Celebrity Very Short Hair Cuts

Celebrity very short hair cuts are rarely as dramatic as Cate Blanchett with her head shaved, but this unthinkable makeover happened in the movie Heaven.

Such a striking celebrity transformation begged to be included in our very short celebrity hair cuts gallery. The picture of Cate Blanchett with no hair is at the end of the second row.

Celebrity or not, the importance of a woman's hair is graphically highlighted when you see Cate Blanchett bald.

The rest of our celebrity gallery is much less dramatic. But the remaining pictures do show well known women with very short hair cuts.

Quirky Celebrity Very Short Hair Cuts

Perhaps the least well known is Swedish modeling celebrity Jenny Molin, pictured at the start of the third row. She wears either a very short hair cut, or a hair style intended to look like a very short hair cut.

With hair swept up from the forehead adding height but no width, and gelled hair combed neatly back above the ears, this very short hair style and this photo have been designed deliberately to emphasize the long, straight lines of Molin's face.

Her photo is a fashion shot, full of intent. Advertisers love toying with sexuality, and here they're playing one of their favourite games - seeing how far they can push a woman's face towards the masculine, while still retaining her feminine appeal.

Go figure.

Keira Knightley's Very Short Hair Cut

For a complete contrast, look at Keira Knightley in the very next picture.

There's nothing masculine or even boyish about her photo. But of all the celebrity very short hair cuts in this gallery, it's hers that leaves most to the imagination.

That's no accident, of course.

Keira Knightley herself has asserted that she's no beauty.

One can't really agree.

But her features do stray sufficiently far from the biologically programmed norm of feminine beauty to require a few adjustments.

When Keira has left her face exposed, it's angular and long, with straight verticals down the cheeks and a very high forehead that's wider than the rest of her face.

Keira Knightley's very short hair cut resolves all those issues.

Her forehead has completely disappeared, absorbed into the illusion of roundness created by the carefully tousled styling of her hair.

There's even a strand tucked in front of the ear, flicking out to distract admiring eyes from the straight plunge of Keira's cheek line ... but it doesn't obscure the ear because her ears are also needed, and for the very same reasons - they widen and curve Keira's face at the midline.

She uses bulky pendant earrings with the same intent, drawing attention outwards from the cheeks, and away from the sharp turn her jaws make towards the chin.

This very short hair cut is a great success. It makes Keira Knightley look pretty, sexy, cute, and utterly feminine.

The Oval in Celebrity Very Short Hair Cuts

Celebrity model Carolyn Murphy can wear the most boyish of hair styles, as she does in the first picture in the top row, and still look unmistakably feminine.

Very short hair cuts are just part of her fashion arsenal.

Look at Carolyn Murphy again, in the first picture of the middle row, where her hair is dragged straight back all around her forehead - it's a smoothly drawn curve that's revealed, exactly the shape you'd like to balance the lower half of her face.

Her face shape needs no adjustment. It's an oval. Fortunate indeed for any woman, let alone a celebrity who earns her living in front of the camera.

Faking the Oval in Celebrity Very Short Hair Cuts

The oval rules in female beauty, but few celebrity women have a conveniently oval face.

Celebrity very short hair cuts that work tend to have one thing in common - the lower half of the woman's face forms the lower half of an oval - or can easily be made to look as if it does.

It's at the forehead, on the other hand, that most of the fine tuning needs to be done to complete that vision of an oval.

Demi Moore, Kirsten Dunst, Wynona Ryder and Halle Berry all wear very short hair cuts in this gallery. All of them, in different ways, use their very short hair to confuse and blur the precise shape of their foreheads.

Wynona Ryder's attempts are perhaps the least successful. Her face, celebrity number two in the middle row, still appears to be cut straight across the top, and her shag style hair actually heightens the impression of squareness.

Halle Berry's very short hair cut is photo four in the middle row. Look no further for proof that so-called A List celebrity status doesn't automatically equal style.

Why would this woman, a celebrity among celebrities, choose to make her face look longer and narrower than it is by stacking a tall, skinny hair shape above her forehead?

It's a mystery. Perhaps we can best resolve it by reflecting that celebrities are only human, stylists are only human, publicists are only human ... and they can all do really dumb things with hair cuts.

Then there's Charlize Theron's boyishly short blonde hair in the bottom row. What a contrast! This is one of those celebrity very short hair cuts that work.

How much of the success is due to camera angle and the tilt of her head, and how much to her actual features, is hard to assess.

Which makes this a very clever photograph indeed.

It would be interesting to view this celebrity's very short hair cut from the front, with her head on an even keel.

Ashley Judd and Celebrity Very Short Hair Cuts

Ashley Judd, the fourth celebrity in the top row, can wear very short hair cuts with the best of the very short hair divas.

But she has a high forehead, its line drawn straight across at the top, and you'll rarely see all of it.

Her hair cut here is boyish and very short, with a fringe that slopes from the side, high above her left eye, down across her forehead to the other side.

The nicely oval shape suggested by this arrangement doesn't go anywhere near her real hair line.

It's a beautiful fake, a tried and true illusion used often by this celebrity photographer magnet.

Two More Celebrity Very Short hair Cuts

Tara Reid is a modeling celebrity who can make very short hair cuts look very cute, as she does in the fourth picture of the bottom row. But she carefully trains her hair around the top of her forehead, and this isn't done on a whim.

Alyssa Milano, seen in the middle picture of the middle row, wears a very short hair cut indeed - but at the forehead it's trimmed and styled to follow the right curve. This celebrity actually has rather a straight, horizontal hair line, which needs to be moulded into the right curves.

Anne Heche's Celebrity Very Short Hair Cuts

Anne Heche is another celebrity whose very short hair cuts have to deal with a forehead that's much too high and broad for the rest of her face.

You'll rarely see Anne Heche's forehead exposed. Instead, even with the shortest, most elfin of hair cuts, this celebrity carefully arranges her style so that her forehead appears almost as the mirror image of her chin.

In this very short hair cut, an apparently casual but very complex part draws her hair down across her forehead from a point just off-center, in angles that echo her jawline and neatly build the impression of an oval face.

Like Keira Knightley, she includes a tuck of hair in front of the ears but makes sure the ears are not obscured. Anne Heche needs to make her face seem wider because her cheeks sink - they curve inwards from just below the eyes. Her ears help to obscure the fact that her face bulges strangely at the midline.

Angelina Jolie and Celebrity Very Short Hair Cuts

Angelina Jolie, the top row's second celebrity, can change her face shape as a chameleon changes its colours. She can be long faced and angular, oval-faced, rectangular, soft and feminine, hard and almost masculine.

In the best tradition of photographic celebrity face moulding, and knowing that any hair cut can look very different from the side, she takes full advantage of camera angle in her very short hair cut picture - number two in the top row.

The light robs her image of detail at vital points - her sharp jaw line and cheeks are softened. Her hair seems to curve gently across the top of her face till it meets the natural curve her forehead makes when seen in three-quarter profile.

Wanting to find a beautiful, oval shape, our mind's eye fills in the missing details to suit.

Celebrity very short hair cuts. There's more to them - and less - than meets the eye.

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