Actors/Actresses whose looks changed drastically

Hamill is a great example. Age really got to his eyes, and his jaw filled out. Much, much like Dave Foley.

Are we talking about celebrities who got run over full bore by “the Old Age Truck”, or are we talking more about celebrities who for one reason or another actively changed their look?

Because if the first is in play, Robin Wright Penn is a good example of someone who is attractive at any age, but whose beauty when she was is significantly different than now.

I always thought the classic example of the second is Joe Piscopo, who left SNL and ended up a bodybuilder.

With that clarification, I’ll go with Irene Ryan.

https://photos.geni.com/p13/4c/67/aa/0a/5344484e1ca62289/59e60927b46bc_irene-ryan_original.jpg

Mickey Rourke.

Louis C.K.

James Doohan. I didn’t recognize him when Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released just ten years after the original series.

How did Louis CK change? He’s always been about the same shape, same hairstyle, same beard. Just different lengths of hair from time to time and less orange these days.

Here’s an article with a picture of him in his younger days.

There was a gap of about 15-20 years between when I first watched him in the late '80s-early '90s and when his standup exploded again in the mid-2000s.

I didn’t recognize this guy:

As being the same person as this guy:

I still don’t really believe it’s the same guy. The hair color is the same, but the face and the voice seem very different to me.

In a still picture, you can analyze and match particular physical features, but watching him on video, in motion, I just couldn’t place him.

Yeah, see, that picture is a good example. I wouldn’t recognize him as being the same guy.

Ah, I see. I was just going off of Louis’s IMDB page pictures. They didn’t include his earliest standup.

James Doohan is a great example. He seems to have visually aged a ton between ST:TOS and the movies but no one else in the cast did.

Drew Carey has made fun of the fact that his appearance has changed so much. Here’s a picture of him before he was famous when he was in the Marines.

True. But I am talking more of how people looked in their first roles when they first became famous (or maybe even solidly into their careers) versus how they looked in later roles for which they also were famous.

Drew Carey, even with his weightloss and lighter glasses frames, is still the blonde haired buzzcut guy with glasses.

One famous example of a performer who radically changed his appearance mid-career is Weird Al Yankovic. He used to look like this. I believe he’s said he was tired of the look but he was stuck with it because the glasses and moustache had become part of his public identity. But he finally had enough and changed to his current look.

Although he’s recently gone back to facial hair.

Really? I totally recognize him as being the same guy with slightly different hair, minus glasses and a moustache. I don’t think he looks all that different. Just older.

Maybe you’re thinking of this guy.

Osment worked sparingly during his high school and college years. He did two indie films during this time period – Home of the Giants (2007) and Montana Amazon (2010).

Here he is in Home of the Giants, roughly age 18 during filming.

Here he is at the Montana Amazon premier, age 22.

Fast forward a decade, and here’s Osment on the set of the What We Do in the Shadows television series. This episode aired earlier this year.

Tangent:

How did you post those photos? I just attempted to do the same thing with the Haley Joel Osment pictures, and got a Discourse message that embedding media was not allowed.

Ricky Gervais circa 1983…

Yes, Haley Joel Osment is exactly who I think of for this thread (and Irene Ryan!). People like Natalie Portman and Brook Shields look exactly as I would expect for people who’ve grown up but still look much like they used to, minus baby fat…(or in Jane Fonda’s case, plus cosmetic facial fillers and lip plumpers)

Needs to be a photo hosted online, not uploaded. Add the photo as a link on its own line, and it should show up as everyone else’s is.

I didn’t post photos. I just linked to YouTube videos and Discourse automatically loaded the preview image from YouTube.