Attention-grabbing opening: The old idea of a faithful, word-for-word paraphrase often hides a deeper truth: you can convey the same meaning with fresh language that feels natural and uniquely yours. Here is a fully rewritten English version that preserves every key detail and nuance, while expanding slightly for clarity and readability.
"Wuthering Heights": Transformations of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi
SPOILER WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, now in theaters.
Director Emerald Fennell entrusted her hair and makeup head, Sian Miller, with a mood board that mixed architecture, landscapes, fashion, cinema, photography, food, and images of children with grass-stained knees. This visual guide helped Miller grasp the mood Fennell wanted as she brought her long-held fascination with Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights, to life on screen.
In this adaptation, Jacob Elordi plays Heathcliff and Margot Robbie portrays Cathy, in a tale of childhood friends who become tormented lovers, eventually torn apart by stubborn misunderstandings and their own destructive choices. Cathy injures her ankle while spying on their new neighbor, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), and his ward, Isabella (Alison Oliver). This accident leads her to stay at Thrushcross Grange, where Edgar becomes smitten with her. Having tasted the luxury of a comfortable life, Cathy contemplates marrying Edgar, though her heart still belongs to Heathcliff. When Heathcliff overhears Cathy tell her maid Nelly (Hong Chau) that it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff—without hearing the part where she expresses her love for him—he leaves town, and Cathy ends up in a loveless marriage. The story shifts when Heathcliff returns to rekindle the turmoil.
Fennell’s script is rich with detail, guiding Miller in crafting looks that communicate jealousy, vengeance, and desire. Robbie reportedly wore more than 35 hairstyles as Cathy, with playful, sometimes provocative nicknames like “Vagina braids” and even joking references such as “Jesus Elordi.” Miller explains how the hair and makeup elements narrate the film’s emotional arc, including a notable scene where Robbie’s hair remains unwashed.
“Jesus Elordi”
In the opening arc, Heathcliff appears as a dirty, unloved orphan when first brought to Wuthering Heights. As Elordi’s Heathcliff matures, Miller dirties his appearance further and adds artificial blood to emphasize his rough upbringing in the stables. “He’s grown up in the stables, and he should be unkempt. He’s going to hide somewhat behind his hair,” Miller notes.
The film presents two main looks for Elordi’s Heathcliff: the rough, feral phase nicknamed “Jesus Elordi” and the refined, clean-cut phase dubbed “Darcy Elordi” by Emerald and Miller. Reading the script, the long-haired version resonated, and Miller, who had previously worked with Elordi on Saltburn, encouraged him to grow out his hair for the transformation.
When the actor returns after a period away, he sports a remarkable beard. Miller recalls the moment: “We were astonished by how great it looked and decided to keep the beard.” However, to maintain continuity across non-sequential shooting, Miller pushed to recreate the beard in the Moors. She trained with prosthetics artist Roberto Pastore to replicate Elordi’s beard by hand-strafting individual hairs. The beard had to withstand wind and rain during filming, so Fennell tested the effect rigorously—an intense, moment-by-moment sequence outside Elstree that Miller likens to a water cannon in a Rolls-Royce engine, all to keep the beard intact.
“Darcy Elordi”
When Heathcliff returns after a five-year absence, he has gained wealth and adopted a suave new style, the so-called “Darcy Elordi.” Miller explains she aimed to craft this look to echo a Jane Austen hero: a dashing demeanor with striking sideburns and a polished silhouette. To complete the change, a dental prosthetic was created for a missing tooth, turning Heathcliff’s grin into a telling detail of his renewed status. Prosthetics expert Chris Lyons designed an 18-karat gold overlay that sat over the natural tooth, providing a memorable spark when Heathcliff smiles during a calm dining scene.
The Vagina Hair
The infamous “Vagina hair” wasn’t in the script from the start. Yet as Miller collaborated with Fennell on Saltburn, the idea emerged early on. Production designer Suzie Davies described a dramatic wall fissure at Wuthering Heights that symbolically resembles a vagina, which influenced Miller’s approach to hair design. In a Christmas scene, a pop-up book also metaphorically echoes this motif. Miller and Davies christened the back-of-head plait a “Vagina plait,” and the team openly named hairstyles to reflect the film’s themes. This collaborative naming helped the director and hair team sync on expressive choices that support the narrative of jealousy and control.
Doll Braids
To convey the passage of time after Cathy’s move to Thrushcross Grange due to injury, Miller introduced a softer, more adult look for Cathy. Her wardrobe shifts include ribbons matching those on a rose-patterned dress, and later, when Cathy returns to the Grange after Edgar’s marriage, the dressing room is reimagined as Cathy’s own, complete with dresses tailored to her measurements and a bedroom wallpaper that mirrors Cathy’s skin tone, freckles, and veins. Isabella even reveals a dollhouse version of Cathy with braids fashioned from Cathy’s own hair, described by Miller as a corset braid because the ribbons at the bottom tie together like a corset. Isabella’s own doll reflects a doll-like, naïve persona with long, wild hair, wild accessories, and oversized glasses, creating a visual contrast with Cathy’s smoother, longer hair. The evolving hairstyles serve to illustrate Cathy and Isabella’s boredom and the shifting power dynamics between them, underscoring how hair design can reveal inner emotions and character trajectories.
Freckles and Horns
On the moors, Cathy and Heathcliff share a bold, exposed space that becomes a visual canvas for weathering the elements. Miller added subtle freckles to both young Cathy and, later, the adult Cathy, using a custom makeup technique and a vacuum-formed mask to map freckles across the actors’ faces, ensuring consistent replication day after day. Given the demanding schedule of a 51-day shoot, the team aimed to maximize looks while preserving efficiency.
As Cathy spends more time indoors at Thrushcross Grange, the freckles recede, while her hair grows more severe in Heathcliff’s presence. Miller devised a victory-roll hairstyle she nicknamed “horns,” a nod to the cat-and-mouse game Cathy plays with Heathcliff. This look draws inspiration from Vivien Leigh’s performance in Gone with the Wind, mirroring Cathy’s darker, more embittered arc.
Cathy’s Death Look
In Fennell’s version, Cathy dies from sepsis while pregnant with Edgar’s child, following a secret affair with Heathcliff. Emerald sought a skin tone that resembled wet concrete to convey the final, deteriorated state of Cathy’s body. Miller collaborated with a medical adviser to reproduce the telltale signs of severe infection on Cathy’s legs, using decals that were carefully mapped onto the prosthetic work. Robbie famously refused to wash her hair for this sequence, allowing it to cascade in a stark contrast to Cathy’s previous looks.
To aid in the grim internal crisis, leeches were created by the art department and applied to Cathy’s body in a dramatic scene intended to reflect a desperate medical intervention. When Heathcliff returns to Thrushcross Grange to confront Cathy’s death, he finds her body on the bed, and the moment’s emotional intensity is sharpened by the stark contrast between his livid, alive vitality and her pale, inert state. This chilling tableau underscores the tragedy of their relationship and the consequences of their choices.
