A lot of the pressure average folks feel to look a certain way comes from the beauty standards pushed on us by Hollywood. Working actors are often pressured to change their appearances to fit a certain mold, but sometimes, they refuse and build careers as their authentic selves.
Here are 15 actors who were pressured to change their appearances to get roles but refused:
1.
In 2023, Jenna Ortega told Harper’s Bazaar, “As a child actor, there are two jobs that you can get: you’re either the younger version of someone or you’re playing somebody’s daughter – and there were just not many leading Hispanic actors who I could be that for. So a lot of the jobs that I was going for growing up would never work out, because I didn’t look [a certain] way. That was really hard, to hear that something you couldn’t change was what was preventing you [from succeeding]…I wanted to dye my hair blonde so that I would look like Cinderella.”
2.
In 2024, Kate Winslet told Harper’s Bazaar, “There’s a bit [in the 2023 film Lee] where Lee’s sitting on a bench in a bikini… And one of the crew came up between takes and said, ‘You might want to sit up straighter.’ So you can’t see my belly rolls? Not on your life! It was deliberate, you know?”
3.
While Kirsten Dunst was filming Spider-Man, a producer surprised her with a dentist visit to straighten her teeth. However, she refused.
4.
In 2023, Rosie Perez told Variety, “[My former agent] told me that if I dyed my hair blonde and got a nose job, ‘I can get you more jobs. Because you’re not Black.'”
5.
The pressure to get a nose job “was fed to [The Boys actor Claudia Doumit] for many, many years.” During a panel at SDCC 2024, she reportedly said, “Ever since I was a young age, I thought to myself, ‘When I book my first job, I’m gonna get a nose job. I’m gonna get paid for that, and then I’m gonna get a nose job.’…Then I booked my first job and I didn’t get a nose job.”
6.
In 2024, Joel Kim Booster told Vulture, “[In an Instagram Stories Q&A] someone straight up asked me, ‘When you get famous, are you gonna fix your teeth?’ It was the first time someone had clocked me for having bad teeth. At that point in my career, I didn’t necessarily have the means to address it. My response was simply, ‘No.’ And I internalized that response to such a degree in the years since that, as I’ve become more and more successful, I sort of put off addressing any dental work.”
7.
In a 2023 Vogue video, Florence Pugh said, “I had a weird chapter at the beginning of my career, but that was because I wasn’t complying. I think that was confusing to people, especially in Hollywood. Women in Hollywood, especially young women in Hollywood, are obviously putting themselves in all these ways in order to get whatever opportunity that they need to get because that’s just the way that it’s been.”
8.
Early in her career, casting directors would tell Amber Riley, “I think you need to lose a little weight.” She was only offered harmfully stereotypical roles. She “didn’t understand why people couldn’t accept [her] for who [she] was,” but she decided to stop going to auditions because she didn’t want to “conform and hurt [her]self” to reach a certain size.
9.
In 2017, Alex Newell told StyleCaster that, when they auditioned for the musical Kinky Boots, “They said my weight would inhibit me from playing the role, which is not true, but to each their own.”
10.
In 2016, Ashley Benson told Health, “It’s come up a few times in the last few years, like, ‘You’re too fat for this.’ And I’m just sitting here like, ‘Wait, what? Do you want a skeleton?’ But I feel good. I don’t want to lose 20 pounds because I don’t need to.”
11.
In 2014, Robin Wright told Town & Country that, when executive producer David Fincher pitched her House of Cards, “I was sitting there going, ‘You’re 45, and you’re not gonna get a face-lift.’ I was really considering that stuff, because in Hollywood the pressure’s there.”
12.
In her 2023 memoir My Name Is Barbra, Barbra Streisand said that, over and over, people in the entertainment industry advised her to get dental crowns and a rhinoplasty. She wrote, “I thought, Isn’t my talent enough? A nose job would hurt and be expensive. Besides, how could I trust anyone to do exactly what I wanted and no more?”
13.
While Debra Messing was filming A Walk in the Clouds, the director allegedly pressured her to get a nose job. In 2017, she told Elle, “I’d never been on a film before. I was doing a love scene with Keanu Reeves. We started filming and the very famous director screamed, ‘Cut’ and said, ‘How quickly can we get a plastic surgeon in here? Her nose is ruining my movie.'”
14.
At the start of her career, Sophia Loren was often advised to alter her appearance. In 2014, she told The Hollywood Reporter, “I always tried not to listen to these people. They were saying that my nose was too long and my mouth was too big. It didn’t hurt me at all because when I believe in something, it’s like war. It’s a battle. But even Carlo [Ponti, my husband] said, ‘You know the cameramen, they say that your nose is too long. Maybe you have to touch it a little bit.’ And I said, ‘Listen, I don’t want to touch nothing on my face because I like my face. If I have to change my nose, I am going back to Pozzuoli.'”
15.
And finally, in 2015, Halle Berry told Yahoo Beauty that she feels pressured to get cosmetic work done. She said, “It is pressure. When you see everybody around you doing it, you have those moments when you think, ‘To stay alive in this business, do I need to do the same thing?’ I won’t lie and tell you that those things don’t cross my mind, because somebody is always suggesting it to me. ‘You know, if you just did a little bit of this and that, lift this up, then this would be a little bit better.’ It’s almost like crack that people are trying to push on you. That’s what I feel like.”
