For a man who’s been famous in three decades, we’ve seen Colin Farrell cycle through bald heads and buzz cuts, high fades and goatees, shoulder-length locks, and, as he once told InStyle, “the abomination of hairstyles I sported at the center of a $150 million film.” It is safe to consider a pair of shears a staple in his thespian’s toolbox.
(“I have done every kind of style on Colin, from military buzz-cuts, to long, unruly hairstyles for his acting projects,” his hairstylist Sacha Quarles told GQ back in 2017. “He is really cool with changing his look, which always helps.”)
Through all those changing hairstyles, one wave Farrell’s been on for years is the stretchy headband, which he manages to wear with both the cheekiness of a mid-career David Beckham hitting the pitch, and the devil-may-care ease of a pre-politics Matthew McConaughey putting in miles on the beach. In that sense, consider the headband the unofficial accessory of men who became massively famous in the early 21st century. But, unlike many of his peers, Farrell has proved a loyal headband devotee through the aughts, even rocking one as recently as this past weekend: a stretchy cerulean number, which he wore during an on-stage appearance in Palm Springs for his latest film, The Banshees of Inisherin, which also happens to be a movie about how good Colin Farrell looks in sweaters.
Press junkets aside, the headband, when deployed responsibly, is primarily a tool of practicality: if you are blessed enough to have a head of hair that gets in your way during strenuous activity, sometimes only a headband will do. Farrell wears them on runs, he wears them to the airport, he wears one while attending the Beijing premiere of The Batman via Zoom, and last summer, he even wore one striped with the green, white, and orange bands of the Irish flag while out in LA on a grocery run. Erin go bragh, baby!
