Yahoo Lifestyle "I Would Rather Have Walked Around Naked": 19 Onscreen Looks Actors Hated With A Burning Passion Or Regretted Wearing
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."
While presenting Chris with the Hairstylist of the Year Award at the 2018 InStyle Awards, she said, "I got that haircut and was like, 'Wow, this is amazing,' and then I was totally left with this frizzy mop on my head, because I had no idea how to do what he did. Nobody seems to know how to do what Chris does. And I figured out that's called creating job security."
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."
In 2016, she told NPR, "It wasn't my choice. When [director George Lucas] showed me the outfit, I thought he was kidding, and it made me very nervous. I had to sit very straight because I couldn't have lines on my sides, like little creases. No creases were allowed, so I had to sit very, very rigid straight...
What redeems it is I get to kill [Jabba the Hutt], which was so enjoyable...I sawed his neck off with that chain that I killed him with. I really relished that because I hated wearing that outfit and sitting there rigid straight, and I couldn't wait to kill him."
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!"
She also said she had to have help from the wardrobe team to get dressed "because when you're in a corset, you can't put your shoes on."
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."
He continued, "I told [director] Ron Howard I couldn't do the movie. Then [producer] Brian Grazer came in, being the fix-it man...and came up with a brilliant idea, which was to hire a gentleman who is trained to teach CIA operatives how to endure torture. And so, that's how I got through The Grinch."
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."
He explained he disliked the costume because it was so restrictive that he needed help getting up and down and couldn't hear well.
He said, "After a while, people stop talking to you. It's very isolating."
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."
He continued, "She was just not into it. She had no idea who Bruce Lee [was], practically. I finally had to show her Game of Death. She sorta, kind of got it. Now, since then it's become this totally iconic thing. And she probably doesn't even remember it, But she was like, 'You're trying to make me look like a clown!'"
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.
In the book The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series, she said, "I don't know if I was being rebellious. I mean, I did do it for [independent film Burning Bodhi], which was my excuse to cut it. At that point, we were heading into our eighth season, and something needed to shake up. I was bored and sick of the hair, and what's funny is I thought by cutting my hair, I would spend less time in the hair and makeup chair, even though I loved the hair and makeup team.
...I was like, this is the worst decision! What was I thinking?! I thought I was cutting off all this time because I hated going in and getting ready. That's why I was wearing my hair up so much in Season 6 and 7. So then I cut it, and it ended up being more work because it wasn't easy 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."
She also said, "I was told for so long what a girl is supposed to be from being on that show. I was made to look like someone that I wasn't, which probably caused some body dysmorphia because I had been made pretty every day for so long, and then when I wasn't on that show, it was like, 'Who the fuck am I?'"
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."
"I’m eating burgers at lunchtime, and then you go do a scene where you’re hosed down and soaking wet in a white T-shirt; it’s so clingy, and you’re self-conscious about it," she said.
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."
"I would've personally liked to have done it," she added.
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.'"
He further explained, "They were made from Lycra and one size too small. The producers wanted to have a smooth, unwrinkled look. It put a terrible amount of strain on the shoulders, neck and back."
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."
"I couldn't move my head. And I had to sit on a specially designed saddle because that's the only thing I could really sit on, and I would be rolled into a cooling tent in between takes. And so I just wouldn't ever talk to anybody, and I was just gonna be sitting, and I couldn't really move, and like, sweating inside the mask and the helmet. And then getting it off was the worst part because they just had to kind of scrape it off for hours and hours," he said.
13.Sarah Jessica Parker wasn't a fan of Carrie Bradshaw's short hair in Sex and the City Season 5.
In 2015, she told Yahoo Style that it wasn't a great representation of hairstylist Serge Normant's work.
She said, "That's maybe time to be forgotten and to never be discussed again!"
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."
She also said, "It's literally like pulling an elastic band over your whole body. Then you let go and let it snap, and then you gotta wear it for 16 hours. Throw a corset on top of that and some high heel shoes, and you're ready to fight, right? I mean, it definitely looks phenomenal and fierce, but it's not."
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."
He continued, "My plea fell on deaf ears: I was straight back in the hairdresser’s chair. It initially took six or seven rounds over a matter of days to achieve the color. It was important to the filmmakers that the coloring was just right. They needed to see how the Malfoy blonde looked next to the Weasley ginger or the Granger brown."
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."
While filming a rooftop fight scene, the wetsuit-like costume got so hot that she began to hallucinate.
In 2012, she told Nightline, "It was so hot, I would wring out my socks at the end of the day."
Because of her stunts, she also "shredded" her costumes.
She said, "They're like tires. You would just go through sets of them. Every time you get a new costume, you just feel real nice and then three days later, it's like the discount Widow."
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."
She said, "They had to powder me down, help me inside, and then vacuum-pack the suit. They'd paint it with a silicon-based finish to give it its trademark shine. I had those claws, and I was always catching them in things. The face mask was smashing my face and choking me…we had a lot of bugs to work out...Originally, they didn't leave me a way to use the restroom in the suit, so that also had to be remedied as well."
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."
He also said, "You're working in it for 10 hours and not really being able to hear well. There's only this much of your face open to the air. The first day is not the problem. The second day is not the problem. The third day gets a bit tough. By the fourth and fifth day of the week, you are really having to meditate on the line of actors, thousands of them, who would love to be in your position. You have to concentrate on how lucky you are."
Sometimes, the Vision costume became unbearable. In 2021, he told ACE Universe, "I guess I had one time where I flipped out on set, and I just went, 'somebody has to help me get out of this suit,' and they pulled it down, and everybody was really lovely. It's so embarrassing to talk about because obviously you're getting paid to wear an uncomfortable suit, but after five days in a row of just being encased in this thing, you're like, 'I gotta get it off my chest.' I sat there for, like, five, 10 minutes just breathing, and then we went back into it, and it was fine. That was the one time I think I flipped out. I'm mostly kind of chill, calm."
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."
Describing his costume, he said, "I think it's some sort of special spandex, like three-ply. It is nonbreathable, and it doesn't have much give in it. It is a bit of a struggle to move sometimes. If I get it in the right position, I can bound around and stuff. Once everything is all working, it is pretty good fun to bounce around in it. But it is a physically demanding part, more than I have previously been called on to do.
The strange thing about the costume is that it mimics whatever temperature it is outside. So if it is cold out, I'm cold in it. If it is hot, it gets quite hot in there and I am sweating. It is kind of terrible in any weather."
