once I did it, it was just so clear to me that my instincts were right because I've never felt more powerful. I feel more honest. I feel like I'm not pretending. I feel like I'm embracing right where I am. I feel really comfortable. And in a lot of ways, I think it's more striking on my face. I just feel like it suits me."
08 of 14
Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen
Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper
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Two of television's most notable faces have been BFFs for three decades, and in recent years they've gained a new shared bond: their gray hair. Cooper was first dubbed "The Silver Fox" in the early 2000s when he appeared nightly on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360.
Although he struggled with the moniker at times, it was certainly better than what the Watch What Happens Live host called him. "Andy Cohen makes fun of me, and says it's like Katniss Everdeen's 'hair on fire,'" Cooper revealed to Kelly Ripa in 2016.
But salt-and-pepper Cohen wasn't far behind – a decade later, the Bravo boss is now also a silver fox (which he blames onThe Real Housewives). "I started going gray in my 20s — just a light sprinkling — and I thought, 'Oh, this is cool,'" Cohen said in 2017 when he received PEOPLE's Sexiest Hair award. "I could never imagine coloring my hair."
09 of 14
Jamie Lee Curtis
Jamie Lee Curtis in 2026
Credit: Steve Jennings/Getty Images
After years of regular appointments at the hair salon, the actress had an "epiphany" one day around her 41st birthday. "Personally, I felt it humiliating," Curtis told Britain's ITV in 2021. "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?'"
Curtis, now 67, admitted that she did try to turn back the hands of time with plastic surgery, but "it didn't work. I hated it. It made me feel worse." As a result, she explained, "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."
10 of 14
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda in 2026
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At the age of 83, the blonde sex symbol decided to embrace change. In 2020, Fonda underwent a seven-hour transformation with her hairstylist, Jack Martin, who took her from flaxen to "silver icy blonde to surprise everyone at the 2020 Oscars."
And it was worth every minute in the chair. "I tell you, I'm so happy I let it go gray," the actress gushed to Ellen DeGeneres in 2021. "Enough already with so much time wasted, so much money spent, so many chemicals — I'm through with that."
11 of 14
Hilarie Burton and Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hilarie Burton in 2026
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The couple that goes gray together, stays together. The One Tree Hillactress was actually inspired by Morgan to stop coloring the gray hairs that had been sprouting up since her early 20s. "My husband turned into a silver fox right before my very eyes," she told Scary Mommy in 2023.
After noticing how "people thought [Morgan] was hotter" after he committed to going gray, "I wanted to act like a man in that journey," Burton confessed in 2021, two years into her own hair transition. "And so the different reaction I had was a little bit startling, but also made me laugh… I want to treat this chapter of my life as my expertise chapter. I know what I'm doing."
12 of 14
Oscar Isaac
Oscar Isaac in 2026
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Onscreen, the versatile actor has transformed into a mutant supervillain (X-Men: Apocalypse), reclusive CEO (Ex-Machina), and crazed scientist (Frankenstein). But it was his role as regal planetary governor Leto Atreides in 2021's Dune, that officially "hard-launched"Isaac as a veritable silver fox. The film's makeup artist, Donald Mowat, added gray to the actor's real beard (which he grew out during the Covid quarantine) to make him look older, and after production wrapped, Isaac, 47, decided to stick with it — much to the delight of fans.
13 of 14
Paulina Porizkova
Paulina Porizkova in 2025
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The 61-year-old model has fully embraced aging, and one of her favorite aspects is becoming a silver goddess. "I love my gray hair," Porizkova told Harper's Bazaar in 2025. "It still requires maintenance, believe it or not, but I feel very good about my hair."
Unfortunately, not everyone feels the same way. Porizkova clapped back at social media critics, via Threads: "One of the wonderful things about gray hair is that it says that I really don't care about your judgement of me. I like me just the way I am."
14 of 14
Jon Bon Jovi
Jon Bon Jovi in 2025
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The "Livin' on a Prayer" rocker's long, feathered locks were his signature for decades. These days, "my hair is gray [but] at least I still have all my hair,” he joked on the How to Fail podcast in 2025.
Bon Jovi, 64, said he had to accept his natural roots in his early 50s. "When I was starting to get to that age, and they would put hair color in, I hated that," he admitted to host Elizabeth Day. "So, I just said, 'Screw it,' like, 12 to 13 years ago. I wouldn't do that, and so I had to come to terms with aging. You know, I look at pictures of me now, I'm not happy about it. I look at 30, 40, 50, and I go, 'Yeah, I would rather look like that,' but I don't."
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