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| Mike Coppola/Getty |
New photos of Letterman jogging in St. Barts this week shocked the internet, quickly becoming a trending topic, showing not only a heavily bearded man with a close resemblance to Santa himself, but someone almost unrecognizable. But the 68-year-old’s new look is very much by design.
“I used to say, every day, ‘I am so sick and tired of shaving,’” he said to Montana’s Whitefish Review in December. “I had to shave every day, every day, for 33 years … And I just thought, the first thing I will do when I am not on TV is stop shaving.”
“My wife hates it,” he said. “My son hates it. But it’s interesting. I’ve kind of developed a real creepy look with it that I’m sort of enjoying. And I can tell that people are off-put by it. And the more people implore me to shave, the stronger my resolve is not to shave.”
Retirement and/or hiatus beards are nothing new, with the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert having previously sported much the same.
But it looks like this new look may be agreeing with the former late night host, who happily flashed the cameras his familiar gap-toothed grin.
