She's the flame-haired temptress who lights up the screen in the hit American TV series Mad Men.
But actress Christina Hendricks has revealed she is really a natural blonde who became a redhead at the age of ten.
Hendricks, famed for her role as curvy Joan Holloway in the Sixties drama, dyed her hair because of her schoolgirl obsession with Anne of Green Gables.
In the classic children's novel, the orphan heroine's pigtails are a distinct red.
Hendricks, speaking ahead of the start of the fifth series of Mad Men, admitted: "I'm naturally a dark blonde. I couldn't tell you what shade because I haven't seen it in ages. I started playing with red hair when I was ten years old. I recognise how odd it is now, but my mum let me do it.
"I was obsessed with Anne of Green Gables. There was something about her that spoke to me — and I wanted to have her beautiful red hair. My mum said, ‘Well, let's throw a rinse on it.'
"My hair was very blonde at the time, but it went carrot red. And I was over the moon. I went to school the next day and felt like myself."
Perhaps her mother might have thought to read the classic 1908 children's book by Lucy Maud Montgomery, in which Anne of Green Gables says: "You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair. People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is."
It's a line that might also equally apply to Hendricks and her seductive character in Mad Men.
Teenage Hendricks went on to dye her hair a series of rather more outlandish shades as she tried to express her youthful individuality.
"In high school, I started experimenting with permanent colour," she said. "My mum nearly cried one day when I came down the stairs in jet-black hair.
"I got purple, pink and black out of my system during those years. I was a goth kid. I dyed my hair about 42 different colours, shaved it at the back and wore black make-up."
Being different
Her unusual looks and her friendship with "drama geeks" meant Hendricks, now 36, was tormented by other students at high school in Fairfax, Virginia, in the US.
"Kids can be pretty judgmental about people who are different," she said. "But instead of breaking down and conforming, I stood firm. That is probably why I was unhappy. There was a long corridor with lockers on either side and kids would sit on top of them and spit on you.
"It was like something out of Lord of the Flies."
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Hendricks moved at the age of three to Twin Falls, Idaho, where she found her love of acting, joining a youth theatre group.
"My friends and I were all weird theatre people and everyone just hated us," she said.
At the age of 14 she moved again, to Fairfax, where she continued hanging out with her new school's theatrical teenagers.
"Moving as a teenager is never easy," she said. "So I tried to set myself apart and it ended up with multicoloured hair. It was how I was expressing myself."
Her mother, psychologist Jackie Sue, surprisingly undermined her daughter's self-esteem even further by telling her she looked "horrible and ugly", the actress claims.
But Hendricks blossomed to become Esquire magazine's Sexiest Woman Alive in 2010, and is now a fixture on the red carpet in Hollywood. She returned to being blonde only once — when MTV asked her to dye her hair for four episodes of its 1999 soap opera series Undressed.
Hendricks became a blonde and cut her hair to chin length for the show, quickly changing back to red when filming ended.
When she appeared in a Playboy magazine photoshoot that same year — intriguingly with visibly less cleavage filling her bikini than the ample bounty she sports today — she wore a short platinum-blonde wig.
Meanwhile, fellow Mad Men cast member Elisabeth Moss has spoken about playing career girl Peggy Olsen in the series, air dates for which have not been confirmed by its UAE broadcaster MBC. Peggy rises from the typing pool to become a copywriter.
Moss, 29, said: "I think she's the truest feminist. It's the feminism of, ‘Hey, I just want to do what I love, and I think I should get paid the same amount for doing it if I do as good a job as a man.'"
— Daily Mail
