Jonny Lee Miller bleached his hair for the role of Sick Boy in Trainspotting even though the character is dark-haired in Irvine Welsh’s book. Miller later said the script was amazing and very different from the novel.
He was still bleaching his hair and keeping up appearances despite the character being broke, addicted to heroin and stealing from old people’s homes, and a baby having died of neglect. That is Sick Boy in a nutshell.
In the sequel, one of the quieter details is him touching up his roots with a toothbrush, still trying (and failing) to maintain the look.
The whole film was shot in about seven and a half weeks on a £1.5 million budget. The “worst toilet in Scotland” was coated in chocolate mousse.
Ewan McGregor lost roughly two stone and considered actually trying heroin for research before deciding against it. Kelly Macdonald was 19 when she played 14-year-old Diane and accidentally invited her mum and brother to watch her sex scene. Irvine Welsh himself shows up as the dealer who sells Renton the suppositories.
Miller has said he owes a lot to the film and is proud of it, even if he didn’t fully capitalize on the Cool Britannia wave that followed. He has also spoken openly about his own struggles with addiction in the years afterward.
The movie still works because it never pretends the characters are glamorous. They are just people who, somehow, still care what their hair looks like.
