Friday, 1 November is the start of moustache-growing season, as guys around the world groom their facial hair to draw attention to men’s health issues. So whether you’re encouraging friends (and yourself) to go for medical checkups, including prostate and testicular cancer screening, or encouraging buddies to just open up and chat or seek help for mental health issues, here’s to a happy and hairy Movember.
For newcomers, it can feel like a hard look to pull off. Without the life support and friendship offered by all the full facial hair unit, the lone moustache can draw suspicious gazes. Would people be ho ho ho-ing at the sight of Father Christmas popping down the chimney with just the moustache? Why leave just that bit? What’s under there? Or worse, what’s caught in it?
Ignore the haters, friends. When a gentleman has the sauce, the swagger and that spark in his eye, a moustache just underlines that he’s got something going on. To prove it, we’ve gathered 10 famous inspirations.
It’s the most iconic walrus moustache in entertainment. This moustache is home-grown by actor Nick Offerman, who once revealed that it takes five to six weeks to reach its full glory. So if you start today and have the follicular fortitude, this magnificent piece of face furniture could be yours by the end of November. In Season 4, we see how essential this furry friend is to the Swanson mystique when Ron’s ex-wife, Tammy 1 (Patricia Clarkson), forces him to shave it off, leaving him with nothing to harrumph into. Now compare the frankly presidential Ron, to the bare-faced liar and weasel-like American President and would-be dictator that Nick plays in the film Civil War (coming to Showmax from 25 November).
Dev Patel’s Bollywood-meets-Bruce Lee mash-up-smash-up movie sees him sporting a classic martial arts moustache under Kid’s monkey mask – as also seen on Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) in Warrior Season 1-2, and on Keanu Reeves in both John Wick: Parabellum, and 47 Ronin. While other facial hair is present, this dark, valiant moustache stands alone in a clearing, like a hero about to take down a horde of attackers one by one. It takes a skilled hand to wield such a precise blade around your face. Or maybe you’re lucky and it just grows that way. Time to find out.
Pedro Pascal’s barely-there beard is the perfect frame for his hearty ’stache. This moustache has what it takes to venture into a post-apocalyptic wasteland while protecting the innocent. It’s a survivor against all odds. The growth of this frontier fur is held back with some rough and ready razor work on the road instead of being groomed to the last hair. It forms the head of an arrow that points up at his nose as if to say, “Yo, look at this guy!” Amazing. No notes.
PS: You can buy a “Smells Like Pedro Pascal’s Moustache” candle on Etsy. This is cursed knowledge.
4. Billy the Kid: Pat Garrett
Alex Roe as old-timey Wild West lawman Pat Garrett in Season 2 (on Showmax from 25 November) gives us the classic “copstache” – as also seen on Danny Glover in the Lethal Weapon franchise, David Oyelowo in Lawmen: Bass Reeves, Brett Dalton in Found Season 1 (Season 2 coming from 26 November), and Jude Law in Sherlock Holmes. This is a sleek, stern, law-abiding moustache that knows its place on the face, and bears down on the lip like an extra set of disapproving eyebrows. We can see what happens when a copstache breaks the rules and goes rogue on Matthew McConaughey in True Detective Season 1, and Colin Farrell in True Detective Season 2. Get outta here, you’re a disgrace to the whole department!
5. Yellowstone: At least one Dutton in each generation
What’s a Yeehawlywood tale of the battle between ranchers and developers without a rugged, self sufficient moustache to hint at man’s efforts to tame and cultivate the wilderness around him, just as he hews a god-fearing moustache from the scrubland of his own facial hair?
The main Yellowstone series gives us Josh Lucas as a moustached, younger version of Kevin Costner’s John Dutton, whose lip becomes bare under the weight of responsibility as the Dutton patriarch in his later years. His oldest branded ranch hand, Lloyd Pierce (Forrie J. Smith), however, keeps his cowboy classic. And in the 1923 prequel, Spencer Dutton’s (Brandon Sklenar) big game hunting adventures in Africa see him killing lions with just a rifle and a moustache for protection. The Duttons’ inspiration might be the king of cowboy moustaches himself, Sam Elliott, playing wagon train leader Shea Brennan, who guides James Dutton’s (Tim McGraw) wagon train to Yellowstone in the other prequel series, 1883.
6. Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist Season 1: Frank Moten
Ooh, la la, Samuel L Jackson! Or Mr Jackson if you’re nasty. This breeding-alpha walrus moustache is so big because it’s full of secrets. It’s shaped like a half horseshoe for luck – or a set of brass knuckles – as gangster Frank Moten sets out to find scammer “Chicken Man” (Kevin Hart), who ripped off him and all the other punters betting on Muhammad Ali’s comeback fight in Atlanta in 1970. Honourable mention to Don Cheadle, sporting the junior version of this moustache as Detective JD Hudson. And don’t let Terence Howard’s glorious, swoopy bouffant distract you from his devious lil moustache.
PS: This series, which is based on real-life events, gets in the ring from 13 November, with new episodes each Wednesday. For more con man moustache action, see Courtney B Vance as Jeremy Horne in the film Heist 88, on Showmax from Monday, 25 November. While you wait, bask in the glory of Christopher Lloyd’s insane full-horseshoe moustache in the Christmas episode of Hacks Season 3.
This iconic half-stache is ideal inspiration for the gent whose hair grows in odd patches. Actor Jack Huston plays World War 1 veteran Richard with half his face covered by a lightweight, enamelled tin mask attached via his glasses, which is painted to include one side of his moustache. The look is based on the real-life prostheses pioneered by surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, and artists Francis Derwent Wood and Anna Coleman Ladd, for soldiers who suffered catastrophic facial injuries during trench warfare. If you can’t grow your own, store-bought or painted is just fine.
Has a moustache ever been a better symbol of forgotten grandeur and a longing for freedom than Ewan McGregor’s aristocratic, waxed handlebar moustache, which stretches out across the lower half of his face like a bird’s wings in this series?
A prisoner of the Bolshevik revolution and then out-moustached by the Stalinist regime, Rostov lives out his days under house arrest in an attic room of the Hotel Metropol Moscow. While Ewan grew his own facial hair, makeup artist Jacqui Fowler helped Rostov along with moustache extensions, especially at the start of the series when Rostov waxes the ends and curls them upwards. While the moustache falls on hard times, it lives on bravely, supported by a stiff upper lip.
PS: if you love the shenanigans at a hotel filled with impossibly demanding, super-rich clients, spare a thought for Armond (Murray Bartlett), manager of The White Lotus resort in Maui in The White Lotus Season 1. Not even his luxurious moustache can quite conceal his constant dismay.
Beware of actor Aidan Gillen’s precisely groomed chevron moustache! As one of the most accomplished political players in Westeros, his character, aka “Littlefinger”, needs that smirk-shield, which runs all the way from under his nostrils to his top lip, to hide his true intentions.
It keeps this ice cold traitor warm as he weasels his way through backstabbing everyone, from bushy-bearded kings to bald eunuchs. While Petyr never actually twirls the ends of his moustache like a pantomime villain, the intention is there. The accompanying goatee is just there to underline the evil perpetrated by the moustache.
This Steve Harvey-style sprawling lip lizard, grown for the role by actor Leslie David Baker, got its own subplot at the start of Season 8, episode 20. Colleagues passing round a card to welcome him back to the office following a tonsillectomy start debating whether the main inscription on the card: “Glad they didn’t mix up your tonsillectomy with a moustachectomy!” is even accurate.
Salesman Jim Halpert (John Krasinsky), the first dissenter, comes up with an even split when he polls Stanley’s Dunder Mifflin colleagues. Pam (Jenna Fischer) the receptionist, who insists that he has a moustache, tries to help everyone along by sketching Stanley caricatures with and without it. Fortunately, we live in the moustached Stanley universe, and not in an evil, bare-lipped Stanley reality. The moustache is such a feature on his face that you’d expect to see it in his baby photos.
Bonus!
Mission Impossible: Fallout – August Walker
When Mission Impossible: Fallout rappels onto Showmax on 25 November, we’ll get reacquainted with one of the most expensive moustaches in Hollywood history. Because of contractual obligations on the Mission film, Henry Cavill had to keep his August Walker moustache while filming reshoots for his role as Superman in Justice League.
We all know Superman likes to keep it smooth, so the effects team had to digitally remove the Cavilstache from every single frame of film (this did not go well), at an estimated cost that reached as high as $25 million. That might be the most audacious Mission heist yet! So if you want a moustache style that oozes money while bracketing the curve of your mouth as if to warn, “Pay attention to what comes out of this”, here’s the flavour-saver for you.
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