Hair designer Emanuel "Manny" Millar wasn't afraid to go mano a mano with producing powerhouse Jerry Bruckheimer when it came to pulling for Angelina Jolie's platinum locks in the summer car-thief-caper movie Gone in Sixty Seconds, which costars Nicholas Cage. Jolie and Millar (who's coifed the actress for four of her films over the past two years) were convinced that her feisty character, Sara Wayland, called for a long, blonde, dredlock-inspired do &endash; a romantic-yet-edgy look that would stand out in a film filed with night scenes, cars, and mucho testosterone. The problem? Bruckheimer pictured a brunet. "I thought, 'I'm probably toying with the tiger here,'" Millar remembers. "But Jerry said, 'Manny, it's not that I'm against it. You just have to sell me on it.'"

So that's what he did. Millar won Bruckheimer over by designing a wig for Jolie that is dead-on with the hip, mechanic-chic style that costume designer Marlene Stewart created for the film. Stewart, who was inspired by workwear from 1930s Sears catalogs, says, "There's a real post-punk mood to Angelina's clothes, which she took a vested interest in developing." Her Sara Wayland has the kind of striking appeal that audiences have come to expect from the chameleon-like Jolie, who's gone through a parade of wigs, dye-jobs, cuts and clothes for each of her films.

Millar says that he and Jolie first developed their collaborative relationship when they worked together on 1998's Gia. "I had never seen her perform before I saw her do the scene with Mercedes Ruehl in which she flings suitcases and throws Mercedes out and goes into tears," Millar remembers. "I said, [referring to her wig] 'I need to mess this up.' To most actresses, when you say, 'Okay, you've just been abused and you've just been raped,' they pull one strand of hair down and say, 'There, I'm ready.' But Angelina is not like that. She's not concerned with looking pretty."

Jolie then asked Millar to help style her as club kid, for Playing by Heart (the two flipped through magazines and spent days mixing colors to find the right shade of salmon to dye her mane); a philandering wife, for Pushing Tin (while Jolie wanted a long, dark wig, director Mike Newell wanted her short natural hair; they ended up going with the wig); and a mental patient, for Girl, Interrupted (she wore a rough-around-the-edges, "not-too-cutesy-blonde" wig that Jolie added bangs to).

For Sixty Seconds, Jolie once again achieves an unusually sexy and intriguing look -- one that achieves the overall aesthetic that director Dominic Sena demanded of the film's style crew. "I wanted to bring a different look to it, and I really leaned on pushing the limits of color," Sena says. "I said, 'This look has got to be original, it's gotta be cool.' And after the first couple days of dailies, everybody went, 'Coooool.'"