Greasepaint Can Kill Hair Follicles?

[Bricker]

In the Wikipedia entry for actor Micheal Chiklis:

At age 20, Chiklis shaved his head to look like male-pattern baldness for the part of a 65-year-old man in You Can’t Take It With You. Instead of using powder on his head (as he did on his face), he used greasepaint, and he failed to remove it properly at the end of each day. This killed the hair follicles on his head, essentially shaping his career in many ways.

Is this true? (Not the fact that Chiklis did it – the claim that using greasepaint on your shaved head can cause baldness).

Errr… can’t edit a title, I see. “Follicles.”

[Gfactor]

@Bricker

Errr… can’t edit a title, I see. “Follicles.”

Done.

Gfactor
General Questions Moderator

[Swallowed_My_Cellphone]

Sounds all :dubious: to me. I went to highschool with a guy whose hairline was receding faster than the ocean right before a tsunami. I don’t doubt Trevor had a chrome dome by the age of 20 because he was well on his way at 18.

Sounds more like a yarn you’d make up for an interview not realizing that it will end up being reported as “fact” forever after. Like the long-standing report that Christian Slater once shaved his eyebrows to look like a Vulcan for Hallowe’en and they never grew back right. He said it as a joke in an interview and allegedly now regrets ever saying it because interviewers still ask him about it.

ETA: And you avoid using pancake and greasepaint at the same time because with one being oil-based and the other water-based, they don’t mix and you end up with a mess. I can’t imagine why an actor would put greasepaint on his head if he was using pancake (or powder) on his face too.