Rooney Mara On Shaving Her Head & Getting Real Piercings For ‘Dragon Tattoo’

There are often tantrums and tears when Tyra Banks and Co. cut the women’s hair during the makeover session on each season of “America’s Next Top Model,” but actress Rooney Mara had no such drama when she went from football dynasty belle to novel heroine Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

“I had parts of my head shaved,” Rooney told Allure magazine of her “… Tattoo” transformation. “I was in that character for over a year. If you’re going to do it, you have to do it.”

Rooney, who is featured on the cover of the magazine’s latest issue, said she shed no tears in the process.

“People always ask, ‘Were you crying when they cut your hair?’ And it didn’t freak me out at all. I was really happy to do it,” she said.

The slender actress also got several piercing – including on nipple — to play the lithe hacker Lisbeth.

“I’m naked quite a lot in the movie,” she told Allure. “And I thought, ‘She has it in the book, and she should have it [in the movie]’. Because of all the tattoos and the makeup and the piercings, and the physical transformations my body has to go through, it would always feel sort of like I was in costume, even if I was naked. It just felt like a good one to get — a necessary one to get.”

As for that football dynasty – The Rooney family owns the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Maras owns the New York Giants – and, sister Kate Mara starred in 2006’s “We Are Marshall,” – Rooney said she’s not a diehard pigskin fan.

“I didn’t love football growing up, and I’m not obsessed with it. My whole family is really into it,” she told Allure. “But I do really like it, and of course I appreciate it because of my family — it’s a huge part of my heritage.”

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” hits theaters on December 20.

For more with Rooney Mara in Allure, click HERE.

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