In movies and TV, costumes help sell the character. Many of us grew up dreaming of wearing the gorgeous princess gowns, period dresses, or superhero suits we saw onscreen. Sometimes, however, the most beautiful outfit is also the most painful — and occasionally, an actor’s costume can cause lasting injuries.
Here are 21 times famous women had to wear painful costumes for a role:
1.
In 2018, Emma Stone played Abigail in The Favourite, and it was her “first time ever really wearing a corset.” She told Vogue, “I can confirm, it does shift your organs after a while. My body shape was different for like, I would say, about a month after The Favourite. Because it was extremely tight, it pulls you in. I’ve got a very big ribcage, so it’s an intense thing to maneuver. My body was definitely not built for a corset. That’s the gift that keeps on giving, ’cause now I can really hold my breath for a long time underwater, and I think it’s because of the corset.”
Previously, she told The Graham Norton Show, “It’s historically accurate, but I couldn’t fucking breathe… After about a month, my organs shifted because they have to. It was only temporary, but it was gross. The bottom half of my stomach, whatever, I’m not a doctor, whatever is in there, went down that way, and I guess just my ribs stayed up.”
2.
The mermaid tail prosthetic that Daryl Hannah wore to play Madison in Splash was “incredibly painful.” It was so bad that she’d just stay in the tail in the water during lunch breaks. She told People that costars John Candy and Tom Hanks “would come by and drop little French fries in [her] mouth.”
She said, “It weighed so much, and it put pressure on spots where it shouldn’t have pressure. So, almost every day, my feet came out bloody and stuff.”
3.
To play the titular role in Angelyne, Emmy Rossum had three-pound fake boobs glued to her chest, which gave her blisters. Additionally, the heavy eye makeup and contacts caused issues with her tear ducts.
She told The Hollywood Reporter, “The physicality of the character was challenging. The body is heavy, yet it has to feel light and effervescent. But I just kept focusing on how lucky I felt. This opportunity is really every actor’s dream. You raise your hand, and you say, ‘Hey, I’d like to play this, and this is how I envision the story.'”
4.
Simone Ashley experienced a lot of discomfort because of the corsets in her Bridgerton wardrobe. 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.”
5.
The pink bodysuit that Lily-Rose Depp’s character Jocelyn struggled to perform in during Episode 2 of The Idol was as unbearable to wear IRL as it was on the show. Costume designer, Natasha Newman-Thomas — who created the beaded panties, resin bralette, and corset with designer Nusi Quero – told W Magazine, “We wanted to create something that would actually play into the scene and have that restrictive quality. Nusi works primarily in photo and doesn’t really have a background in stage or dance. So there was a little bit of reality reflected in the art.”
She also said Lily-Rose was “a trooper” during the scene, adding, “It was definitely a challenge, but I think that fed into the scene and heightened the point we were trying to get across.”
6.
While playing the titular role in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Rachel Brosnahan got a “corset-related injury” from her character’s ’50s and ’60s-era outfits. She “can’t take super deep breaths anymore.”
She told The Late Late Show with James Corden, “We talk so fast on the show that to get all the words out, you can’t really take very many breaths. And I think I wasn’t breathing a lot, and I was a bit constrained, and apparently, some of my ribs are sort of fused together.”
7.
All of Elizabeth Banks’s Effie Trinket costumes for The Hunger Games were custom-made for her. She even helped costume designer Judianna Makovsky design them. However, she told People, “They are all torture.”
She added, “My favorite costume is when we’re watching the result show, and I’m in the big green [dress with] poofy sleeves. I love that outfit; it was the most comfortable.”
8.
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.”
9.
Jennifer Lawrence suffered from the bodypaint she wore to play Mystique in the X-Men franchise. She told E! News, “I got a couple of things from the paint. Like weird boils, rashes, and blisters… [A doctor who visited set] had to pop them.”
She later 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?'”
10.
On the set of The Other Boleyn Girl, Natalie Portman’s Anne Boleyn costumes hurt, but she didn’t want to say anything. Her costar Scarlett Johansson told W Magazine, “Natalie would be uncomfortable in her costume and not say anything. She’d tell me, ‘My rib is killing me.’ I’d be like, ‘Natalie, why don’t you say something?’ I’d have to be like, ‘Hellooo, someone, Natalie’s rib is hurting! Can you fix her zipper?'”
11.
In Lady Macbeth, the corset Florence Pugh wore to play Katherine Lester hurt to lace up, like several scenes depicted. She told W Magazine, “Everything was affected: the way I ate, the way I walked, the way I went to the toilet. Of course, they’re very pretty, but the idea behind them is to imprison you. Something as simple as eating, you’re using up breathing space.”
12.
To wear her Ajak costume in Eternals, Salma Hayek had to face her fears. 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.'”
