6 Dignified Actors Stuffed Into Deeply Embarrassing Costumes

As you might have been able to guess, there’s going to be a pretty heavy comic-book presence on this list. This entry, though, is a little less Marvel and a little more Sunday funnies. It might be tough, but Captain America’s arms can be built in the gym. The appendages of famous sailor-man Popeye cannot. So Robin Williams was left to strap on the prosthetic forearms of the famous seafarer. The movie, arguably, is much better than the collective memory of it. Still, even for someone who played Mrs. Doubtfire, it’s got to be hard to start every day of work making yourself look like a character that was drawn that way specifically because someone thought it looked funny.

He might not have the Academy Awards the previous two actors have, but it would feel patently insane to argue that Tim Curry isn’t a great actor. It’s impossible to deny the gift he brought to each and every role he ever played. And yes, I mean every role. He’s somebody that can make most costumes feel perfectly reasonable just by how deep he dives into whatever ridiculous character he’s been cast as. Sometimes, though, the suit is simply too much. 

That’s one way to describe what he wore to play the Lord of Darkness in the movie Legend. Now, your mileage may vary depending on your opinions on heavy metal album covers, but it’s a pretty ridiculous costume out of context. All I’m saying is, when an actor has to go through eight hours a day of makeup, wear three-foot-long fiberglass horns that give him back pain and then soak it all off in the tub for an hour afterward to avoid the adhesive literally tearing his skin off? That costume better be fucking undeniably cool. At least make the chin look less like a pair of balls that spent too long in a sauna.

Mark off your bingo card, because here come the bat-nipples in a story about bad costuming. Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin boasted a genuinely star-studded cast, and gave them all some of the most wince-worthy footage of their careers. The sidekicks Robin and Batgirl got off easy, maybe accidentally benefiting from a little less attention than the main heroes and villains. Their costumes, in retrospect, are regular stupid and clear remnants of the 1990s aesthetic. Suits like George Clooney’s, with perhaps the most famous vestigial nipples in all of cinema? Or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze getup, that looks like something from a commercial Eric Wareheim directed for an air-conditioning company? Those are lasting misses. 

You could argue that Catwoman looking like she's a fetish pinup from the Nightmare Before Christmas universe isn’t exactly off-brand, but having to get baby-powdered into a latex suit every day can’t feel particularly powerful.

Really, when it comes down to it, costuming up as the Caped Crusader is rarely a pleasant experience. The Dark Knight’s suit, like the T-shirts bearing his logo, seem to be something that people constantly think looks much cooler than it actually does. It’s the leather duster of superhero costumes. Christian Bale probably got off the best, but it’s rare to find another ex-Batman that doesn’t have a couple gripes about the suit. Val Kilmer probably felt a little less like a lithe, stealthy superhero and master of martial arts when he couldn't stand up or sit down without assistance. Another way to make someone feel embarrassed while playing a very powerful character? Make them wear a much less battle-ready motion-capture suit like Ben Affleck did in Batman v. Superman, which he called “the most humiliating, ridiculous thing in the world.” Maybe they all would have been better off wearing hockey pads after all.