You Lookin' at My Hair?

Does action dictate character?

Or could it be something simpler--like your haircut? The film oeuvre of Robert De Niro would seem to present an argument for the latter.

In a career that spans more than 30 years and almost 70 films, De Niro has donned just about every possible tonsorial and facial-hair fashion you can name, with the possible exception of those wigs they wore during the Restoration. More often than not, how he looks is a direct tip-off about his character--as obvious a giveaway as a twitchy eye in a poker game--with one crucial exception.

This fall, for example, De Niro will be seen in "Men of Honor," playing a rock-hard military man who helps break the color barrier among Navy divers. How do we know he's rock-hard even before the film comes out? Because he's sporting the same severe crew cut he had in "This Boy's Life"--when he played a disciplinarian with a military mentality. Bristly is as bristly does.

Already this year, De Niro has adopted his antic-comedy look, shaving the sides of his head and plastering his hair to the top of his head in a post-Dillinger-do to play Fearless Leader in "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle." It was almost the same look he affected for "We're No Angels," with almost the same result, laugh-wise. That hairstyle also seems to trigger his jack-o'-lantern-like downward scowl with alarming frequency.

Once the hair gets a little longer, De Niro's characters become slightly more refined. With hair pulled back in lacquered slickness, his body sleek in tailored clothes, he can play flawed matinee idols, as he did in "Casino," "The Last Tycoon" and "True Confessions." Let De Niro get near a gym and he'll harden himself into a sculpted abstract and use that physique to release the finely tuned animal within. Think of the young Jake La Motta in "Raging Bull" and the direly tattooed Max Cady in "Cape Fear."

As the locks get long, De Niro's willingness to release inner passion also seems to rise. He gives some of his fiercest emotional performances in "The Mission" and "Jacknife," both featuring De Niro in long hair and beard. And, speaking of fierceness, it doesn't get any more soul-stirring than Louis Cyphre, the devilish client (who sported long nails to match his hair and beard) in "Angel Heart."

Trim the beard and hair and you get the pragmatic, slightly tweedy political advisor in "Wag the Dog." Bring the beard down to a goatee, however, and you release something feral and deadly: Michael in "The Deer Hunter" or Neil McCauley in "Heat."