What they USED to look like. Part one.

Posted by Dan January 3rd, 2008 at 11:01am In Gossip Girl

I always thought I’d make a shitty actor.

Not only can I not write in any other voice than my own, but I can’t imagine trying to embody a character with his own personality quirks and affectations. Hats off to those who can actually slip into another persona.

But I’m not an actor, lucky for everyone. I did, however, take notice of some newer-on-the-scene actors and noticed how weird it is to see them the way they were before they got haircuts and changed their appearance to portray different characters. There are only two, because I don’t necessarily feel like scouring the internet for pictures of people all day. But these two stuck out.

First up, there’s Penn Badgley from Gossip Girl. Unless you’ve been stalking him for years, you know him like this:

Nattily attired and freshly shorn. If you could smell him, it’d probably be a bouquet of honeysuckle, chamomile and Smirnoff Ice.

Then there’s Penn as he was in The Bedford Diaries, which was apparently on The CW some time ago.

Hello hair! I don’t know if he had been hanging out with Josh Groban too much during an impressionable phase, or what. It’s both shocking and heartbreaking. But it’s nothing compared to this next doozy.

Apparently Penn’s a veteran of the WB/CW scene, as he had a role on a show called Do Over. Which, of course, I’ve never heard of. Have you?

Obviously, this is a much younger Penn. Since then, facial hair has evened out and, presumably, complexions have cleared up. Still, the hair is too much. I can’t think of who it reminds me of, even after Google Imaging the terms “billowy hair” and “80s rock star” (although, for the record, you could do worse by spending your time by looking at those search results).

I don’t know if I’d consider Penn’s transformation as “getting into character” as much as it is “the end of an awkward adolescence.” Still, it’s weird to look at, right?

Tomorrow, we’ve got another lucky actor. I was going to include him in this post, but I was all “why put them in one post when you can put them in two, thereby creating the illusion of more content.”