Sylvester Stallone’s Hair Restoration
Dr Rassman,
As part of your occasional series discussing the hair jobs of celebrities, could you take a look at this (rather unflattering) article on Sylvester Stallone in London’s Daily Mail?
Link: Daily Mail
In short, he does look very good for his age — until you check out the closeup of his hairline. In your opinion, what technique is responsible for that restoration job?
Thanks for your time
Yikes! What I see in the link you sent appears to be a harsh hairline. Even with the limitations of the photos, I think I am able to see some of the older type of work, some large grafts mixed with smaller grafts — so in my opinion he looks transplanted. I have no firsthand knowledge and am basing this on Mr. Stallone’s appearance in this photo. The older (and larger) grafts are relatively easy to detect and reflects more than one surgery, one of which may have been done years ago, prior to the advent of the modern Follicular Unit Transplant technique that we defined in 1997 in the published literature (see links below).
Unrelated to his hair, I don’t agree that Stallone looks “very good” for his age. He has been criticized as an indiscriminate advocate of general use of Human-Growth Hormone (HGH)in “anyone over 40” (see any of hundreds of articles via Googling) and in May of 2007 he pled guilty to illegally importing HGH into Australia. To me, his face has grown increasingly dysmorphic (a side effect of HGH) and one wonders whether the arthritis suggested by his pictures in the above link and mentioned by him in his interviews is also HGH-related.
Stallone’s still the greatest. I think alot of people are jealous of the fact that he’s over 60 and can DOMINATE over the very poor excuse of action stars today.
As the physician pointed out – Stallone’s hair replacement techniques are a combination of approaches each of which, in its respective time, was state-of-the-art. Correspondingly, the overall presentation reflects this so the look isn’t uniform or natural looking. Moreover its pretty easy to detect. Also, dying the hair doesn’t help as what 65 yer old man has jet black hair. Leave a litte gray for realism.
On the other hand this is nothing as stars have been getting cosmetic procedures done for decades to remain competitive in what is most assuredly a youth oriented business. What amazes me though is how some stars despite their considerable financial resources and presumed access to top-of-the-line surgeons can still wind up looking like a Kewpie doll. I’m thinking of Nicolas Cage who has to have what is most assuredly one of the worst hair replacement jobs ever.
I just watched a Tecate beer commercial and sly looks like he has a real funky hairline that should make people satisfied that a Doctor was involved in his “look”