Actors gonna act; wigs gonna distract. We hereby present 11 of the most egregiously scene-stealing syrups in movie history.

1. JUDE LAW, SLEUTH

This is one of the most handsome men on Earth, remember? It's hard to see that through this blond mop, which looks like the mutant offspring of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump's dos. It's as if someone found the most annoying, most flaxen-haired public schoolboy they could, then scalped him and stuffed the results on top of Jude Law to give him more than a hint of a mullet. No-one deserves that, even if he was sleeping with Michael Caine's wife in the film.

2. GARY OLDMAN, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA

Why does the legendary Gary Oldman have a bum on his head? Why would anyone do this to Commissioner Gordon? Or Sirius Black? Apparently costume designer Eiko Ishioka and her team took inspiration from Japanese theatre and the hairstyles of the Hopi Indians, among other world cultures. But we're not sure that's sufficient excuse.

3. ANGELINA JOLIE, LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT

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Oscar winner Angelina can look good with blonde hair – see Salt or The Good Shepherd – but this Marilyn look is atrocious. The hair is probably fine, and her face is obviously fine, but the two together? A clash. Maybe they stuck it too far back on her head? Or maybe it's her proximity to Edward Burns? After all, as well as co-starring with Ange in this film, he also appears opposite Sir Ben Kingsley in A Sound Of Thunder (see below), so maybe he exudes some sort of force field that stops wigs from working. Yes, that's probably it.

4. COLIN FARRELL, ALEXANDER

It's long past time that Hollywood acknowledged the truth that Colin Farrell is one of nature's brunets. He's just not supposed to be blond, and the proof is in this thunderingly awful wig. Without it, the film's decision to have everyone use Scottish, Irish and, frankly, random accents to signal the different kingdoms of Greece might have gone unremarked.

5. BEN KINGSLEY, BLOODRAYNE / A SOUND OF THUNDER

If Farrell is one of nature's brunets, Kingsley is one of nature's slapheads. Bad things happen when you put hair on his head, as shown by this pair of terrible, terrible films. Whether he's playing a vampire king or a thoughtless billionaire, attaching a weird bowl cut or pile of dandelion fuzz to the back of his head will not help his moral standing.

6. SAMUEL L. JACKSON, THE CAVEMAN'S VALENTINE

Someone with high levels of cool can carry off a lot of inadvisable hair dos: the Pulp Fiction jeri-curl, the Unbreakable swoosh, that braided beard in Jackie Brown. But Sam's long, flowing dreadlocks in The Caveman's Valentine were a bridge too far even for the future Nick Fury.

7. BRUCE WILLIS, LOOPER

Another of nature's baldies, as a general rule Bruce Willis's handsomeness is inversely proportional to his hair. So it was a baffling decision to saddle him with a scraggly, thinning, dark cut as part of his possible-future transformation from Joseph Gordon-Levitt to Willis proper.

8. TAYLOR LAUTNER, TWILIGHT

Fidelity to the source material is a terrible thing. It means that we get Taylor Lautner, as Jacob, stuck with a very long, flowing wig for his early appearances as Jacob. Thankfully, spotting the heart-throb potential and the fact that long straight hair hasn't been in for men since the '90s, the Twilight puppetmasters gave him a haircut pretty darn quick. When your romantic rival is Robert Pattinson, you need to bring your hair A-game.

9. JAMES EARL JONES, CONAN THE BARBARIAN

It takes serious fashion flair to carry off a mini-fringe with a long, straight cut – Rooney Mara can do it, for example. But sadly for all of us, the voice of Darth Vader doesn't quite have the cheekbones for it. Jones wisely adopted a sort of quasi-Egyptian headdress to cover the mess, which we imagine he hoped to keep on until it had all grown out and he could find a new hairdresser to set things right. (What happened to the old hairdresser was, presumably, unspeakable).

10. WINONA RYDER, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS

Why would anyone make Winona Ryder blonde? And worse, give her a dry, frizzy wig in desperate need of some deep conditioner? Oh, you can curl those random bits all you want, but we're still going to notice how horrible it is. With her black eyebrows and indeed eyes, it also looks painfully out of place on the quasi-goth actress.