Celebrities are always doing the most with their appearances. Blame money, blame fame, blame the constant stream of attention. Because they are public figures, they are often extremely self-conscious about their faces. This is doubly problematic for women who often lose career opportunities as they age, and they are statistically more likely to suffer from addiction to getting work done than men. That doesn’t mean men don’t go under the knife, however, as evidenced by some of the contenders in this list. With a little tightening here, a little filler there, doctors really can work miracles to hide the effects of aging from the camera. Here we have 15 celebrities who look a little bit… off. With the help of various characters from American Horror Story, we investigate what it is exactly that makes these people look so weird, and why this makes them seem kind of evil. The short answer to this question is that people shouldn’t try and save money by getting discount facelifts. The long answer? Keep reading to find out.
15 Cinema Icon Meg Ryan Mirrors Savage Criminal Icon Twisty The Clown
Has anyone ever seen American treasure Meg Ryan and American Horror Story’s Twisty the Clown in the same place? No? Interesting. The two have a lot more in common than their bright eyes and toothy grins. Meg has been consistently killing the box office since 1989’s When Harry Met Sally, while Twisty has been killing hoards of people since American Horror Story: Freakshow, and has made cameos in Cult, currently airing on FX. Jokes aside, Meg’s dabbling in fixing herself up has actually been quite tasteful by Hollywood standards. Doctors have done a good job keeping her recognizable amidst Botox, fillers, and lifts. It’s when the signs of aging creep out through the work that the phenomenon of cosmetic procedures begins to be seen as jarring. Lines on the neck or under the eyes, or uncharacteristic swelling in the cheeks, for example. While Meg prefers to hide the effects of aging behind the work of skilled doctors, Twisty the Clown hides his own face behind his signature mask – that’s right folks: Those aren’t his real teeth.
14 Lara Flynn Boyle's Post Procedure Swelling Recalls Devoted Mother Iris
After celebrities go under the knife, tabloids often remark that they look unrecognizable. For Lara Flynn Boyle, this is totally untrue. She is absolutely recognizable – as Iris from American Horror Story: Hotel. Lara’s affair with getting work done has been in the tabloids for years, starting when she was in her early 30s. While she is by no means “botched”, her face does indeed look different. Her skin is smooth, her face muscles are relaxed, and her upper lip’s upward curve is the result of strategic injections. Because so much change occurs in the face in the 30s and 40s, Lara must constantly upkeep the work she has had done to prevent the work from moving around or settling weirdly. AHS's Iris achieves her ageless look by being a vampire. Iris became a vampire so that she could look after her immortal son for all eternity, and spends her days managing the haunted hotel. Despite her and Lara’s relative age difference, Lara’s work easily ages her to the late middle-age purgatory where Iris will stay forever.
13 Tori Spelling And Gloria Mott Share Tips On Blush
What’s going on with these two? Tori’s very hard cheeks are dusted with a rosy blush, as are those of Gloria Mott, useless mother of criminal Dandy from American Horror Story: Freakshow. The issue of motherhood in relation to Tori is contentious, as she and her own mother are estranged. As a mother herself, Gloria Mott enabled Dandy’s killing sprees before ultimately dying by his hand. Tori, like Gloria, comes from a very rich family. Gloria, like Tori, has the stony face of a socialite. While the actress who plays Gloria is actually aging quite gracefully, for American Horror Story she took on a youthful look supplemented by bright red hair, heaps of pale makeup, and a baby voice. The result was very creepy. Similarly scary, Tori’s face has the quality of many women who have undergone similar work: it just doesn’t really move.
12 Donatella Versace Is Just Pepper Without Hair Extensions
Donatella, what’s going on? The matriarch of the Versace empire, Donatella’s face can either be considered a work of art or a war crime. Following the ancient tradition of rich women pulling their face skin back (for beauty? For youth?), Donatella looks less like her younger self and more like a lizard. Pepper, who appeared in American Horror Story: Asylum and Freakshow, is loved more for her characterization and inner-beauty, but famous for her unique appearance. Her face is pulled back by her tightly wound up-do, and her mouth and ears are large and cartoonish. Donatella can say the same for herself, although her hair is amped up by dye and extensions. She frequently appears in public wearing wigs. Despite years of procedures and skin treatments, there is one feature Donatella has never altered: Her prominent nose. She also shares with Pepper taught skin and a broad forehead. While Pepper is going for a slightly more natural look in terms of brows and skincare (it’s hard to moisturize in an asylum), Donatella purposefully eschews the natural look in favor of looking like a scary Italian Barbie.
