Jason Alexander’s Hairpiece

“Elaine, bald men, with no jobs, and no money, who live with their parents, don't approach strange women.”
- George Costanza, Seinfeld

It appears that Jason Alexander got our beautician Thombeau's memo...

According to Jason…

“The way my hair has receded in the last two years was best defined as ‘dorky.’ I started balding at age 17 and after first being sad, I really embraced it. I was always cast older than my actual age which generally meant better roles. And for the most part, the way I was balding always looked kinda good or good enough to my eye and more importantly, to my wife’s eye. But most recently, the look lost any kind of impression other than purely comical. I”m happy to be able to sport that kind of look for characters but I didn’t want it to be the only kind of characters I could be considered for.

Also, there was a practical element — onstage and even to a degree on film, my head had become a big beacon, reflecting light in a very obvious and distracting way.

My wife and I discussed it and came up with 3 options – do nothing and accept it; shave my head (but I thought that might limit my castability even more) or put some hair back.

I thought about grafts or implants but frankly didn’t trust the results would be good enough and also wanted to retain the option of playing truly bald characters. So I began looking for a hair system.

What you see on my head is a really good, semi-permanent hairpiece. By semi-permanent I mean that I can wear it constantly for weeks at a time, if I so choose. I can swim, shower, work out — whatever. It stays on. Or I can take it off any time of any day I choose. The reason it looks thin is that I challenged my designer to make me a piece that would look very similar to the way I did 10 years ago. So, it looks like a guy who is losing his hair and isn’t an artificial mop of hair that I never had. The designer was dubious at first but he actually loves the look now. And the fact is that we are still playing around with the shape and density to make it as flattering and natural looking as we can.”