Costumes are integral to an actor’s portrayal of a character, yet there are instances where actors choose not to wear certain outfits. This decision can stem from practical issues, discomfort, or personal preference. Although some may attribute it to diva-like behavior typical of Hollywood, more often than not, these choices are linked to significant concerns, sometimes even impacting safety. In this article, we will explore ten occasions when actors declined costumes and uncover the motivations behind their decisions.

Wearing costumes is an essential part of the acting process, but sometimes an actor will refuse to wear certain items of clothing — whether it’s for logistical reasons, they found them to be unwearable, or because they simply didn’t want to. Sometimes they’re being divas, in classic Hollywood fashion, but more often than not, putting on these costumes can be a matter of life or death. In this list, we’ll break down 10 times that an actor has said no to a costume and give you the inside scoop on the reasons why.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has featured a vast array of actors, both seasoned and emerging, yet Amanda Seyfried is one who declined a role. In a conversation with ComicBook.com, Seyfried shared that she turned down the opportunity to play Gamora in James Gunn’s “The Guardians of the Galaxy.”

Her decision wasn’t based on creative differences, although Seyfried admits she isn’t an avid viewer of Marvel films. Instead, her choice was influenced by a discussion with Jennifer Lawrence who recounted the lengthy process of being painted blue for her role as Mystique in the “X-Men” series. To Seyfried, the thought of enduring extensive time in the makeup chair, with little opportunity to be on set before needing to remove the makeup, seemed daunting—something she described as “hell on earth.”

At this point, it feels like just about every actor and actress in Hollywood, both young and old, has appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But one actress who turned down the job was Amanda Seyfried. In an interview with ComicBook.com, Seyfried revealed that she turned down an offer to join James Gunn’s “The Guardians of the Galaxy” in the role of Gamora.

The reason she said no to the part of the alien assassin wasn’t for creative reasons, although Seyfried does admit she’s “not really a Marvel movie watcher.” Rather, it comes from a conversation with Jennifer Lawrence where she talked about how long it took for her to be painted blue in the role of Mystique for her “X-Men” films. To Seyfried, that experience in the makeup chair “seems like hell on earth” — not just because of how long it takes to get the makeup on, but also because of how little time you then get on set before you have to return to the makeup chair to take everything off.

“Babylon 5” was one of TV’s more ambitious space opera series, attempting to bring a novelistic approach to the genre with a pre-planned story that would track the development of not just its characters and their respective alien societies, but the universe as a whole over many years.

Creator J. Michael Straczynski created an epic five-season arc that would tell one grand story in the model of “a novel for television.” But the difference between novels and TV is that you can easily write about a character like Na’Toth (Julie Caitlin Brown), a reptilian individual with orange skin and dark spots across her body. But actually transforming into an alien body can take quite a toll on an actor that is far worse than just having to sit in the makeup chair each and every day. In an interview with The SciFi World, Brown revealed that wearing this makeup made her face “very sore.” It was so painful in fact that Brown left the series after its first season, fearing that the prosthetics could cause permanent damage if she fought through the pain. This surely must have thrown a wrench into the five season plan, but it’s for the best that Brown stepped aside before any lasting damage could be done.

Plenty of science fiction shows featured alien characters, but only in “Farscape” were they brought to life by the artists at the Jim Henson Company. Using a combination of makeup and prosthetics, the aliens on “Farscape” were unlike anything seen on TV before or since, with colorful and monstrous designs that were profoundly alien — but that wasn’t always easy for some of the actors on set.

Playing the part of Pa’U Zotoh Zhaan, Virginia Hey was covered head to toe in blue makeup to transform into a blue alien priestess. But Hey left the series in 2002, and in an interview with BBC, Hey says that this was because “the make-up was making [her] very sick.”

“I started to get kidney problems after the first three months of the first season,” she said. “I don’t think I would have lasted for the three years had I not done intensive healing every single day on myself.” On her personal website, Hey explained how her “body could not cope with the chemicals and was weakened, [her] kidneys bled [every] day for [three] years, [and] it couldn’t cleanse properly due to the relentless hours and very little sleep.” She also couldn’t escape the character in the little downtime she had because she shaved her head and eyebrows for the role.

At the very least, Zhaan was able to have a proper send off on the show, sacrificing herself to save her friends. Hey also put the makeup on again for a surprise appearance in the show’s fourth (and ultimately final) season that was brief enough to avoid causing any more harm to the actress.

If Brown and Hey thought their health issues were bad, they might find a small sliver of solace knowing that they didn’t go through the same catastrophe that befell Buddy Ebsen on the set of “The Wizard of Oz.”

The “Beverly Hillbillies” star was originally cast to play the Scarecrow before switching roles with Ray Bolger to play the Tin Man, Dorothy’s metallic companion who is in desperate need of a heart. To transform from flesh to tin, Ebsen was covered in buckram fabric and leather, then painted silver with aluminum dust. With the benefit of hindsight and modern medicine, we know this is a recipe for disaster, but unfortunately for Ebsen, he inhaled the toxic aluminum which gave him a severe allergic reaction.

