The blond hair was her idea.
Renowned redhead Julianne Moore was preparing to play a character called Doctor's Wife in the film adaptation of Blindness, currently shooting at the (now-defunct) Ontario Reformatory in Guelph, an hour or so west of Toronto.
Moore had read the script by Don McKellar, as well as the prize-winning novel by Jose Saramago, so she knew the story well.
She knew that it begins when a mysterious, highly contagious virus renders people blind. "No pain. A sea of white," as one character puts it.
That the government quarantines the sick, but civilization breaks down when the guards and officials go blind, too.
That her character is immune, but keeps her sightedness a secret so that she can stay with her husband, Doctor (Mark Ruffalo), and their makeshift family, including Dark Glasses (Alice Braga, niece of actress Sonia Braga), Man with Black Eye Patch (Danny Glover), Receptionist (Susan Coyne) and Woman with Insomnia (Martha Burns). Sandra Oh plays Minister of Heath, and McKellar himself plays Thief.
Moore also knew that as time passes, Doctor's Wife comes to feel increasingly isolated. "She'd almost rather be blind," the actor said last week, over lunch in her trailer in the prison's parking lot. "The last thing anybody wants to be is different. So I thought red hair would make her look too strong, too different.
"And blond is about leisure, money, maintenance. I was adamant about it." She laughs. "And what doctor's wife have you ever known who hasn't been blond?"
Any good actress will plan her character's look. But not many would have the conviction to dye her hair without first getting the approval of her director - in this case, the Brazilian-born Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener).
"She sent me an e-mail to avoid the shock," Meirelles tells me later, chuckling. "But it's really working well. We gave her a wardrobe that's the same colour as her skin and her hair, so she's like a pale angel."
Moore certainly stands out in the prison, a depressing location to begin with, made worse by the filth lining the halls. "Usually in films the garbage is tattered," Meirelles says, "but in the images from the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, all the litter was new - backpacks, CD players, shoes. So that's what we used here." Not to mention the human waste heaped in corners and smeared on the walls. ("Have you seen the chocolate pooh?" Martha Burns asks. "They put out fresh piles every few days.")
"But Julianne herself is very down to earth," Meirelles continues. "She's the anti-star. There hasn't been a single second of complaining or asking for quiet. It's always, 'Let's do it,' and 'Let's do it again.' She's a joy."
Moore sure lines up for her lunch like everybody else, piling her tray with salad, grilled vegetables, a hunk of salmon, and then more vegetables stir-fried with tofu.
"Oh, Julianne, I just saw one of your movies on the plane, the one with Nicolas Cage?" says the actress ahead of her in line, referring to the action-adventure pic Next.
"Oh, I never saw that one," Moore says. Her nose wrinkles slightly.
The atmosphere inside her trailer is the polar opposite of the set: clean, giggly, and crawling with two nannies, three children (Moore's son Cal, 9, and daughter Liv, 5 - the spitting image of her mama - plus, for a bit, Ruffalo's son, Keen, 6), and one dog, Moore's black Lab.
