The 20 Best Pixie Cut Hairstyle Transformations

Emma Stone debuted a major hair transformation on the 2025 Golden Globes red carpet. The award-winning actress arrived sporting a new cropped pixie cut—still in her signature deep-auburn shade. The dramatic transformation is rumored to be for her upcoming project, Yorgos Lanthimos’s new movie, Bugonia.

“It’s been growing out, and it’s looking so stunning—very ’90s in that nostalgic way,” Mara Roszak, Stone’s longtime hairstylist, told Allure. The stylist used her brand’s latest RŌZ Evergreen Styling Cream, a $32 lightweight yet moldable formula that smooths flyaways and boosts shine, to get her hair look at the award show (right).

"I've never ever done a big chop before. And it was just one of those things that like, I want to do something different. I feel like I've done every type of hairstyle apart from cutting my hair," supermodel Jourdan Dunn says in a Bazaar UK interview of her new short pixie cut. "I am getting older now, and I am like, okay, I feel like it's time to embrace this version of me that is emerging...Now, I can safely and confidently say I love it. It does feel empowering."

Actress Zoey Deutch cut her hair for her role as Jean Seberg in Richard Linklater's upcoming film Nouvelle Vague. "Zoey was so excited when we finally completed the transformation, which did take two days overall. We were both in awe, truly gobsmacked, to how much we both loved it," hair colorist Tracey Cunningham told E! News in March 2024. "Zoey looked so much like her character, we were wide-eyed looking at the photographs of Jean and then looking in the mirror at Zoey's color and style."

Hairstylist Nikki Nelms is the mastermind behind Zoe Kravitz's beloved pixie cut, which she's worn in both black and platinum blonde hues. "Edgy is in the eye of the beholder. But to me, I think her haircut is edgy. It's really cool and carefree and funky. You can do a lot with it. It's versatile," Nelms told Refinery29 back in 2017. "When she was blonde, you were able to see the texture in it because there was more length. Now it's sleek and darker. It's still pixie and cute and short, but the blonde gave it a little more."

Katy Perry ditched her signature jet-black waves for a controversial blonde pixie cut ahead of her Witness album release back in 2017. To this day, some fans blame the album's lack of critical success on the haircut alone. However, the haircut was a way for the singer to regain a sense of agency over her self-identity. "I'm really strong as Katy Perry and then sometimes I'm not as strong as Katheryn Hudson," Perry said in a 2017 interview. "People like talk about my hair, right? They don't like it, or they wish that it was longer. I so badly want to be Katheryn Hudson that I don't even want to look like Katy Perry anymore sometimes. That is a little bit of why I cut my hair, because I really want to be my authentic self 100 percent. It hurts when I don’t feel like I can.”

You can't talk about modern pixie cut icons without mentioning Charlize Theron, who has worn the short style on and off for years. She famously buzzed her hair off for a role in Mad Max: Fury Road back in 2012.

Rihanna is no stranger to major hair transformations—from mullets to wine-red hair to this chic black pixie cut circa 2012. “I work with a lot of artists, and I tell them, ‘If you want to be adventurous and try different looks, you have to own it—because that’s what the fans are looking for,’ ” Rihanna's hairstylist Yusef previously told Bazaar. “With Ri, she just owns every look and makes it hers. She makes girls feel like they can try anything if they carry themselves that way too.”

Miley Cyrus ushered in her Bangerz album era with a dramatic hair transformation courtesy of hairstylist Chris McMillan. "It's so nice. When you wake up, your hair is always done. It's so easy," Cyrus told Ellen Degeneres in 2012. "And the dirtier my hair is, the more I like it. The showering has really cut down—I'm saving water. This is a statement, more than a fashion statement. Eco-friendly." McMillan has since called this one of his most controversial haircuts ever. "It was the moment to shed her old image and create a new one," he says.

