Javier Bardem's villainous bob has made even more headlines than the Oscar-sweeping film in which he and it starred. Tim Walker considers the strange cinematic potency of the really unpleasant hairdo.

Javier Bardem ought to be basking in Oscar glory this week. The Spaniard was a worthy winner of the best supporting actor award for his turn as Anton Chigurh, the cool, calculating, psychopathic killer in the Coen Brothers' Oscar-winning drama No Country for Old Men But....

But instead of the finer details of Bardem's performance - his dead-eyed stare or deep, unearthly growl - the endless column inches are devoted to what he described, in his own Oscar acceptance speech, as "one of the most horrible haircuts in history".

This was a haircut so bad that it sent Bardem spiralling into a depression. Fellow performers claim he was often too ashamed to leave the house.

Yet latest reports suggest that he may have to endure the sight of it for some time to come - the young hipsters of Hollywood are said to have taken to the Bardem bob, and some claim that it is set to become the gentleman's hairstyle du jour.