Mia Farrow Reveals That Bette Davis Went Bald From Wearing Wigs

PAYMENT ON DEMAND, Bette Davis, 1951 bettedavis-fscn23(bettedavis-fscn23) — Everett Collection

In a new interview with Cole Escola in Interview, Mia Farrow, 80, reflected back on her long life as Hollywood royalty and encounters with many big screen legends — including the revelation that family friend Bette Davis had lost her hair from wearing wigs.

Farrow, daughter of Tarzan actress Maureen O’Sullivan and director John Farrow, met Davis at age 12 while in Spain on the set of one of her father’s films (likely 1959’s John Paul Jones, which was also Mia’s big screen debut). Farrow recalled developing a close relationship with Davis on the trip, saying that she “really loved” the actress.

While filming, Farrow membered, Davis “traveled with silver-framed photographs and she would invite me to her room and she would wear—I’ve never seen anything quite like it—a nightcap, an actual hat.”

Davis wore nightcap, Farrow remembered, because “she’d lost her hair from wearing wigs.” In fact, the screen diva gave young Farrow some performance advice caused by her own hair troubles: “So she said, ‘Don’t you wear wigs!’ It’s a tall order if you’re in showbiz. But I said, ‘Okay.’”

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Farrow and Davis teamed up again nearly 20 years later, in the 1978 Agatha Christie mystery Death on the Nile.

Davis passed away in 1989, at the age of 81. Farrow — who won her last major award, a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year in 1964 — has just been nominated for her first Best Actress Tony, for her role opposite Patti LuPone in the Broadway play The Roommate.