The most common question I get - from casting directors, from aunties, from strangers on the metro - is about the hair. Is it real? (Yes.) Is it a wig? (No.) Did something happen? (Yes: a decision.)
I was twenty-two, sitting in a salon chair with a magazine, and I realised every model in it looked like a slightly different version of the same person. Long dark waves, warm balayage, beachy something. All beautiful. All interchangeable. I asked my colourist what she'd never been allowed to do to anyone. She said, "full silver, like a grandmother from the future." We started at two in the afternoon and finished after the salon had officially closed.
Professionally, it was the best ten minutes of decision-making of my life. Before, I was one of forty comp cards on a casting table. After, I was "the silver one" - which is not always a compliment, but is always a memory. Clients book the thing they can't stop thinking about. My agent says my hair books jobs before I've said hello, and I've stopped pretending that bothers me.
The maintenance is its own part-time job - violet toner, cold rinses, a standing appointment I guard like a visa - and every few months someone warns me it will "limit my range". Then a knitwear campaign wants exactly this grey against exactly that camel trench, and the range limits itself in my favour. The curls were always mine. The silver is mine too now - it just took a decision to claim it.