Joel Edgerton hits red carpet with blond crop and ‘breakout’ award

AUSSIE actor Joel Edgerton had stunned onlookers doing double-takes with a new head of hair not quite like anything he has had in 20 years of acting.

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AUSSIE actor Joel Edgerton had stunned onlookers doing double-takes with a new head of hair not quite like anything he has had in 20 years of acting.

Striding the red carpet — and picking up an award — at the 19th Annual Hollywood Film Awards in Beverly Hills, Joel unveiled his treatment at the hands of the bleach bottle.

In the 20 years since Edgerton graduated from Hills Grammar and then Nepean Drama School, he has rarely looked so blond. Or chopped.

And it’s not only the cropped locks that folks have been noticing about the boy from Blacktown lately. Vanity Fair has said he has a strong chance to drift into Oscar-talk territory with his next outing — a movie about an interracial couple who broke the law by marrying in the state of Virginia in 1967.

Edgerton will play Richard Loving, the husband, who was jailed. The period the movie is set in explains the 60s-style ‘do — much shorter from his 70s hair in Black Mass.

Joel Edgerton accepted the Hollywood Breakout Actor Award for Black Mass.

Actors Joel Edgerton, Dakota Johnson and Johnny Depp at the awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Edgerton speaks after receiving the award.

Depp and Edgerton at a premiere in Canada.

Black Mass, in which Edgerton, 41, plays opposite Johnny Depp as a dodgy policeman, is generating Oscar talk of its own. And he got the awards ball rolling at the weekend by accepting the Hollywood Breakout Actor Award, even though he originally captured overseas attention with his role in The Great Gatsby.

DEPP’S IRISH MOBSTER RULES IN BLACK MASS

Black Mass tells the story of a violent Boston criminal who became an FBI informer to stop a Mafia mob stealing his pitch.

Edgerton broadened his CV immensely this year with the release of The Gift, his directorial debut and a film he wrote.