Ethan Hawke Blonde Hair: Actor Looks Like Billy Idol, But Was Going For Bowie

Ethan Hawke has blonde hair. But his new ‘do isn’t a symptom of a mid-life crisis. Hawke’s bleached look is a byproduct of his newest role.

MSN reports that Hawke plays a 1990s rocker gone bad in an off-Broadway performance of Clive, and is diving into his new role Daniel Day-Lewis style by bleaching his hair to look more like a grunge-era musician in New York City.

Hawke’s blonde locks debuted at a February 7 opening-night party for the play, which he directs as well as stars in. The 42-year-old Dead Poet’s Society star hardly looked like himself, sporting platinum-blonde hair gelled up into a spiky, Billy Idol-esque look.

“I don’t know how to explain it exactly,” Hawke told The New York Times of his blonde hair. “I didn’t want to feel like me when I did this role.”

Despite the blonde-and-guyliner look, Hawke says that his makeover has less to do with Idol, and more to do with another famous British musician.

“I’m trying to do that old-school, third-person thing by unlocking something as utterly superficial as my hair. I was shooting for a [David] Bowie thing,” he explained, “but then I saw a picture of him after I did it, and he didn’t really do his hair like this.”

Clive is a modernized adaptation of the 1918 play Baal, by Bertolt Brecht. The updated version tells the story of a 90s rocker in New York City who looks for musical inspiration through sex and drugs.

Check out a picture of Ethan Hawke’s blonde hair below. Let us know what you think!