Ebsen recounted the harrowing story in his autobiography “The Other Side of Oz.” “One night in bed I woke up screaming,” he said in the book. “My arms were cramping from my fingers upward and curling simultaneously so that I could not use one arm to uncurl the other.” Ebsen dropped out of the film after the ordeal, and Jack Haley took over the part, this time sans aluminum makeup.

Is there a single gown more iconic than Belle’s gold dress from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast?” When she dons the ballgown for her dance with the Beast at the emotional climax of their relationship, it became one of cinema’s most indelible costumes. So when Emma Watson was cast as the live action version of Belle for the 2017 remake, recreating not just the look of the dress, but also the character’s graceful movement through the scene, was of the utmost importance.

Watson went into great detail about how important this sequence was for her in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I really embraced working on the dress, making sure that it was utterly whimsical, and magical,” she said. “The scene that I wear that dress in, and I have that dance in, it really tells the story of Beast and Belle falling in love… This is total, blissful escapism. You are transported to another world.”

But one issue of translating animation to real life is that sometimes recreating it exactly isn’t quite as easy. Costume designer Jacqueline Durran explained how Watson made sure that whatever dress she wore for the sequence “was light and that it had a lot of movement,” so that they could capture the unimpeded emotion of the scene. That meant Watson refused to wear a corset, as might have been customary for a dress of that style, because doing so “would impede her” ability to flow gracefully through the ballroom.

Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly may be two of the most beautiful women to ever grace the silver screen, with their outfits in films like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Rear Window” respectively making them fashion icons to this day. With that being said, that doesn’t mean they were immune to having certain costumes foisted on them.

Case in point: both stars were famous for their demure looks that allowed them to play the “girl next door” type across a variety of films. Because of this, they both refused to wear padded bras and shoulder pads that Hollywood producers believed would make them appear more curvy. The women stood their ground and refused to wear these costumes that would augment their look, making the characters they played on screen a more direct reflection of who the women were in real life. As costume designer Edith Head eloquently put it in her book “The Dress Doctor,” “There was no pretense in [Grace Kelly’s] make-up or her clothes; she never dressed to attract attention; she never dressed like an actress; she dressed like Grace Kelly, and she was Grace Kelly.” And with that decision, the two help set a precedent for women in the future to wear exactly what they wanted to wear.

Wearing a costume is meant to help an actor inhabit the mindset of a new character, but in Elliot Page’s memoir “Pageboy,” he tells the story of how he had to reject a part in a literary adaptation of a famous novel — most likely Cary Fukunaga’s “Jane Eyre” — because he wasn’t comfortable wearing women’s clothing anymore.

“I would imagine myself in a woman’s costume from the [mid-19th] century. The dress, the shoes, the hair, flashed before my eyes. It was too much after having put on the mask for awards season,” he said in the book (via IndieWire). “I understood that if I were to do it, I would want to kill myself.”

Page said that it “wasn’t easy to explain to [his] reps that [he] couldn’t take on a role because of clothing,” with some people pressuring him to “‘just put on the … clothes.” But Page knew that he couldn’t because of how it felt when “people lit up seeing [him] in feminine clothing, as if [he] had accomplished some miraculous feat.” Rather than give in to the pressure, Page pushed to play characters who matched his gender identity, including having his character on Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy” transition alongside him.

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We’ve now seen all kinds of stories about why an actor might refuse a certain costume for their character. Maybe it was too much of a hassle, it was being forced on them by unscrupulous producers, or it was literally trying to kill them. But in the case of Gene Hackman on the set of Richard Donner’s “Superman,” he simply didn’t want to do it.

Even if you have never seen a single image of Superman’s archnemesis Lex Luthor, you probably know that the villain is famously bald. However, Hackman reportedly refused to shave his head for the role or even wear a bald cap, reasoning that his version of Lex Luthor covered up his baldness with hair pieces. Director Richard Donner allowed that, but Hackman was so insistent on not losing any hair for the part that he also refused to shave his mustache. Rather than give in here too, Donner found a way around that problem: he offered to shave his own mustache if Hackman shaved his. Hackman agreed to the deal, only to discover Donner’s was a fake. “I love him for doing that,” said Hackman in the 2001 DVD documentary about the film. And we love him for it too, since Hackman earned the title of our favorite version of Lex Luthor when we ranked every one from worst to best.

Unfortunately, little has changed in the over 50 years since Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn stood up to pressure to change their appearance; and one of the most shocking examples of this institutionalized sexism reared its head again when a 16-year-old Chloë Grace Moretz walked into her on set trailer and found a push-up bra with silicone inserts waiting for her. Moretz didn’t reveal which film set this incident occurred on, but based on the timing, it might be the action film “The Equalizer,” in which Moretz played a teenage sex worker.

Moretz tried to brush off the incident, but admits she internalized the implication that her body was a problem for the film and that she should be unhappy with her own appearance. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, she was able to channel this anxiety into activism as she pushed back against the film and TV industry’s tendency to pit women against each other.