At some point in 1984, when I was 18, I was approached by a woman who identified herself as a casting agent, near the American Embassy on London’s Grosvenor Square.

Would you be interested in doing a screen test for the new Stanley Kubrick project?

Why, yes, of course, I would most certainly be interested in that!

Would you be willing to get all of your hair chopped off? Like in an military buzz-cut?

That I was considerably less enthusiastic about. I had long hair then and I was… rather attached to it.

Obviously, in retrospect, she was casting for long-haired young guys willing to have their heads shorn for Full Metal Jacket. I took her card but never went for the screen test.

I’ll bet David Bowie wishes he’d had made a similar decision before losing his locks for a blink and you’ll miss ‘im cameo in 1969’s The Virgin Soldiers. Aside from a two-second cameo as a falling down drunk soldier in the background of a bar scene, the rest of Bowie’s performance ended up on the cutting room floor.
 

 
Thank you Nigel Best!