The Abbott Elementary star debuted a pixie cut in the fall of 2024. "I’ve been planning it for a really long time, and I kept getting cold feet, and I decided it was time to stop getting cold feet and just cut it off," she said on the 2024 Emmy's red carpet. "Like, I have never felt better. I just feel very much like myself. It’s like a piece of me that I was trying to get for a long time."

Like her Abbott Elementary star Quinta Brunson, Janelle James has also recently adopted a gorgeous pixie cut. The short chop on the 2025 SAG Awards red carpet was the perfect canvas for statement earrings and a bold red lip.

To play Fantine in the 2012 film Les Misérables, Anne Hathaway shaved her head, which grew into an enviable pixie cut with long, side-swept bangs. She even wore the chic cut as she accepted her Academy Award for the role in 2013.

The model and actress shaved her head for a role in the 2018 film Life in a Year. The short chop allowed for fun hair experimentation, from coloring her platinum hair pink to adding glitter and accessories on various red carpets. "I wouldn't have done it without the opportunity of doing it for a film," she said in 2018. "But I'm so glad. I really recommend it for everyone. It grows back!"

"My hair was such a crutch. I looked quote-unquote 'sexy' no matter what. I could hide behind it," Stewart told Marie Claire back in 2015. "As soon as I didn't have all that hair, I had to let my face hang out. I felt more confident than I had in a really long time. And it felt really good. It was like not having your iPhone for a couple months. It was the same feeling of release. It sounds so obvious, but it's like the hair really did make me feel like a 'real girl.' Like I'm pretty, I'm feminine. I don't know why I valued that so much, as if that's something to prove."

New York stylist Rodney Cutler was the mastermind behind Emma Watson's headline-making chop back in 2010. For Watson, it marked the end of filming the Harry Potter films. “It was weird. My hairdresser was like, ‘When are you going to freak out?’ Most people cry or go into shock,'” she told EW.com at the time. “But I was very calm. I knew it was the right thing."

Jennifer Lawrence went for a dramatic chop back in 2013 while filming the Hunger Games movies. In a chat with Yahoo in 2014, the actress said she regretted cutting her hair into a shoulder-grazing lob after so much damage, so an even shorter chop just made sense. "It grew to that awkward, gross length, and I kept putting it into a bun, so I just cut it off," she explained. "It couldn't have gotten any uglier!"

Katie Holmes inspired a thousand copy-cat haircuts after debuting this layered pixie cut in 2008. With bangs and face-framing pieces, it's the perfect cut for those who want to maintain some length and softness with the ease of short hair.

Scarlett Johansson chopped her hair into a pixie cut back in 2014. "I think I just got tired of wearing a ponytail all the time," the actress told Refinery29 at the time. "I [was] always stuffing it under a wig, so I just cut it off. Everybody kept saying, 'Don't cut your hair! You might hate it!' But, then I thought, 'Why am I letting other people tell me what to do?'"

Natalie Portman famously shaved her head for the 2005 film V for Vendetta, and the resulting grow-out process left the actress with a gorgeous pixie cut on many red carpets. Portman's buzzcut was unusual as it was done on camera, in one take, for the film. "It's very rare to be experiencing something in real life at the same time as your character, so that was a pretty unusual experience," she said during the film's press tour.

Victoria Beckham has had many posh haircuts over the years—including angular bobs and long, beachy waves—but we loved her choppy pixie cut circa 2008.

There's perhaps no pixie cut quite as polarizing as the one Keri Russell got during season two of Felicity, which aired on WB in 1999. “My hair was curly and it was an awkward haircut, but even so I didn’t care, like I loved it. I thought it was so true [to the character] and great. I did not expect all the hysteria," the actress told W Magazine in 2017. There was hysteria, indeed: fans blamed the haircut for tanking the beloved show, though that's not entirely accurate, as it ran for two more seasons. "Pulling a Felicity" has become a punchline and warning of sorts against making a drastic hair change that could turn audiences away. Years later, this whole narrative seems so silly. The cut and her curls are gorgeous.