Celebrity Teeth That Had Heads Turning

Straight, white, symmetrical: that is more or less the ultimate Hollywood sketch of what a "perfect" smile is, or should be. These requisites have long accompanied the job description of being a camera-facing persona — so much so that veneers, teeth whitening, and other cosmetic dentistry practices are booming in the entertainment industry, with a sea of celebrities turning to them in a bid for flawless pearly whites. As New York dentist Sivan Finkel told Refinery29, "The first thing that happens when someone starts their career and moves out to LA is their agent tells them, 'You've gotta get veneers now.'" Dr. Finkel is on to something, as there have been many celebrity teeth transformations that have been dramatic, to put it mildly. 

Yet, in this airbrushed landscape of conventional beauty, a few names stick out with confidence — like the crooked, uneven, real teeth that define their million-dollar smiles. From versatile actors like Willem Dafoe and Anna Paquin, to glam divas like Madonna and Kate Moss — many high-profile names have managed to resist the showbiz industry's banal standards of attractiveness, and for years, have proudly flashed their so-called imperfect smiles in everybody's faces. And fans love them all the more for it! Even though their chompers may sometimes draw more attention than their craft, they serve to add a unique character to their overall celebrity.

The transformation of Johnny Depp's teeth over the years has been almost as captivating as his 40-year run in Hollywood. From the unblemished, boyish smile of his "21 Jump Street" days, to Captain Jack Sparrow's chaotic gold-capped grin — Depp's teeth have mirrored the arc of his eccentric, but brilliant screen performances. And while that trend has typically left fans waiting in anticipation for every next one of Depp's career moves — and the bold physical transformation they will likely be accompanied by — they were in for a rude shock when the award-winning star showed up to the 2023 Cannes Film Festival (out of character and as himself) with a set of what looked like stained, rotting teeth. 

The concerning detail naturally turned heads and set fans talking, with widespread discussions on social media surrounding Depp's dental health. "I would do veneers because he needs his bite reestablished. He's worn his teeth down so much," celebrity dentist Dr. Apa told Page Six, tying Depp's poor oral situation to his lifestyle of coffee and cigarettes. Though Depp didn't publicly address the dental discourse — instead, showing up with a seemingly spotless set of pearly whites a year later — he has always been the first to acknowledge that his teeth are far from perfect. In fact, it's a detail he apparently delights in. "I'm proud of these. When I see people with perfect teeth, it drives me up the wall," he told Premiere Magazine back in the '90s. 

Few actors in showbiz have features as distinct as Steve Buscemi does — and over his 40-year career, this novelty has only worked in his favor. It's why the award-winning star has consistently thwarted any advice he has received to get his teeth aligned. "I've had dentists who have wanted to help me out," he revealed during The Hollywood Reporter's roundtable in 2011. His response to them was simple, "You know, I won't work again if you fix my teeth." 

Interestingly enough, Buscemi was not as observant about his misaligned teeth as the rest of the world has been, telling GQ that the realization hit him only when he watched himself on screen. "They're much more harmonious in person, save for one prominent exception: a slightly feral snaggletooth, top left, that peeks out when he laughs," the writer of the profile detailed about Buscemi's iconic set of teeth. Together with his gibbous eyes, Buscemi's teeth have helped carve out a niche identity for him as one of entertainment's most favorite misfits. 

It wouldn't be a stretch to say that what made Aimee Lou Wood's debut in "Sex Education" so smashing was her unique set of teeth, which protruded as dazzlingly on screen as her natural penchant for acting. Though her pearly whites did not steal the spotlight from her acclaimed performance — which earned her a BAFTA — they did add an undeniable character to Wood's widely beloved on-screen persona, which then also enthralled fans in the third season of "The White Lotus." 

Wood, of course, is clued into the wide-ranging, largely uplifting conversation about her chompers, which have come to symbolize a kind of resistance to conventional Hollywood aesthetics. And while the actor has typically responded to these social media discussions with that very same trademark grin people love, she is admittedly a bit tired of this one-track discourse surrounding her. "It's, like, cool, and now I want to stop f***ing talking about it. Can I talk about my character?" she stated to The Times, offering a deeply personal perspective on the matter. "It does feel a bit weird that the thing I got bullied for is now the thing that everyone's, like, 'woo!' It's still the thing that's defining me." 

Vanessa Paradis' gap-toothed grin hardly fits the cookie cutter standards of what showbiz defines as glamorous and yet, the singer-model has managed to enrapture legions of fans, brands, and runways with it. From the time she stepped into the spotlight as a middling but prodigious 8-year-old singer, to now, when she holds high status as one of France's most iconic entertainment figures — Paradis' teeth have commanded their own attention, emerging as a key feature of her signature French charm. 

Fortuitously for Paradis, a diastema — or a gap between the teeth — is what the French call "le dents du bonheur," which translates to "teeth of happiness or luck." To that end and to some degree, maybe her wide-ranging success can be tied to her unique pearly whites — besides her unparalleled talent, of course. For Paradis, the whole matter is far more simple. As she told Harper's Bazaar back in 2012, "Why would I fix them? I was born with them. I can spit water through them. They're useful!"  

Even with a gap, Madonna has a smile that could bite through steel. The OG rule-defying diva of music was rocking the ideals of rugged, imperfect beauty long before it became a buzzword on social media, carving her own way in an industry that has always clung to polished ideas of stardom. The "Material Girl" hitmaker has pushed boundaries across the worlds of fashion, music, and culture — all with her famous crooked teeth in tow. 

