Yahoo Lifestyle 19 Iconic Superhero And Villian Costumes That Looked Incredible Onscreen, But Were Actually Pretty Miserable To Wear IRL
Superhero costumes look great onscreen, but oftentimes, they're pretty uncomfortable to wear IRL.
Here are 19 actors who hated their superhero and villain costumes:
1.Tom Holland's MCU Spider-Man suit came with all kinds of problems. In 2021, he told The Graham Norton Show, he said, "I asked for a zip, and I didn't get one...I remember them bragging about, they added in these fans that you could click, and it would supposedly cool me down. They worked once. I have these hot batteries in my helmet heating my head up... There's a hole underneath the eye socket where we used to be able to feed a tube down, and I could drink without taking the suit off...because it takes a lot of time."
His costar Zendaya added, "I really think we should do something about this. Like, all of us, we need to band together. We need to tell somebody... It's one piece, so there's a helmet, and there's all these things that go underneath it, and I always have this fear that if he's, like, working really hard or something's happening that, if he had to, like, throw up, per se... How? How is he going to get it out? This is a genuine concern... Sometimes when I look at him, I get a little scared... It just stresses me out!"
2.Before helping design her new Scarlet Witch costume for WandaVision, Elizabeth Olsen wished her outfit "would just not be a cleavage corset."
In 2018, she told Elle, "I like corsets, but I'd like it to be higher. Everyone has these things that cover them — Tessa Thompson does, Scarlett [Johansson] does. I would like to cover up a bit. It's funny because sometimes I look around, and I'm just like — wow, I'm the only one who has cleavage, and that's a constant joke because they haven't really evolved my superhero costume that much.
But then you look at where it started in the comic books, and it was a leotard and a headband, so…oh, it's horrible, it's so horrible. So, at least, they know that's not cool. But then they made Wonder Woman, you know? And that's what she's in. I think of the costumes and what we have to wear it's’s more about iconic images, becausthat's's what these movies are...I think that's the goal with the costumes, and it's not representing the average woman."
3.To play Mystique in X2, Rebecca Romjin spent hours in makeup every day. In 2003, she told Entertainment Weekly, "The first one, it was eight or nine hours every day just to get into costume. It's a little less now. Still, there are four women who do it, and having them in my personal space for that many hours a day is crazy-making. You can go from being perfectly happy and having a nice time to just being, like, evil bitch woman: 'If one more person stares at me, I'm gonna pull my eyes out!'"
The nudity also made her uncomfortable.
She said, "I've been in denial about the nudity: 'No, no, I'm VERY covered up.' I kept checking with the rest of the cast, 'You guys, I'm totally covered up, right?' And they'd tell me, 'No, Rebecca, you're naked.' I'm hoping by X3, they can do it digitally. Maybe I won't even have to show up.
One time, [director] Bryan [Singer] opened the tent where I was literally bent over a chair getting my crack touched up. And I was like, 'Don't come in here, Bryan! You don't need to see this.' And he said, 'You really need some white wine.' And he brought me some."
4.Similarly, Jennifer Lawrence didn't like being covered in body paint to play Mystique from X-Men: First Class onwards. In 2015, she told Entertainment Weekly, "I love working with Bryan [Singer], and I love these movies. It's just the paint."
She said that, when she first accepted the role at age 20, she didn't care about "fumes and toxins."
She continued, "Now I'm almost 25, and I'm like, 'I can't even pronounce this, and that's going in my nose? I'm breathing that?'"
5.For Oscar Isaac, playing Apocalypse in X-Men: Apocalypse was "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.
6.Scarlett Johansson was worried about wearing her Black Widow costume for Avengers. In 2017, she told Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio, "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."
7.In Avengers, Tom Hiddleston's Loki costume was hot and uncomfortable because it was "30 pounds of leather and metal." The eight-pound helmet was especially miserable.
In 2012, he told Nightline, "On one level, it's incredible because it does so much of the work for me,. When you're wearing 30 pounds of leather, then you get very hot, and then all the heat that would normal escape through your head is just kind of encased inside this steel balaclava, and your brain slowly turns to scrambled eggs…so it has its challenges."
