Josh Hartnett gave himself the uneven haircut that turned up in both The Faculty and Halloween H20: 20 Years Later in 1998. At 19, he wanted his teenage characters to look like teenagers he recognized, and he kept undoing the hair departments’ attempts to tidy him up.
Reflecting on the look while promoting his Netflix series Below, Hartnett said: “No one would give me the haircut I wanted because it was a terrible haircut. I took it on myself to cut my own hair and then I put my beanie on afterward and would walk around Texas with a beanie on. I was crazy.”
They were his first 2 movie roles, filmed concurrently. Robert Rodriguez cast him in The Faculty first, and Halloween H20 followed through a package deal with Dimension/Miramax. His homemade haircut ended up in both films.
Hartnett disliked the polished appearance of movie teenagers and pushed back against H20’s hair and makeup team, cutting and disrupting his hair to keep it from looking too neat. He described it as a battle he “won,” with the people around him eventually giving up on controlling the look.
The haircut even earned a comment within Halloween H20: LL Cool J improvised the instruction to “comb your hair.”
