We know how obsessed you are with your hair: We’ve seen you spit-comb your cowlick in the reflection of the subway doors. And we get it; hair says a lot about who you are—just look at Phil Spector. Even his hair looks guilty. So, what do the coiffs sported by actors in movies say about them and the characters they portray? Well, if you’re Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovich, your frizzed-by-an-eggbeater hair says that you’re spacey and eccentric, and that you’re acting—that was her thespian hair. If you’re Christopher Reid, a.k.a. Kid, in House Party, then your vertiginous ‘fro acts as an exclamation point to your zany just-wanna-have-fun persona. (A man with that kind of hair would not commit murder, see.) Sadly, Reid did not make it into our faves, but you can see who did—like Jean Seberg, pictured above—in our banging top-ten list here.

How much money would you reckon knowing the meaning of life is worth? We asked popular Israeli novelist Etgar Keret about $9.99—a film based on his stories and shot in stop-motion—to talk about that and other aspects of the deceptively complex animated movie that he made with director Tatia Rosenthal (we review it here). It’s the story of a group of residents in a Sydney apartment building, all looking for meaning in their everyday lives.

I used to live in a Sydney apartment building like the one in the film, but it didn’t seem a likely place to find the meaning of life.
[Laughs] No. It doesn’t seem the most likely place where you would find the budget for a screenplay written by two Israeli short-story writers. But you find things where you find them, and not necessarily where you start looking for them.

Quite so. Do you find city apartment buildings to be, in general, good spots to find stories?
You know, I think it’s not the apartment building, but people together in close proximity that always makes for good stories. In a plane or Club Med or an apartment building. I think for me the fact that it’s specifically an apartment building is less of interest. Just the fact that these people lived so close together but lived lives that were totally different.

How much would you pay, personally, to find out the meaning of life? In American dollars, please.
Well, as much as I can afford. Which isn’t much.

Read the rest of the interview after the break.

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