Since the advent of magazines, everyone has taken hair inspo photos with them to the salon. Today’s clippings are far more likely to be screenshots, but Hollywood hair continues to be our aspirational focus. Last year provided a host of silver screen and streaming platform hair ideals to help update our 2026 locks. Here is the lowdown on the top hair looks:

Face-Framing Long Hair

The biggest trend comes from Hollywood’s biggest hair influencer, Jennifer Aniston, and her longtime hairdresser, Chris McMillan (the creator of “The Rachel,” Jennifer Aniston’s cut for Friends, which defined ’90s hair). Last fall, for season four of The Morning Show, Aniston’s broadcaster character featured a new way to wear long hair. “It’s layered, it’s complicated, it’s emotional,” is how Aniston describes this season of the hit series to People magazine. This could also apply to her new hairstyle. Hair, after all, is an emotionally fraught topic for women.

Aniston, 56, has magnificent “bronde” (brown-blonde) hair, with warm honey and gold highlights. The new twist, says uptown Toronto celebrity hairstylist Jason Lee, is about how the look frames her face. “She is so beautiful, and so relatable at the same time,” says Lee. “Jennifer’s hair has always been an inspiration. And Chris McMillan is so good at reading – and leading – cultural relevance” vis a vis hair. What is different about this look? “Long hair has been ‘in’ for a long time,” he says. “This look has much more detail around the face.” If you have enough hair, there is no reason not to wear it long, just tweak it a bit with a few face framing adjustments. 

Lee breaks down Aniston’s style for us, noting the flattering extra long bangs, worn swept off to the side, blended with the face-framing features. “When you have long hair, it can pull down the face if you don’t draw attention back upward or outward. This style does give you a bit of a facelift, accenting the features and creating shadows.” It opens up your eyes, he says.

All you really need to style this yourself, he says, is a big, round brush to blow dry and volumize. “It is really versatile, and you can still pull it back, as the layers are so long.”

The French-Wave Bob

Also from the Morning Show comes Marion Cotillard, 50, who plays a villainous TV exec who brings French chic. Polished and formidable, her side-part bob screams no-nonsense Gallic power broker. It is hair that says, “do not argue with me.” Although this full and chin-length look (as reported on set.com) is actually a wig with pin curl waves set with Evian spray and a wide-toothed comb, it’s a good option for those with curly and wavy textured hair.

“The bob is a big conversation this year,” says Lee. “The most famous being the precision-cut ‘c***y’ bob on Leslie Bibb in The White Lotus, and now sported by Lily Collins in season five of Emily in Paris. “We haven’t seen the bob return with such vengeance since the ’90s,” says Lee. It feels new and modern, he says, “and it opens up your neck. I’m cutting this a lot on 40-plus clients.” Despite the fact that many of us feel bad about our necks, to crib from Nora Ephron, a neck-baring cut can counterintuitively make your hair the focus. An architectural haircut adds crispness, which leaves a stronger impression than any softness around the jawline or wrinkles at the neck.

The predominant feature of the new bob is a crisp line at the bottom, with a little texture added in the underlayers. It works best on straighter hair. “If you have textured hair, it can require keratin treatments,” he says. “If you have very fine hair, it may require a rack of extensions. Today, any look is possible on any head of hair with modern techniques, if you find the right specialist.” 

The Retro Lob

Julia Roberts, 58, is famed for not wearing wigs in her movies (as Nicole Kidman has been rumoured to). She goes all in and has her famed auburn cascade of curls styled to inhabit the characters she takes on. The retro sculpted blonde bob she debuted in Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt was a case in point:

“What I see in this look,” says Lee, “is a perfect length. A longer bob feels fresh. It is retro – I see 1970s (which is also 1940s). I love how full it is.”

Naturally curly hair has volume when blown dry, but to get the swooping waves, Lee says, “You are going to need heated round brushes and Velcro rollers,” he says. “It is a very purposeful style. We’ve seen so much bedhead, and this style feels so deliberate. It is very appealing, and it would stand out in a crowd of beachy, tousled hair.” 

The longer bob, he notes, is good for tall women. Length, he says, does matter in terms of proportions. “It depends on the person, he says, “but a too-short bob on a too-tall person can make the head look small. You can end up with a floating head.” 

The more “styled” a look, like this one, the more attention it commands. It takes time and care and that sends a strong message about how you value your image. On a practical note, this length is also a good way to make a change from long hair to shorter in stages, or, conversely from short to longer.

The Three-Way Bob

Halle Berry, 59, makes textured hair a virtue. We have seen her new bob this year worn in three very different iterations: At Cannes, we saw a natural-textured wave gleaming  in the Southern French sunlight, but she also showed off how to do a smoothed-down look with a retro flip as well as full-bodied, blow-dried waves.

“My favourite look on Halle this year, of many, was the Golden Globes slicked flip,” says Lee. “It was so ’30s. And it felt so modern.” If you have a wider face, says Lee, this styling trick is a great one as it provides balance, and slicking down the sides allows wide cheekbones to shine and the flip adds interest at the chin. 

This is a high-effort style tailored to formal occasions. Here are the details to give to the hairdresser for a big night out: deep side part, hair slicked down against the head but miraculously not wet with styling product and a very clear outward flip that holds its shape and moves as one, sculptural curve. 

The Bixie

Pamela Anderson, 58, has become an important fashion and beauty influencer, while simultaneously adopting her now-signature no-makeup mantra and haute couture. But it’s her hair that keeps heads turning. She downsized her trademark long blonde locks and switched to a bob with micro-bangs. Now this sounds like a challenging look, but if you peruse photos of Anderson’s The Naked Gun press tour, you’ll see how many different styles are possible with this cut. 

What’s more, it is great for menopausal women whose hair often becomes more brittle and thinner. “I think this is probably the most powerful haircut of all,” says Lee, “because it embraces ageing hair and it doesn’t fall into the category of trying to be ‘conventionally’ feminine and aspiring to have long hair, which Pamela Anderson symbolized in her youth. What she is saying with this cut is just to keep it simple, no extensions required. It’s a statement and throws out the idea of how society sees femininity past a certain age. She’s very sexy, playful and au naturel.”

Anderson took it a step further when she cut the look into a bixie (a mashup of bob and pixie) which approached a playful shag, loaded with shape and layers. We saw Anderson wear it straight, with curls, tousled and full, while also softening her hair colour to strawberry blonde. It has a delicious, insouciant punk edge, to take her from a gala to gardening. Which seems like a good goal to aim for in this  year.