Sam Pinkleton Got a Hair Transplant in Athens and Then Wrote About It
Sam Pinkleton — the Tony Award-winning choreographer and director — didn't keep his hair transplant secret. He wrote about it.

The Tony Awards, CC BY 3.0
Sam Pinkleton is a Tony Award–winning American choreographer and theater director, best known for directing the Broadway hit Oh, Mary!, which earned him the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 2025, and for his Tony-nominated choreography work on Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. Pinkleton has publicly confirmed that he underwent a hair transplant procedure at Seneca Medical Group in Athens, Greece, in October 2025. In a first-person account published by Condé Nast Traveler, he described traveling to Athens for the procedure, drawn in part by his Greek ancestry and a desire to reconnect with the city he hadn't visited since childhood. He spent 24 hours sightseeing—visiting the Acropolis, the Ancient Agora, and a rooftop bar at The Dolli hotel—before his appointment the following day. According to Pinkleton, the procedure itself took approximately nine hours from start to finish, after which he returned to his hotel, Ergon House, to recover. He recounted spending the recovery period eating spanakopita and spraying saline solution on his scarred scalp while listening to church bells ring every half hour. The single-session timeline aligns with what hair restoration specialists describe as a comprehensive one-day procedure rather than a staged series of treatments. While Pinkleton has not publicly disclosed the specific technique used or the number of grafts involved, observers comparing his appearances at earlier productions like Amélie (2017) and Significant Other (2017) with more recent ones note improvements in frontal hairline density and temple coverage consistent with a follicular unit extraction (FUE) procedure in the range typical for that area of restoration. He described the experience at Seneca Medical Group as "the most luxurious experience of medical care I've ever had." Pinkleton's openness about the procedure—framed within a broader reflection on heritage, ritual, and self-acceptance—stands in contrast to the discretion that typically surrounds hair restoration among entertainment industry figures. He recounted visiting the Church of St. Eleutherius near his hotel during recovery, lighting a candle, and later discovering that his grandfather had been photographed in front of the same chapel decades earlier. "There was a beauty in this ritual," he told Condé Nast Traveler, "going out and not feeling shame about getting a hair transplant while getting reacquainted with my heritage."