Carrie Fisher once called the “iron bikini” Princess Leia wore in Return of the Jedi “what supermodels will eventually wear in the seventh ring of hell.”
No matter how many roles they’ve done, your favorite actor probably has one iconic look that sticks out in your mind. While plenty of actors love their famous costumes or styles, there are plenty of others who were pretty miserable sporting them.
Here are 19 actors who hated or regretted their famous onscreen looks:
1. Jennifer Aniston has a longstanding beef with her iconic Friends haircut. In 2011, she told Allure, “I love Chris [McMillan, my hairstylist], and he’s the bane of my existence at the same time because he started that damn Rachel, which was not my best look. How do I say this? I think it was the ugliest haircut I’ve ever seen.”
2. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Carrie Fisher once called the “iron bikini” Princess Leia wore in Return of the Jedi “what supermodels will eventually wear in the seventh ring of hell.”
3. Simone Ashley experienced a lot of discomfort because of the corsets in her Bridgerton wardrobe. In 2022, she told Glamour UK, “On my first day, I was like, ‘OK, first day as a leading lady, got to eat lots of food, be really energized.’ So, I had this massive portion of salmon, and that’s when I needed to be sick, basically because I was wearing the corset. I realized when you wear the corset, you just don’t eat. It changes your body. I had a smaller waist very momentarily. Then, the minute you stop wearing it, you’re just back to how your body is. I had a lot of pain with the corset, too. I think I tore my shoulder at one point!”
4. In 2014, Jim Carrey told The Graham Norton Show, “When I did [How the Grinch Stole Christmas]…literally the makeup was like being buried alive every day. The first day was 8.5 hours, and I went back to my trailer and put my leg through the wall.”
5. In the 2021 documentary Val, Batman Forever actor Val Kilmer said, “Whatever boyhood excitement I had was crushed by the reality of the Batsuit. Yes, every boy wants to be Batman. They actually want to be him…not necessarily play him in a movie.”
6. In 2021, Kill Bill director Quentin Tarantino told CinemaBlend, “Uma [Thurman] hated the yellow tracksuit. Hated it. Didn’t get it. Thought she looked like a Popsicle — a banana Popsicle.”
7. When Kaley Cuoco chopped her hair into a pixie cut ahead of The Big Bang Theory Season 8, she thought she’d save time on styling, but the decision ultimately “bit [her] in the ass” because of how much harder it was to style.
8. Dressing up as the titular character in Hannah Montana had a negative impact on Miley Cyrus’s self-image. In 2015, she told Marie Claire, “From the time I was 11, it was, ‘You’re a pop star! That means you have to be blonde, and you have to have long hair, and you have to put on some glittery tight thing.’ Meanwhile, I’m this fragile little girl playing a 16-year-old in a wig and a ton of makeup. It was like Toddlers & Tiaras. I had fucking flippers.”
9. In 2016, Margot Robbie told the New York Times that she understood Harley Quinn’s wardrobe in Suicide Squad because she felt the character was “wearing hot pants because they’re sparkly and fun [not because] she wanted guys to look at her ass.” However, she said, “As Margot, no, I don’t like wearing that.”
10. During a panel at New York Comic Con 2020, Smallville actor Laura Vandervoort confirmed that she wished her Supergirl wardrobe had been less revealing. She said, “I did ask them to burn the wardrobe when I was done with the show.”
11. Patrick Stewart “came to loathe” Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s Star Trek: The Next Generation jumpsuit. In 2008, he told Newsweek, “We actually got rid of it after the second season thanks to my chiropractor, who said, ‘If they don’t take you out of that costume, we are going to slap a lawsuit on Paramount for the lasting damage done to your spine.'”
12. Oscar Isaac found playing Apocalypse in X-Men: Apocalypse “excruciating.” In 2018, he told GQ, “I didn’t know when I said yes that that was what was going to be happening. That I was going to be encased in glue, latex, and a 40-pound suit—that I had to wear a cooling mechanism at all times. I couldn’t move my head, ever.”
13. Sarah Jessica Parker wasn’t a fan of Carrie Bradshaw’s short hair in Sex and the City Season 5.
14. Malin Ackerman was super uncomfortable in Silk Spectre’s latex suit for Watchmen. In 2009, she told Access Hollywood, “I actually have to say, having to put that on, by the third month, I would rather have walked around naked.”
15. In his 2022 memoir Beyond the Wand, Tom Felton wrote that, the first time he had his hair bleached to play Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter franchise, it “felt like fire ants were nibbling at your scalp” and was “agony.” He said, “Then, they said they’d have to do it all again and I begged them not to.”
16. Scarlett Johansson had trepidations about her Black Widow costume for Avengers from the first moment she saw it. Appearing on Bravo’s Inside the Actors Studio in 2017, she said, “Look at that thing. I mean, who wants to get into something like that? You just think, ‘Oh god, really? Couldn’t it have, like, I don’t know, some sort of a peplum skirt or something?’ This thing is like very: there you are. It was also everything it represented. The character was so beloved. She’s an iconic character. And I didn’t know how people were going to take it. What the hell was I doing in this franchise? It was daunting.”
17. In 2017, Michelle Pfeiffer told The Hollywood Reporter that her Catwoman suit in Batman Returns was “the most uncomfortable costume [she’s] ever been in.”
18. In 2015, Paul Bettany told USA Today that the costume and makeup he wore to play Vision in the MCU was “pretty painful” and “uncomfortable.” He said, “I do everything I can not to get into that suit. It takes three and a half hours to put it all on. And it takes me about .30 seconds to take it off. I just rip it.”
19. And finally, in 2017, Peter Serafinowicz, who played the titular role in The Tick (2016), told Yahoo Entertainment, “I think one thing all superhero costumes have in common is that all actors who have to wear the superhero costumes hate wearing them. It looks good, so I suppose that is the important thing.”
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