Entertainment

the insider: olivia wilde

the actress on studying diablo cody, mastering a cat-eye, and trying every manic panic color.

by katie dickens

A break from the madness of Fashion Week is always welcome, especially when said break involves sitting down with the breathtakingly gorgeous Olivia Wilde to chat about hair color, upcoming projects, and teenage rebellion. The Revlon Global Ambassador is the face of the brand's new Luxurious ColorSilk Buttercream at-home hair color and so had dye on the brain. With nine films in various stages of production, the actress has been beyond busy. Though we imagine she'll come up for air to plan a wedding to her very funny fiance Jason Sudeikis, with other projects looming, Wilde is showing no signs of slowing down.

You switch up your hair color a lot--do you do that for roles or do you just like change? When I was younger it was about wanting to experiment. Now it's mainly for roles. This past year I was four or five different colors for five different jobs. I'm very open to changing my color for a role and a lot of actresses won't do that. They want to protect their hair. Maybe I'll get to that point but now I'm open to that. People wear wigs. I have fun with it. And my fiance [Jason Sudeikus] just made fun of me. He's like, "Honey, it's been a week since you changed you hair. Do you maybe want to run and do that really quick?" When you change your color that often, it's important to use products that don't have a lot of chemicals in them. Revlon's newest hair color doesn't contain oils. They use butters and it's an ammonia-free formula. It's going to save your hair.

Any teenage rebellion moments with haircolor? Oh yeah. I went through the entire Manic Panic line starting at age 12. I did purple, red, green, black, blue--separately, and sometimes they melded together. My parents got used to it pretty quickly. When I shaved the back of my head from the ears down, my mom said, "You look like you've gotten run over by a tractor." It was pretty accurate now that I look back. That's not an easy look to grow out. I had, like, an inch of fuzz and long hair on top. But all that trauma of adolescent experimentation leads you to understand your style. So I'm all for it. And I think it should continue past adolescence. I encourage people to try new things.

What's been your favorite hair color? This brown color I have going on right now because it's closest to my natural color. It's the best for my skin tone. Red isn't great because I have a lot of red tones already in my skin so it makes me look sun rash-y. And you would only know if you tried it. I just had black hair for a role and thought that looks kind of cool. I had it for Tron and this movie Butter and the one I just did. It's fun with the right makeup, but then when I didn't wear makeup I looked like Wednesday from the Addams family.

Any makeup faves? I really like [Revlon's] eyeliners. I do a cat eye a lot, I've gotten pretty good at it--it's the one thing I can do! They make it really easy because they have these gel liners and the applicator is in the pot. All the pencils are really easy to use. I like the different colors. They have an emerald green and an eggplant purple. I've been using the lip crayons a lot; they stain really well.

What are your favorite designers these days? I'm really excited to see Calvin Klein this season. I wear a lot of Rag & Bone. And ALC. A lot of vintage stuff. I love Isabel Marant. I love Rick Owens. I wear my Acne boots every single day. I just had them resoled because I can't buy any other boot.

What's been your favorite role? I played a stripper in this comedy called Butter. She was just broad and bold and sassy and pretty smart. I based her on Diablo Cody--she has this book called Candy Girl, it's hilarious. It's her anthropological study of strippers in Minnesota. It's hysterically funny. I based the character on her and the book. It was a supporting role and she didn't need to be likable. There is a lot of freedom in that because you can just be as out there as possible. So that one. And then coming up I produced and starred in a movie called Drinking Buddies that's going to SXSW. It's entirely improvised. It's me and Jake Johnson and Anna Kendrick and Ron Livingston and we had the best time. That's one of those tiny little movies that I hope makes it to the big screen. It's an experiment. We were running around Chicago, guerilla-style, so it's filmmaking at its best.