Did celebrity Kevin Costner recently refute rumors that he had a hair transplant and share a personal testimonial about the positive results he has seen since he began using the roll-on hair growth product RenewHairX? No, that's not true: A fake audio track promoting a product was dubbed over Costner's voice in a video clip taken from a 2008 guest appearance on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." Costner was not discussing treatments for hair loss but discussing how he was a late bloomer and had a growth spurt in his late teens.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook on the page David Terrill-oo3 on November 20, 2023 (archived here), with the caption:
The Secret About Costner's Hair RegrowthCostner used to have severe hair loss and now he's regrowing his hair. We Interviewed Him & Uncovered The Secret! It's Actually Easier Than We Think!
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https://www.furrioz.com/en/review-renewhairxxs.html?cy=DE
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Dec 5 19:19:26 2023 UTC)
The scope of this fact check does not extend to the question of whether this product is effective, or whether, or how, Costner may have treated hair loss -- only if Costner has promoted this specific product. He has not promoted RenewHairX (archived Google search results) and the video clip used in the RenewHairX advertisement has been manipulated with a fake voiceover testimonial.
Lead Stories used a screenshot from the video clip pictured above to conduct a reverse image search (archived here). Google Lens found the clip originated from an episode of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" that originally aired on July 30, 2008. The 4:44-minute-long clip was republished on the Late Night YouTube channel on February 17, 2022.
The composite image below shows screenshots from the same moment in both the Facebook video and the YouTube video with the respective text captions. At nine seconds into the video clip on Facebook (below left), just before Costner gestures with his hands, the simulated voice says:
Then, this year, I stumbled upon RenewHairX and, well, I started applying it every night, massaging it in to get the blood flowing, and would you believe it? My hair started to grow back... It really did!
In the Late Night video (above right) Costner's hand gestures appear just after the 1:23 minute mark. At this time he is not talking about a treatment for hair loss but about being a late bloomer. He says:
In my senior year I probably grew seven, eight inches, had mononucleosis ... everything was stretched out. I continued to grow into college. So yeah. I'm about 6'1".
Additional Lead Stories fact checks debunking claims derived from fake audio tracks can be found here.
