# Actors/Actresses whose looks changed drastically **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 12, 2020, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813 "2020-10-12T17:05:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2020, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813/182 "2020-12-26T06:10:01Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > You mean when he then starred in **The Dead Zone** for 6 seasons on TV? Six high-profile starring role movies in six years versus six seasons on the USA network? I’d be good with either one, personally, but it’s my understanding that most actors would take the former over the latter. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2020, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813/183 "2020-12-26T06:32:47Z")
Yes, but he graduated from a child/teen actor to an adult in this period. He still [looked like a large child](https://images.app.goo.gl/1P7DHuQW74HE86y2A) in Edward Scissorhands. “Hitting the gym” wasn’t the reason he looked different after that (although it may have helped him look better, if he indeed hit the gym) . ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2020, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813/184 "2020-12-26T06:43:43Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I see that you’re responding to a mention of Lara Flynn Boyle. The reason I mentioned her is because she was in a “Reunited Apart” reunion of the cast of “Wayne’s World”. Most of the cast just looked older, but she must have had some unfortunate plastic surgery at some point. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/N4rKd9xB6cE/maxresdefault.jpg "Wayne's World Reunited Apart - PARTY TIME!") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4rKd9xB6cE) ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2020, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813/185 "2020-12-26T07:05:10Z")
needscoffee wrote: > Yes, but he graduated from a child/teen actor to an adult in this period. He still looked like a large child in Edward Scissorhands. “Hitting the gym” wasn’t the reason he looked different after that (although it may have helped him look better, if he indeed hit the gym) . He looked suddenly, radically and permanently different in a way that peers Robert Downey Jr. and Winona Ryder (in roughly the same time frame) did not. Had he gone back to making John Hughes teen comedies after _Scissorhands_, he would have been cast as a jock bully instead of a witty nerd underdog. It’s like he was wearing one of those _BTVS_ vampire forehead prosthetics all of a sudden, but it never came off. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2020, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813/186 "2020-12-26T07:24:27Z")
Sorry, I saw him transition from a gawky gangly teen to filling out as an adult man. While he looked drastically different as an adult, it was in a good way. Not sure why you think hitting the gym caused him to grow up. Maybe I’m not following what you’re saying. He didn’t get many prominent roles until he finished growing into his adult looks. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2020, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813/187 "2020-12-27T01:13:35Z")
I realize this falls squarely in the “aging plus health problems” category and perhaps doesn’t meet the OP’s criteria, but I was shocked when I spotted Michael Ironside in an obscure true-crime show on Hulu: [![](https://i.imgur.com/removed.png) ](https://i.imgur.com/removed.png) ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2020, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813/188 "2020-12-28T15:14:10Z")
This isn’t about an actor whose looks changed drastically, but I put together a Lionel Barrymore set of films, beginning with [Mark of the Vampire](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026685/) through [You Can’t Take It With You](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030993/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_27) and ending with [It’s a Wonderful Life](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_11). First things first, don’t judge me for Mark of the Vampire, it’s a pandemic. You don’t know me. Secondly, if you watch those films in order you can see Lionel Barrymore progress from walking normally in Mark of the Vampire, in You Can’t Take It With You he’s wearing a cast on his foot to account for his limp, and in It’s a Wonderful Life he’s in a wheelchair. He’d broken his hip twice, and had severe arthritis. After 1938 he was never filmed standing upright. It struck me how few actors successfully incorporate these kinds of changes in their acting. Howard McNear (Floyd the barber) had a stroke during the Andy Griffith show, but they always filmed him sitting after that and never showed the effects. The same with Richard Kiel, (Jaws in the Bond films) who at the end of his career was always filmed in such a way as to obscure the fact that he was not free standing. He’d had a head injury and needed a cane. One actor I know of that did incorporate a disability is Darryl Mitchell, who became paralyzed from the waist down in a motorcycle accident and used the wheelchair as a bowling alley manager in Ed is still acting today in NCIS: New Orleans. It seems like there should be more. Maybe for a lot of actors these kinds of injuries or illnesses are career ending events. ---
**Author:** ![Pythonette](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9a140/32.png) [@Pythonette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pythonette)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2022, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813/189 "2022-07-28T06:29:01Z")
Has anyone mentioned George Clooney? ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2022, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813/190 "2022-07-28T11:08:28Z")
> [@Pythonette](#): > > Has anyone mentioned George Clooney? Apparently not. > [@Bill\_Door](#): > > One actor I know of that did incorporate a disability is Darryl Mitchell, who became paralyzed from the waist down in a motorcycle accident and used the wheelchair as a bowling alley manager in Ed is still acting today in NCIS: New Orleans. Timothy Omundson (of _Psych_ fame) suffered a massive stroke in 2017 and had to learn to walk again. The stroke and his physical changes were subsequently worked into his later appearances in _Psych_ and in his role in _This Is Us_. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2022, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813/191 "2022-07-28T15:28:52Z")
[Nick von Esmarch](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0902235/?ref_=tt_cl_t_2). Of course you never heard of him. He co-starred on the TV show Nikki which incredibly lasted for 2 seasons. His character was supposed to be a professional wrestler and he was a pretty hefty guy. Between the first and second seasons of the show he lost a lot of weight. So much weight that many of the few people who ever watched the show thought he was seriously ill or had been replaced by a different actor they’d never heard of before. I was thinking about adding Elliot Page to the list, but actually he doesn’t look much different than she used to. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813/192 "2022-07-29T01:44:41Z")
Jackie Coogan? Yeah, another child actor, yawn… but still, to achieve fame in the early 1920s as the paragon of child beauty, and then again in the mid 1960s as (arguably) a paragon of adult ugliness (Uncle Fester), is quite an arc. (BTW, from previous posts, I think Louis C.K. and maybe Ricky Gervais fit the OP best — people who had two very distinct looks within adulthood, not simply via aging). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-actresses-whose-looks-changed-drastically/922813.md?page=9)