This is a topic about David Jay, so I'm loath to get too deeply into the obsession that is RD touching his hair (and also because it's a subject that's been covered so many times in so many other topics), BUT I do feel the need to point out that it's a very different thing for some DS actors to occasionally touch their hair from time to time and for RD to touch his hair to convey every range of emotion from sheer joy to intense anger. And, yes, a director might have instructed certain actors to occasionally touch their hair to get a point across or to heighten a moment, BUT there's such a thing as an actor's tick - something they do over and over (and over and over and over in RD's case). It's not something that happens occasionally, or simply because a director might want it, but because the actor can't reign themselves in.
It's a shame that many of our current members weren't around back in 2002-2003 when the forum actually kept a running tally at the top of the BoardIndex of the number of times RD touched his hair. For example, here's a sample capture that was taken somewhere around the end of 2002:
(http://www.dsboards.com/images/RDhair.jpg)
And here is a link to a topic from July 2002 that called attention to the very sad fact that in Ep #567 RD touched his hair 16 times!!!!
!! Hair Touching Alert !!
Any director that would specifically instruct his/her actor to touch their hair that many times in the course of 22 minutes of television would most definitely have to be sorely lacking in imagination and they should do the world a favor and resign from the Directors Guild pronto!! ::) Though in fact, they probably wouldn't even have to resign - the Directors Guild would probably expel them for sheer lack of talent!! [wink2]