Merkin Christmas, everybody, and a Happy Pube Year! Have we discussed how much we truly love merkins? You know what we always say: if a movie doesn’t require actors to wear a tiny pubic wig, then it’s not worth watching. Luckily, it sounds like the upcoming film The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo has the request crotch costuming to make it one of our favorites.
Said the film’s star Rooney Mara to Metro, “There was a lot of discussion that went into my merkin for the movie, because I was naked quite a lot. And I don’t think a lot of people will notice all of the attention that went into that. But there was a lot of discussions around that.” Ah, but what of Daniel Craig‘s merkin? We would like to have a discussion about that! Mara continued, “Well, you know, in the book she’s meant to have strawberry-blonde hair originally and she dyes it, so we had a special merkin made that was, you know, strawberry-blonde so that it would fit.” We can all breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the soon-to-be-released thriller is so committed to authenticity. Then take a few more breaths as we gasp in delight at other celebrity merkin experiences:
Evan Rachel Wood, Mildred Pierce: “I looked at Kate and she was like, ‘You’ve got to do it. Trust me, it’s so brave. Put a merkin on and you’ll be fine,’” Wood said, reminiscing about her nude scene in the HBO miniseries. “Let’s just say, I had to wear a wig because it was in the 30s, and everything had to look like it was in the 30s.”
Kate Winslet, The Reader: “I had to grow the hair down there. But because of years of waxing, as all of us girls know, it doesn’t come back quite the way it used to,” Winslet remarked about her 2008 Oscar-winning role. “They even made me a merkin — a wig — because they were so concerned that I might not be able to grow enough.”
Heidi Klum, Blow Dry: “But that wasn’t my real hair anyway, it was a specially made wig,” the Project Runway host said of the heart-shaped merkin she donned in the 2001 comedy. “If you can call it that. But that whole scene wasn’t about sex. It was just supposed to be funny.”
Patricia Arquette, Human Nature: Having decided to craft her cover-up out of one of co-star Rhys Ifans‘ prop beards, Arquette explained, “Everybody was like, ‘What is up with your pubes? You’ve got a lot of pubes!’ and I was like, ‘Look, I’m not going to show my own pubes here!’”
Lucy Lawless, Spartacus: Vengeance: “Have you ever been fitted for a merkin? I have…I’ve got one. Haven’t worn it yet.” Lawless told EW‘s Michael Ausiello about the sex scenes in her Starz series, “I’m wearing it right now,” she joked. “No, I don’t bring my merkin with me. It’s pinned to the wall. It like these little beards on the make-up trailer.”
Jake Gyllenhaal, Sex & Other Drugs: “When I told people I would wear merkins they would look at me rather oddly because they thought that I had no pubic hair, or maybe I had crabs. I’ll leave that up to you to decide,” Jake joked. Consider us decided!
[Photo: Getty Images]