11 Young Dakota Fanning And Holden Lark - Which One Is An Immortal Vampire?
Dakota Fanning, age 23, exists eternally in the minds of most people as a tiny blonde child. Holden Lark, also a tiny blonde child, lives eternally in Lady Gaga’s suite in American Horror Story: Hotel. Dakota has since taken on more grown-up roles in the years since Uptown Girls and War of the Worlds but is still popularly imagined as a child. While celebrities who begin working at a young age often assert their adulthood by engaging in public risqué acts, Dakota has mostly avoided this kind of negative attention. Good on her for staying out of rehab! Holden, who has Dakota Fanning’s face and hair, was kidnapped by Lady Gaga’s Elizabeth to live with her in her haunted hotel. He spends his days dressed like a baby Kennedy, playing video games and drinking blood. It just goes to show that if you want to remain forever youthful, you either need to be strategically forgotten at the right age or subsist entirely on a diet of blood.
10 Courtney Love Is Literally Sally McKenna
Heroin chic’s longevity fluctuates, but Courtney Love is always relevant. Likely the inspiration for American Horror Story: Hotel’s Sally McKenna, Courtney has maintained the image of a glamourous junky since the 80s. In recent years she has toned down her image significantly, but the constantly replicated images of her with bright red lipstick and fried blonde hair from her 90s paparazzi heyday remain steadfast in her public perception. Sally plays a junky whose outfits appear to be modeled on these very paparazzi photos of Courtney, where she haunts the Hotel after being killed by Iris. A fiend for drugs, Sally sloppily wanders around the hotel, crying and never fixing her eye makeup in the afterlife. Much of her character seems to be modeled on Courtney’s 1995 appearance on the MTV VMA’s in which she interrupts a Madonna interview. Of course, Courtney has since calmed down, and Sarah Paulson has gone on to play a different iteration of the same character in subsequent seasons.
9 Grace Coddington & Myrtle Snow - Fashion Icons?
Myrtle Snow isn’t really evil, but she is crafty and schemes behind the scenes to allow Cordelia to become the Supreme in American Horror Story: Coven. She is twice burned at the stake, first because she is framed, and second because she insists on it – she purposefully went against witch law and forces Cordelia to make an example of her through her execution. Her entire character, from her hair, her voice, and her penchant for fashion, are based on Vogue Creative Director Grace Coddington. On the scene for decades, Grace began her career as a model in the UK before climbing the ranks at Vogue to her current position. She is revered in and out of the fashion industry for her exceptional taste and – like Myrtle Snow – the hard work she does behind the scenes. She became especially famous following the 2009 documentary The September Issue, which chronicled the work she and Anna Wintour do for Vogue.
8 Elsa Patton - The Face Behind The Little Girl Clown?
Before anybody says that Elsa Patton is not really a celebrity, stop right there. Real Housewives of Miami was iconic. Unfortunately, there’s something up with her face. Like Donatella Versace and Jocelyne Wildenstein, her face is totally frozen. Although her skin is smooth, it is oddly textured because of her abuse of fillers, both permanent and temporary. Her brows have been lifted to achieve a perpetual frown, and her skin pulled back to remind people she has money. Getting work done can act as a status symbol, after all. Her similarity to the Little Girl Clown from the current season of American Horror Story: Cult, rests on the fact that neither of their faces has any mobility. They’re both fake. They’re both plastic. While the characters in Cult tote their masks for a limited time before removing them, Elsa, unfortunately, must spend the rest of her life wearing hers. Terrible news for somebody whose lips don’t move when she talks.
7 Bare-Faced Julia Roberts Shares Aileen Wuornos' Weariness
Julia Roberts without makeup is a sight to behold. While she has perfect facial symmetry and flawless skin, she has the vestiges of an ordinary woman under all the careful Hollywood maintenance. Who else so strongly resembles an ordinary woman than famous criminal Aileen Wuornos? Wuornos, once a street worker, became notorious in America following her trial for taking the lives of 7 men, most of whom solicited her. Her mug shot and photos of the trial were widely disseminated, with her face bare and her features plain. While she has the weary look of somebody who clearly had a difficult life, she really could be anybody. After being executed by lethal injection in 2002, she was featured as a character in American Horror Story: Hotel, colluding with the other ghosts of criminals. It’s safe to say that she never has her Pretty Woman moment. Poor Aileen. Poor Julia.
6 Rapper Hopsin Inspired Papa Legba
Papa Legba is an intermediary figure between the spirit world and the human world in Haitian Vodou, or “voodoo”, and a character in American Horror Story: Coven. His character often takes on the role of a deal maker, playing on characters’ greed in order to secure their souls in the afterlife. Hopsin is a rapper who wears white contacts lenses, contributing to his signature ghostly look. In promotions for his single "No Shame" from his upcoming album Witch Doctor, Hopsin recreates Papa Legba’s look with white face paint and glowing red eyes – a slight departure from his usual fare but still striking. Hopsin often plays with provocative imagery in his promotional material and work, similar to Kanye West, using it to make commentary on racism and history. Papa Legba’s attempts to right the wrongs of racism by imprisoning the soul of Delphine LaLaurie after her years of secretly torturing her slaves.
