Rita Moreno Ditched Her Gray Hair For the Oscars

This year, celebrities were consistent on the Oscars red carpet: wearing black. Actress Rita Moreno took it one step further. She’s not only wearing a black velvet Badgley Mischka gown adorned with pleated taffeta, but she’s also donning a new hair color, jet black.

The 92-year-old West Side Story actress has embraced her gray pixie cut for decades. Whether spiky, curled or flipped with a fresh cut, it’s consistently a silver, platinum gray. While her black spiky pixie tonight looks like it could be growing right out of her scalp because of how spot on it is, Moreno confirmed on the carpet that it’s just a wig, “I’m just having fun wearing this wig,” she said during the pre-show. While wearing a shortcut is not new for her, this specific look was her paying homage to Chita Rivera, actress and singer who died a few weeks ago and “a woman I loved very much,” Moreno says. Like the wig, Rivera always wore a short black cut, sometimes straight and sometimes curled but always giving Hollywood diva like Moreno is tonight.

This isn’t her first time hitting the red carpet without her gray hair. In 2022, Moreno arrived at the Oscars with a black and white feathered headpiece covering her gray tresses. Perhaps the Oscars red carpet is her favorite moment for some extra drama. Lean into the drama, Moreno! The wig looks fab.

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