13.
Louisa Jacobson “took a long time to get used to” the corset she wore to play Marion Brook in The Gilded Age “after wearing sweatpants for so long.” She told the podcast Reign with Josh Smith, “I really suffered from that decision because they measured and sewed all my costumes based on how tight my corset was in the fitting, when I had been really ambitious about making it very tight. It was taxing physically and mentally. I couldn’t sleep on my side for a long time because my ribs were so sore.”
Several months into shooting, she began requesting breaks from the restrictive garment. She said, “After every take or between setups, I would ask my dresser to untie the corset so that I could get a break.”
14.
Star Trek: Voyager actor Jeri Ryan told BBC that, for her Seven of Nine costume, “There’s a corset, one-piece undergarment. It’s constricting, and it’s not comfortable. You can’t really bend. You can’t really sit comfortably in it.”
She added, “Initially, I would stay in the costume much longer than I ended up staying in it because it takes about twenty minutes to get into. Someone has to dress me and undress me. It’s a production break if I have to get out of the costume to use the restroom or something. It grinds to a halt unless they can shoot something without me, which typically they can’t if it’s a scene that I’m in. So, in the interest of being a team player, the first season, I would not take restroom breaks, I just didn’t drink anything on set, which is not the healthiest thing to do.”
“As time progressed, I finally learned that you just heed the call of nature and take breaks when you need to take breaks. And finally, it got to the point where they would just let me get out of it after every take. When I wasn’t in the shot, I didn’t just wear it to wear it because it was very uncomfortable. It looks very simple; it looks just like a leotard, but it really was a feat of engineering on Bob Blackman’s part to design this costume,” she said.
15.
Cinderella actor Lily James told TIME, “The best [costume], which outweighs everything else, was in that blue gown — I felt completely transformed. And that’s what fairy tales are all about: transformation. When I put that dress on, I felt like I could be a princess. But then I’m glad that it only lasted a night! Or like, a movie-magic night. It was just so big, so heavy. With corsets, it’s interesting when you put them on, realizing that’s what women actually wore — that’s what they wore every day, and they’re just so constricting. I’m not surprised they ditched those corsets!”
“In the blue dress, it was particularly tight. On the one hand, it helps in the way you stand and the way you move, but on the other hand, it takes your breath right up into your chest. When I was trying to dance, I didn’t have the capacity to breathe to support the physicality, and so I had to keep taking breaks and loosening the corset. But as I said, it was worth it,” she said.
16.
Scarlett Johansson told Nightline that the tight outfit she had to wear while playing Black Widow in The Avengers was like a “wetsuit.” She also said that, while filming a rooftop fight scene, she got so hot that she started hallucinating.
She said, “It was so hot, I would wring out my socks at the end of the day.”
17.
Frances Fisher, who played Ruth DeWitt Bukater in Titanic, told Vulture, “Having that corset on completely changes your breathing style and posture… Nobody could breathe correctly. There were not a lot of places where you could rest. Sitting down was difficult. The corset would dig into your body, and you couldn’t lean back — the hat was so big. They had all these resting boards for us, but nobody who had their hair up in a big hat could use them. The proportions were incorrect. So we did a lot of standing around.”
18.
Watchmen actor Malin Akerman said that wearing Silk Spectre’s latex costumes was “an interesting process.” 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 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.
Vicky Krieps told the Boston Herald that wearing a corset to play Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Corsage was “one of [her] biggest mistakes because [she] underestimated it.” She “couldn’t eat properly, couldn’t breathe.”
She said, “I’ve worn it before once or twice, but we decided to really take the corset of the time — the hourglass shape, with the tiny waist, big shoulders, and big hips. And I was in so much pain all the time! … It was really terrible.”
20.
Julie Caitlin Brown played Na’Toth on Babylon 5, but she left after Season 1 because her “face was very sore from the makeup, and [she] was afraid there would be permanent damage.”
She told The SciFi World, “I wish I would have stayed a little longer, as the character was so interesting. I didn’t know at the time that I could have been released from my contract if I signed it, so I was afraid to sign it.”
21.
And finally, while playing an alien runway model in Men in Black 3, model Danika Gerner wore a 30-pound dress made of sheet metal. She only had two metal bands fastened with Velcro underneath, and she wore six-inch heels. After wearing the costume for nine hours a day, five days in a row, she allegedly had nerve damage and a herniated disc. She told the New York Post, “I complained about my back hurting and asked the wardrobe people if I could take the costume off [between takes]. They kept saying, ‘No, not yet, because you’re in the background of every shot.'”
She also claimed that, after the soreness left her unable to take modeling gigs for a month, her agency dropped her. She allegedly “woke up one day and couldn’t walk” then “called [her] parents, crying and screaming.” After surgery and treatment, she was $30,000 in debt.
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