What all celebrities who are known for their good looks decided to play a role where they would intentionally be made ugly and unattractive? Offhand I can only think of two.
Leonardo Dicaprio in Whats eating Gilbert Grape
Charlize Theron in Monster
I’m not including attractive people who have been made ugly for a small part of the movie (Tom Cruise after he emerges from the swamp in Interview with the Vampire or Brad Pitt after being beaten up in Fight Club), i’m more wondering about a movie where the star becomes ugly for the whole role and did it intentionally.
Gwyneth Paltrow, Shallow Hal
Bette Davis (never a glamourpuss, but IMHO strikingly attractive), Mr Skeffington (for later scenes so may not count) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (although she was past her best days she certainly wasn’t as hideous as Jane Hudson)
Joan Crawford, also in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (although she did her damndest to subvert it)
(Okay, he’s not my idea of a really handsome guy, especially since he went in for pro boxing. I was shocked at his appearance on a recent David Letterman. It looked like he still had some of his Marv makeup on.)
From the Golden Age: Boris Karloff wasn’t a glamour boy, but was obviously nowhere near as ugly as the monster.
Gerard Butler played the Phantom in the latest version of The Phantom of the Opera. Ohmygod, hottie. As the Phantom and unmasked, not so much. (With the mask, still pretty hot.)
A lot of people thought that Nicole Kidman uglified herself to play Virginia Woolf in The Hours. I disagree with this, because I really don’t think Virginia Woolf was ugly – plain when she was older, but she was quite striking as a young woman. Also, while I’m not particularly fond of Ms. Kidman, I don’t think she was ugly in The Hours, either.
Tangentially related, but Janeane Garofalo was supposed to be the ugly one in The Truth About Cats and Dogs. What? She’s adorable.
I remember there being a rash of articles about actresses who “uglify” themselves getting an automatic Oscar nod. I suppose the actual uglification is better than the old Hollywood method of tossing a girl in glasses and rendering her automatically unworthy of a man’s attention.
Michelle Pfeiffer starred in Frankie & Johnny as a “plain jane” waitress. It was based on a Terrance McNally play about a love affair between two decidedly unglamorous people and, of course, was Californicated into… well, a role for Michelle Pfeiffer.
Jeffrey Hunter’s only action-figure role was as the horribly deformed Jeremy Pike in Star Trek. That episode (the pilot rewritten and adapted into a two-parter) was in part based on the 1945 movie The Enchanted Cottage, in which homely couple Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire fall in love and are beautiful (sans make-up) to each other.
Tina Louise played her homely doppelganger in an episode of Gilligan’s Island.
He’s right. She looked very unglamorous, dressed crappily, wore that gross wig, etc. It didn’t succeed for you, I guess, but she was trying to look plain. And like somebody who worked with monkeys.
Count me as another who only noticed Cameron Diaz was actually attractive in Being John Malkovich.
Does John Hurt count, in The Elephant Man?
He was known as a handsome fella, although he was already starting to look a bit boozy and aged by the time Elephant Man started shooting, and now looks pretty convincingly like a railroad tramp.
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