5 Steven Tyler Looks Suspiciously Like Mama Polk
Steven Tyler is an incredibly successful and rich musician with a career spanning decades, and Mama Polk is the incredibly devoted matriarch of a family with a violently rich history spanning hundreds of years. They also have the exact same hair. Isn’t that crazy? Mama Polk, the cannibal farmer from Roanoke, has a centuries-old contract with The Butcher wherein she supplies her ghost colony with human sacrifices. Steven Tyler, a rock star relic from a bygone era, is somehow still considered to be attractive by many women over the age of 50. Despite years of heavy substance abuse, Steven has access to the kind of magic regular girls like you and I could only dream of: Hollywood dermatology. His skin is very smooth for a man of nearly 70, evidence of Botox. While gossip blogs have long commented on his well-preserved face, they don’t often remark on his neck, which doesn’t have much loose skin or dangle. This can only be achieved by doing an entire facelift. If only he would do something about his hair.
4 Jared Leto Somehow Creepier Than Edward Mordrake
Why is Jared Leto so creepy? To prepare for his roles in film, he often goes through the process of “method acting”, meaning he takes on the persona of his characters and lives as if he were actually them. After details of his treatment of cast members during his preparation for his role as the Joker became public, perception of him became largely negative. His spiritual twin, Edward Mordrake from AHS: Freakshow, is a figure pulled straight out of a long-existing urban legend. Born with a face on the back of his head, he was driven to take the lives of his circus freakshow colleagues. Performing on Halloween presents the possibility of summoning him, where he will take one of the freaks to join his ghost-troupe. Unfortunately for the characters on Freakshow, that is exactly what happens. Leto and Mordrake are also privileged to have very prominent brows and angular faces filled out with dark, wiry hair. Spooky.
3 Jocelyn Wildenstein, Ruined By Vanity Vs. Shelley, Ruined For Science
This pairing is arguably unfair to Shelley. Played by Chloe Sevigny in American Horror Story’s second season, Asylum, Shelley is admitted to the facility for being promiscuous. She is tortured and disfigured by Dr. Arden against her will, transforming her from an ordinary young and pretty woman to messy, lumpy, inhuman monster. Jocelyn Wildenstein, on the other hand, underwent the same transformation on purpose. Reportedly happy with the work, which she has continuously undergone since the 1980s in an initial effort to look like a cat, she was recently seen chatting up the paparazzi in New York following a domestic spat with her fiancé. After being arrested for stabbing fashion designer fiancé Lloyd Klein (no relation to Calvin) with a pair of scissors, Jocelyn later claimed the whole event was a simple misunderstanding. What most people have trouble understanding, however, is how exactly she looks like that. While listing every single procedure would take pages, one of the most interesting features of her frozen face is the tattoo of lip liner, which outlines the border of her lips which have all but disappeared entirely due to her permanent – possibly silicone – lip fillers.
2 Gary Busey And His Secret Brother, Beauregard Langdon
Why does Gary Busey look like this? An overdose coupled with a motorcycle accident. Is it wrong to make fun of him? Technically yes. He has, however, maintained a public persona in the years following his accident and overdose, so he’s fair game. Beauregard Langdon, affectionately referred to as Beau, was never a public figure in the same way. A recurring character in American Horror Story’s inaugural season Murder House, Beau is kept in the attic of his mother’s house because of his deformity. He is neglected by his mother and ultimately murdered, but his ghost remains trapped in the attic. Unlike Gary Busey, Beau does almost nothing with his time, appearing in the series mostly to underline his mother’s cruelty. Gary Busey, however, has been doing the absolute most since his overdose, including multiple appearances on reality shows, a public conversion to Christianity, and endorsing Donald Trump’s presidency in more recent years. They also look exactly the same.
1 Any Duck Dynasty Cast Member Could Pass For Spalding
For every girl that says “I literally look homeless” whenever she goes out in PJs and a messy bun, there’s a Duck Dynasty cast member that actually looks homeless on purpose. That’s their whole shtick, and it made them millionaires. Unfortunately, all men have to do to achieve this imposing look is neglect one crucial self-care step – grooming. Spalding, the beloved butler from Coven, knows this very well. While he expertly tends to his healthy collection of dolls, the corpse of Madison, and the academy, he commonly forgoes brushing his long grey hair. The result? A passing resemblance to the Real Housewives Of Terrible Camo Jumpsuits… I mean Duck Dynasty.