8.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 also said that the suit was so restricting he couldn't sit or stand without help, and he couldn't hear well either.
He said, "After a while, people stop talking to you, it’s very isolating."
9.In 2017, Michelle Pfeiffer told The Hollywood Reporter that her Batman Returns Catwoman suit was "the most uncomfortable costume [she's] ever been in."
She continued, "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."
10.When Arnold Schwarzenegger played Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin, it took an 11-member team four hours to get him in costume every morning. The worst part of the costume was the LED light in his mouth because his "saliva would creep into the seams of this thing and attack the batteries, [then] the batteries would immediately start disintegrating and start putting out battery acid into Arnold's mouth."
In 2017, makeup artist Jeff Dawn told The Hollywood Reporter that the actor shouted, "It tastes like shit! What's in my mouth?"
Jeff tried to amend the issue by putting the battery and light into a little balloon, but it died every 20 minutes.
He said, "Arnold is sitting there in this incredibly uncomfortable suit, and it's costing us $5,000 a minute to wait."
11.In Suicide Squad, Margot Robbie rationalized Harley Quinn's outfits to herself because she was "wearing hot pants because they're sparkly and fun [not because] she wanted guys to look at her ass.'
In 2016, she told the New York Times, "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."
12.In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Paul Bettany's Vision costume was "pretty painful, it's uncomfortable."
In 2015, he told USA Today, "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."
He also said he'd gladly wear the costume again, but only when he's getting paid.
He added, "I do everything I can not to get into that suit. It takes 31/2 hours to put it all on. And it takes me about .30 seconds to take it off. I just rip it."
13.In Captain America: Civil War, Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther costume was "blazing hot."
In 2016, he told Slash Film, "Listen, it's so hot. I've never been that hot before in my life, seriously."
14.To film Green Lantern, Ryan Reynolds wore a mo-cap suit, and the actual super suit was added digitally in post-production. In 2010, he told GQ, "It's made of actual woven misery."
He continued, "Whatever material they've used, they've managed to make it the most heat-conducting substance known to man. I literally begged them to just put me in a nonbreathable rubber unitard."
15.To wear her Ajak costume in Eternals, Salma Hayek had to face her fears. In 2021, she told Variety, "I am claustrophobic. I was terrified of the costume. I was terrified. Because if I cannot move and it's kind of thick… I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm not going to be able to breathe. It's going to drive me crazy.'"
She continued, "And I went to put it on, I found myself profoundly moved. It was a very strange experience because I didn't expect it. I forgot about how does it fit? Am I going to get a claustrophobic attack? All I could see was, 'Oh my God, here's a Mexican female in this outfit, and this is really happening. And yes, we get to be superheroes.'"
16.In Eternals, Barry Keoghan was uncomfortable in his cumbersome Druig costume. In 2021, he told HeyUGuys, "There was, like, three layers to it, and I complained every day about it."
"'Cause we were in the heat as well, and it was like...Especially coming back after Christmas, when you put on the pounds, you're like, 'Oh, jeez...' But it looked amazing."
17.During a 2020 New York Comic-Con panel, Smallville actor Laura Vandervoort confirmed that she wanted her Supergirl wardrobe to be 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 said.
18.Watchmen actor Malin Ackerman said that wearing Silk Spectre's latex costumes was "an interesting process." In 2009, she told Access Hollywood, "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," she said.
She also said that, if the movie was real life, she'd choose a much more practical look.
She said, "I'd be wearing sweats and running shoes, not high heels and latex. I actually have to say having to put that on, by the third month, I would rather have walked around naked."
19.And finally, in 2017, The Tick actor Peter Serafinowicz 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."
He continued, "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. Like today — I was pretty slimy by the end of the day."
He also said that, because of the costume's fit, he couldn't gain any weight during filming. He said, "My body has started to form to the shape of the costume. But I don't have the energy for any fun right now, anyway. As soon as I am done for the day, I am spent, a wreck, a husk of a man. I am basically a puddle at the end of the day."
