I Ranked The Best Blue-Haired Characters In Movies

While, today, bleaching and dying your hair any number of neon colors might be thought of as a Billie Eilish-inspired Gen-Z trend, the practice of dunking your head in a vat of colorful goo has actually been around for decades. The punks of the '70s/'80s as well as the twee and the ~*rawr*~ generation of the 2010s, all knew that colorful hair could say it all if you were brave enough to let it. ("I've gotta get out of this town...," or "I'm not like other girls...")

It's undeniable that blue hair has become the universal symbol of independence and parental disappointment. But why blue? Perhaps, because it compliments every skin tone. Perhaps, because it's a dye color that's readily available. But I suspect it's simply because it's a color that could never emerge out of a human head naturally. Cold, deep, fading into a light bluish-green and often looking even better the less you keep it up, blue is the ultimate color choice for anyone looking to visually separate themselves from society and the average human experience. 

Being a visual cue for anyone looking to mark themselves as "different," it's only natural that blue haired characters in movies have cropped up in everything from teen movies to dramas to romantic comedies, marking their characters as the ones to watch. Blue hair can be a plot point, mark the passage of time, serve (often lazily) as shorthand for a character going through mental health struggles, or simply be a distractingly bad wig. It runs the gamut. 

Below, I've decided to rank the quality of blue hair belonging to live-action characters in movies, ranging from the barely there to the unforgettable. I tried to picture the images of these characters cropped meticulously and pasted onto a Tumblr-era gif of a swirling galaxy to determine if I would have reblogged it. They say that Indie-Sleaze and Twee is back, so I leaned in and kept that in mind while ranking.