These 16 Actors Hated Their Costumes And With All The Discomfort They Described, I Can't Blame Them

Some of these outfits were literally torturous.

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1. During an interview with Stephen Colbert, Kit Harington said that the cape he wore as Jon Snow on Game of Thrones "weigh[ed] a ton" and "smell[ed] awful." He speculated (jokingly) that they added weight to the piece every year, because "Michele [Clapton], the costume designer, hates actors."

HBO / Via youtube.com

Clapton later explained in a Vogue interview that the cape did in fact get heavier, in order to reflect Jon's growing status. She also pointed out that lots of actors had to wear more cumbersome costumes in worse weather "without a personal dresser to help out." Well, then.

2. Going Grinch was grueling for Jim Carrey. He described the process of getting into the yak hair suit, which could take up to eight and a half hours, as "being buried alive."

Universal / Via youtube.com

Carrey almost quit the film, until a producer brought in an expert in training CIA operatives to resist torture. The expert recommended smoking, turning on the television, and getting someone to smack you. Somehow, Carrey managed not to "break" in the 100 times he had to wear the costume. Makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji actually took a hiatus from working on the film due to Carrey's angry outbursts, but he returned when Carrey asked him to a few weeks later.

3. While filming the first Iron Man movie, the filmmakers were hoping to achieve superheroic heights with practical effects, but the suit proved too difficult for Robert Downey Jr. to work in.

Marvel / Courtesy Everett Collection

The LED lights in the helmet "absolutely blinded" Downey Jr. In later films, the Marvel team defaulted to CGI to produce their movie magic.

4. It takes Paul Bettany 3.5 hours to be Vision-ified, but after 10 hours of shooting, he's so frustrated with the costume that he only spends 30 seconds tearing it off.

Marvel / Via youtube.com

His main complaint? The headpiece, which makes it difficult to hear and breathe, and is "pretty painful" and "uncomfortable." Bettany's technique to resist giving into his irritation is considering the many thousands of actors who'd kill to be cast in a Marvel movie.

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5. While speaking on a panel in 2017, Matthew Lewis revealed two aspects of shooting the Harry Potter series that he struggled with: filming the Great Hall scenes, which often featured food that "did not particularly smell well," and having to wear a fat suit to play Neville, especially once he became a teenager.

Warner Bros. Pictures / Via youtube.com

Lewis said, "There's girls around; I’ve got this fat suit on every day...no one knows I’m wearing this damn thing." On a separate occasion, co-star Alfred Enoch (Dean Thomas) pointed out that Lewis was always attractive, but the prosthetics and bad haircuts required to play Neville made it seem like his physical transformation from geeky teen to handsome adult was more dramatic than it really was.

6. In 2008, Tom Felton said that the worst part of being Draco Malfoy was having to maintain the character's signature platinum blonde hair.

Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection

Felton (a natural brunette) had to dye his hair every 10 days. Luckily, Felton said that his hair "built some super-human resistance, but it seems to have survived."

7. In a 2014 interview with Jimmy Fallon, Jennifer Lawrence divulged that transforming into the X-Men's Mystique was an exhausting process that could last up to eight hours.

20th Century Fox / Via youtube.com

Not only did the makeup take a full workday to apply, during the first movie J. Law had such a severe negative reaction to the blue paint that a doctor had to be called to set. Following that incident, she wore a bodysuit from the neck down.

8. Andrew Garfield said during an interview on Ellen that wearing his Amazing Spider-Man costume fell short of amazing: It "irritated" him and often looked "unflattering."

Columbia Pictures / Via youtube.com

The presence of paparazzi exacerbated these concerns, especially since, according to Garfield, "knowing that your keister has been shot from many different angles makes you very uncomfortable." I'll take his word for it.

9. Jennifer Aniston has repeatedly said that she hated "The Rachel" she sported on Friends, despite the fact that it may be the most influential TV hairdo of all time.

NBC / Via youtube.com

Not only was it difficult to maintain without professional assistance, she thought it was "cringey" and "the ugliest haircut I've ever seen." When asked if she'd rather shave her head once or rock the Rachel for the rest of her days, Aniston enthusiastically went with the former.

10. Speaking to Marie Claire, Miley Cyrus revealed that the unreasonable beauty and fashion standards of playing a pop star on Disney's Hannah Montana had negative effects on her self-image.

Walt Disney Co. / Courtesy Everett Collection / Via youtube.com

She described herself during her Disney days as "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 wasn't a fan of Hannah's long blonde hair or fondness for "glittery tight thing[s]," either.

11. Sean Astin didn't love having to gain weight to play the hobbit Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings franchise, and two elements of his costume in particular gave him grief: Samwise's huge traveling backpack and the iconic hairy hobbit feet.

New Line Cinema / Via youtube.com

The backpack was "not...an ergonomic piece of wardrobe," but he had to wear it "for 15 or 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 2 years." Meanwhile, the hobbit feet made it difficult to film the physically demanding scenes central to the series.

12. Benedict Cumberbatch felt uncomfortable in the "well-cut, good-looking suits" he wore as BBC's Sherlock, since the waists were often so small that he found it difficult to breathe or even digest.

BBC / Via youtube.com

The costumes even affected his day-to-day life, since he had to stop wearing certain elements of his own wardrobe that were too similar to Sherlock's, or else risk being instantly recognized as the detective in public.

13. Anthony Daniels brought C-3PO to life in the Star Wars films, but life as a robot isn't as much fun as it seems, and honestly, it doesn't even seem like that much fun.

20th Century Fox / Via youtube.com

The 19-piece C-3PO suit took 2 hours to put on at first, and once he was in it, Daniels couldn't sit or easily move. Sand got stuck in the suit while they were filming in the desert, it was difficult and at times impossible to breathe, and a failed battery pack once almost resulted in him being "baked alive." Adding insult to injury, many of the cast and crew would forget that the motionless C-3PO had an actual human being encased within it, prompting Daniels to hand out matchboxes emblazoned with the words "3PO IS HUMAN!"

14. Patrick Stewart's costume on Star Trek: The Next Generation was so painful for him to wear that his chiropractor said that they should "slap a lawsuit on Paramount for the lasting damage done to your spine."

Paramount Television / Via youtube.com

Since the producers wanted Captain Jean-Luc Picard to have a "smooth, unwrinkled look," the Lycra suit was deliberately made a size too small, resulting in strain on Stewart's neck, shoulders, back, and chiropractor.

15. Oscar Isaac didn't realize before signing on to X-Men: Apocalypse that playing the titular villain meant being "encased in glue, latex, and a 40-pound suit."

20th Century Fox / Via youtube.com

Calling the experience of making the film "excruciating," Isaac said that he took the role because of the chance to work with talented actors, but the cumbersome costume meant he couldn't talk to or even see any of his co-stars. Between scenes, he had to stay in a "cooling tent," and after filming was done for the day, he spent hours getting the makeup removed.

16. And finally, proving once again that sweat is the greatest enemy of all performers, Dan Stevens said that to keep from literally wasting away while playing the Beast in 2017's Beauty and the Beast, he ate four roast dinners a day.

Walt Disney Co. / Via youtube.com

To become the Beast, Stevens had to use stilts and wear a muscle vest, both physical burdens that caused a lot of sweating and, subsequently, weight loss. Stevens was particularly prone to overheating during dance sequences, and depended on a cooling vest that he compared to those worn by Formula One drivers.

Do you know about any actors who would've happily burned their costumes after filming wrapped? Tell us about it in the comments!

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