Amid the growing (and disheartening) pressure to look “perfect” in Hollywood, it’s nice to see celebrities refusing to conform to particular standards and embracing their natural beauty. This week, Reddit user u/PaleontologistNo5420 shared a thread in r/popculturechat celebrating famous women with “unique” smiles, which prompted a heap of wholesome discourse and praise. So, here’s a roundup of celebrities who have refused to get cosmetic dental work done:
1. After starring in The White Lotus earlier this year, Aimee Lou Wood found herself — and, well, her teeth — at the center of public discourse. The actor even saw a viral video of an orthodontist “analyzing” her teeth before concluding that she doesn’t need to change her smile at all, to which she replied, “It feels so lovely. A real full-circle moment after being bullied for my teeth forever. Now people are clapping in an audience.”
2. Although Ayo Edebiri’s dentist apparently insisted that she get Invisalign, The Bear star firmly refused. “I’m not allowed to. I won’t allow myself to. I don’t want to, I want to look like myself. I want to look like my parents, I want to look like my family. I want to look like Black people who are from Boston,” she told Bustle in 2022.
3. Kirsten Dunst once shared that when she was just 19, a Spider-Man producer drove her to the dentist to get her teeth fixed — without giving her any sort of heads up beforehand. “I was like, ‘Mmmmm, no, I like my teeth,’” she recalled as she remembered refusing to get out of the car.
4. Joel Kim Booster once tweeted, “I love when people ask me when I’m going to fix my teeth. Extremely normal behavior. And quite honestly if I did, it would almost make me too powerful.” He later shared in an interview of the awkward encounter, “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.”
5. Back in 2021, Cynthia Erivo told Vogue that she has “never” wanted to change the gap in her teeth. “I think a smile that has a gap in it already is perfect,” she said. “I wouldn’t change it. I have never wanted to change it. I never will change it. And I don’t shy away from people looking at my mouth. So if you have a gap out there, enjoy it.”
6. Similarly, Georgia May Jagger has talked about embracing the gap in her teeth, admitting that she wasn’t really aware of it until she started modeling. “The press started making a big deal of it and I thought, I suppose my smile doesn’t look like everyone else’s,” she told Vogue in 2011.
7. Back in 2007, Keira Knightley said she’d never felt any pressure in Hollywood to fix her so-called “wonky” teeth. “I’ve never felt that I was, in any way, exploited in any of the kind of film experiences that I’ve had,” she told CBS News. “Which is quite amazing, because I’ve got wonky teeth. And I keep hearing about everybody going to Hollywood and, you know, their agents going, ‘Straighten your teeth,’ or ‘Whiten your teeth,’ but nobody’s ever said anything about my teeth.”
On the flip side, several stars have talked about massively regretting getting cosmetic work done to fix their teeth:
1. Back in 2016, Demi Lovato shared during an interview with Allure, “I signed with the Disney Channel when I got to Camp Rock, and I had a gap between my two front teeth. They were like, ‘Would you be willing to fix it?’ I wish today that I hadn’t.”
2. During a 2021 interview, Bad Bunny looked back at a photo of himself at the 2018 Latin Billboard Awards and said, “My jaw hurts just looking at this picture. I’d just had my teeth done — I’ve always regretted it — and the veneers were wrong, so the grill didn’t fit properly. Look at me trying to close my mouth!”
3. Kehlani once warned her fans against getting “cheap” resin veneers that caused her dental problems. “It is cheap and fast but the amount of long, expensive dental work you are going to need after you go this route is five or six times the amount,” she said in a now-deleted TikTok. “Dental work can not be one of the things where you sacrifice quality because of price. It’s your mouth and when you get problems in your mouth, it can lead to disease in the body.”
4. Just last month, Alix Earle expressed regret over her veneers as she shared a now-viral TikTok of herself filing her front tooth down with a nail file. “I really regretted it, like, right away. I think it was really scary for me, and I was like, ‘What did I just do?’ I had such good teeth and, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I have to keep up with this for the rest of my life,’” she said in the video.
5. And finally, LeAnn Rimes once sued her dentist, alleging that a faulty crown placement caused her to develop “severe tooth pain, gum inflammation and chronic gum bleeding,” per ABC News. The singer — who was unable to perform at certain tour dates because she had to undergo dental surgery — sought monetary compensation for “loss of earnings and future earning capacity.” There is no public record of how the suit played out.
Can you think of any more examples? Feel free to share in the comments!