Zosia Mamet on Finding Stability in Hair and Life

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It’s hard to explain where the hair-dyeing impulse comes from, but it’s a powerful one. Zosia Mamet knows it well. Want to dye your hair blonde, brown, pink, or grey? Zosia has your inspiration for it. Just print out a moment from her last few years and take it to your stylist.

We recently spoke to the Girls actress, who’s repping Secret deodorant for its campaign geared toward young working women, about where her hairs have been and where they are going. "I think I’m going to stay this color for the foreseeable future because my hair has been through a lot,” she says. “I never had the opportunity or the desire before. I went blonde about four years ago for a play and then I had to go back to brown for Girls and then I just really don’t know. The fire was lit inside of me in the hair-dyeing desire part of my brain.”

She relates a familiar end to the tale that anyone who has shared that burning hair dye desire will recognize: “I just wanted to try all the colors, so I did, and then my hair got really upset with me. Now I’m sticking with this.”

But hair isn’t the only part the actress that’s seeking equilibrium. Mamet describes her career as one of instability, in which work can come and go. "I fully should have been a banker,” she jokes. “Waking up every day that tomorrow — god forbid — my show could get canceled. Or... I got a job in Bulgaria! Or my boyfriend got a job in Bulgaria! It’s the fact that friends of ours will ask if we can have dinner next Friday and we’ll both be like, 'We can tell you maybe on Tuesday?’”

She finds ways of adding stability to her life by surrounding herself with familiarity, including people and routines. "I always try, wherever I go, to try to make it feel like home. My boyfriend and I really try not to take jobs when the other one is working so we can travel as a unit, and we bring our dog. I am a total yoga geek, so I make sure I can do yoga every day. Those little things start to create a non-stressed-out human being."