First time creating actors so maybe I am missing something, but is there a way to randomize an actor's head features every time he or she is added to the game world? For example, I have this script that periodically adds my new actor bandits close to the player. I want each one to be unique instead of appearing like the same actor cloned over and over again, so I want things like facial features, hair type, and hair color to be randomized for each instance. Is this possible without having to create 50 unique actors myself and have the script randomly choose one?

Not that I know of.

There are some calls in SKSE for accessing face data. I haven't had a chance to look properly at them, but they might do some of what you want.

Worth a look, anyway. I'm interested in doing something very like this myself.

When you make a new NPC character, in the lower left corner there is a "Template Data" section. You can choose something like LvlBanditAmbushMeleeNordM as a base, and individually select what characteristics of that template you want to use with the check boxes underneath. I'm guessing you've at least seen this, but when you do this, you usually get a different bandit each time the character is enabled and spawned into the world, so conceivably you could reuse 4 or 5 of these and use some scripting to force these actors to disappear, reappear, and hopefully be a different, semi-randomized character.