Of all the Best Picture contenders at the 2025 Oscars, Sean Baker’s “Anora” has some of the most memorable fashion choices. (Sorry, “Conclave,” we all know it’s true.) At the center of the movie’s style is Ani, a young sex worker played by Jewish actress Mikey Madison. Ani is glitzy and feminine with rough, natural edges. She has long acrylic nails with butterfly decals, black-and-white tattoo bows on the backs of her legs and, of course, the flashy pink and purple hair tinsel that has become a beauty trend in 2025.
As contributor Paula Tsvayg noted in Hey Alma last year, “Anora” has an unmistakably Russian-Jewish backdrop in its Brighton Beach setting. But as it turns out, the backstory behind Mikey Madison’s hair in the film, tinsel and all, is also pretty Jewish.
In a recent interview with Allure Magazine, Mikey talked about the extreme measures she had to take to keep her naturally voluminous and curly hair straight for the part of Ani. “We had done a screen test in Los Angeles, and it was raining and I had straightened my hair,” she explained. “And then once moisture hit my hair it just went like, sshooo! Got really curly, frizzy. And Sean was like ‘Oh no, what’s happening to your hair?'”
Mikey’s response? “I was like, ‘I’m Jewish.’ Like, I don’t know what you mean?”
@allure Are hair tinsels the newest hair accessory of 2025? It just might 👀 Watch #MikeyMadison walk us through her beauty transformation for the hit movie #Anora ✨ #allure #mikeymadison #anora #seanbaker #movietok #dancer #hair #hairtransformation #hairstyle #hairtinsel
Mikey clarified that Sean Baker wanted her character to have straight hair, so she ended up getting her hair chemically straightened. It required a solution that she laughingly described as “pretty gnarly,” though she was willing to do “anything for the character.”
This is naturally the part of the article where we clarify that “Jewish hair” (or: hair on the heads and/or bodies of Jews) does not have a unified appearance, and not all Jews have dark, curly locks. However, Mikey Madison does have that version of “Jewish hair” — and might I add that it is absolutely gorgeous. That she chalks up her unruly hair at the “Anora” screen test to her Jewishness is honestly so endearing and relatable for many.
Mikey also took the time in the interview to credit the movie’s hair stylist Justine Sierakowski for the genius idea for Ani to wear hair tinsel. It was “such an amazing detail,” she said. “I have all this dark, black hair, but when it moves, [the hair tinsel] kind of catches the light and reflects light in an interesting way, it kind of gives some dimension to my hair which was essentially all one length,” Mikey said. She added, “Also, just [it] tells you a lot about who this character is that she spends so much time tying in all these individual pieces of hair tinsel. Because it would take like three hours to put all of that in.”
To my knowledge, this is the first time in the press tour for “Anora” that Mikey Madison has talked about her Jewish identity. (It remarkably didn’t come up when she saw the “Anora” menorah on “Late Night.”) And though the Oscars are this coming weekend, meaning the press tour will be over very soon, it’s still an exciting development for Jewish pop culture vultures everywhere.
