It’s not easy being an unnatural blond—just ask Susan Olsen. The 63-year-old actress is best known for her portrayal of Cindy Brady, the youngest sibling on The Brady Bunch, for five years. She recently opened up about the hair and makeup requirement that caused her a lot of stress in real life.
According to People, Olsen appeared on a panel at The Chocolate Expo at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, alongside three of her former Brady Bunch co-stars. During the chat, a fan asked if she had to use bleach or dye to maintain Cindy’s signature blond hair color.
“You bet,” she responded. “Every three weeks, they had to dye my hair. If you look at the third season, my hair is kind of a different shade of blond every episode.”
Olsen continued, revealing that putting so many chemicals on her hair at the time (she was 8 years old when the show first aired) took a pretty big toll. “They were trying out different things, but then my hair had started to fall out,” she said. “With that, I went back to letting my mom do my hair, every Friday night.”
Olsen’s hair ended up being so damaged by the bleach and blond hair dye that it permanently straightened itself, meaning she had to go to great lengths to achieve Cindy’s ringlet curls. “I had to keep it rollers because my hair was straight,” she explained. “It couldn’t hold a curl unless I slept in them. But my mother was responsible for those ringlets.”
Her co-star Mike Lookinland also chimed in, noting that “in 1970, trying different things meant a whole cocktail of weird chemicals,” to which Olsen agreed. Thankfully, going blond in 2025 isn’t as much of a headache.
