Bella Thorne is back in the red hair that made her one of Disney’s most recognizable young stars. The 28-year-old traded dark brown tresses for the red ringlets tied to her Shake It Up era, then gave fans a close look at the transformation across a series of recent posts.
On May 10, Thorne shared selfies with the caption, “Merida down in this b---hhhhhh.” Two days later, she followed with an Instagram Story asking, “Did you know I actually dyed my own hair…who wants to see the video?” The shift was the latest in a run of throwback looks that have leaned hard into her early-2010s image, when she starred on her Disney dancing series alongside Zendaya from 2010 to 2013.
The return landed with extra force because Thorne had already been mining that period for inspiration. On April 14, she posted a video next to a photo of her earliest Disney headshot, taken when she was 12 years old, and framed the moment with the line, “Just at the start of Shake It Up Bella.” She then looked back on that version of herself with a sharper edge, saying, “She was so innocent. She had barely lived a life at this point. Oh, she had no idea what was to come.”
That same post also made clear that the red shade is more than a nostalgic wink. “I love this version of my red hair,” Thorne said, underscoring that the color she is wearing now is not just a costume from her past but a look she still sees as part of her identity. For fans who followed her through the Disney years, the change reads as a direct callback to the image that helped define her early career.
The timing matters because Thorne has been revisiting several of her aesthetic eras recently, especially the moments when her hair was red. The new look comes as she continues to balance that public nostalgia with her personal life. She got engaged to fiancé Mark Emms in 2023, and in December she said the two were in no rush to marry. At the time, she said, “We're making our love child, which is this movie we just made together that I wrote and directed,” adding, “Then we will have the brain capacity to think and really do it right.”
Thorne and Emms met in 2022, and the wedding delay reflects the same deliberate pacing she has described around her work. That makes the hair change feel less like a one-off beauty update and more like part of a broader return to older versions of herself, even as she keeps moving forward with new projects and a life that looks very different from the one she had when she was 12.
What comes next is likely another round of close attention to the details she shares herself. Thorne has already shown the process behind the dye job, asked if fans want the video, and linked the look to the red-haired character she once played. For now, the message is plain: Bella Thorne is leaning back into the image that made her famous, and she is doing it on her own terms.