Back in the 2010s, she took her trademark daring up by several notches, experimenting with dental jewelry and bejeweled mouthpieces that, gradually over the years, became a staple in her red carpet lookbook. Her foray into grills — from gold-capped teeth to diamond-studded sets — made heads turn, if not swerve, and marked a moment in Madonna's stunning transformation that seemed a tad too bold, even by the singer's transgressive standards. Cutting through all the criticism around her fashion choice, Madonna had this to say during an appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" in 2022, "People have a problem with my grills, I don't know why ... I just like the way it looks — it's mouth jewelry — and I have really ugly teeth." 

It would be hard — and frankly, a bit unfair — to reckon with Willem Dafoe's long, prolific career of playing intense characters without giving his iconic sneer the consideration it deserves. Unlike his films, the Oscar-nominated star had no part to play in choosing this crooked, gap-toothed smile he was born with. Yet over the course of Dafoe's 45-year career, it has become a signature, lending an unsettling edge to the villains and misfits he's played to perfection on screen. Sure, he has relied on prosthetics and appliances when a role has called for it — think films like "Spider-Man," "Wild at Heart," or "Shadow of the Vampire" – but that devilish grin remains singularly (and eerily) his own. 

While Dafoe, ever focused on the more paramount aspects of his craft, has largely refrained from giving his chompers too much airtime in interviews and public appearances, he did feature in a 2016 short that put his unique smile in the spotlight like never before. Titled "Mind the Gap" published by Nowness, the nearly 3-minute film has Dafoe talking candidly (and somewhat unnervingly) into the camera about his widely discussed attribute. "People have suggested I fix them but I like my gaps ... Everything I bite, stays with me a long time." 

Anna Paquin is one of those celebrities people could easily recognize just by a closeup of their teeth. Her wide, gap-toothed smile shines with the power of a million watts, adding character to her face that sets her apart in a sea of airbrushed Hollywood beauties. But the "True Blood" star apparently doesn't see it. "Well, it's never bothered me. I've never understood why people are quite so interested in my teeth," she told Red magazine in an interview, quipping, "I'm not even someone who smiles that much." It's a debatable claim, given the endless pictures that exist online of Paquin flashing her famous smile — making it hard to choose the best out of the lot. 

Paquin, who has been acting since she was a child and holds the crown for being one of the youngest-ever Oscar winners, is also aware of the distinction her unique teeth offer her, professionally. Talking about the many insecurities that often come hand-in-hand with the job of being a female actor in Hollywood, she once told Zooey Magazine (via Just Jared), "If you have a whole bunch of work done with your teeth and your face and your boobs then you're only going to play modern people. That's a big choice to make. Very limiting." However, in the mid-2010s, Paquin's teeth seemed to shift into more of an alignment, closing her gap slightly. While the actor still rocks a gap between her front teeth, it's noticeably less than it was before. Whether this was the result of a cosmetic enhancement or a natural movement, is still up for debate.

When Ricky Gervais first burst onto the mainstream Hollywood scene — crossing over from the fame he enjoyed back in his homeland of England — the industry just couldn't tear its gaze away from his peculiar fangs. It didn't help that he happened to break through, ironically, in the role of a dentist in "Ghost Town," the 2008 comedy that brought him this renown. According to Gervais, America couldn't immediately come to terms with his crooked teeth and he was often asked if it was a real set. "Everywhere I go, American journalists are asking me about my 'horrid' teeth," he said at the time, per the Daily Mail. "One journalist said to me, 'Now, in this film, you have an amazing set of horrible-looking fake dentist teeth.' I told him, 'No, actually, they are my own.'"

Such confrontations hardly seemed to faze the provocative comic who, thankfully, didn't give in to the showbiz pressure of cosmetic alterations for the screen, and true to form, took the feedback dryly in his stride. The industry's reaction to him, however, did beget some interesting conversations around the difference in cultures, vis-à-vis beauty and appearances. "Americans have the idea uniformity is equivalent to looking good. The British character is more free-spirited, more radical," Professor Liz Kay, Dean of the Peninsula Dental School told the BBC. 

There was a time when "Fifty Shades" star Dakota Johnson flaunted an endearing little gap between her front teeth. So when she appeared at the 2019 premiere of her film "The Peanut Butter Falcon" with the quirky detail mysteriously gone, fans couldn't help but wonder what happened. Her missing tooth gap was all the talk on social media, with users on X (then still Twitter) dramatically paying condolences to it. It was no doubt the loss of something iconic as fans of the actor would remember that the space between her teeth could fit everything from toothpicks and credit cards to cherry stems and even twigs — as she memorably demonstrated once for a 2017 Vanity Fair video. 

Not long after, though, Johnson came forward with a much anticipated clarification about the noticeable change in her dental appearance. "I had a permanent retainer since I was like 13, and it was just glued to the back of my teeth," she said on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" in 2019, going on to explain that her doctor decided to remove the fixture after she began having issues with her neck. "She decided that it would be a good idea to take it off and see if my jaw sort of expanded and it helped me." Unfortunately, in the process, her tooth gap closed, marking the end of an era that Johnson, along with her legions of fans, also mourned. "I'm really sad about it too." 

In a business intent on molding every female star to fit its glam playbook, that is dated to say the least, Kirsten Dunst has always stood out with a certain edge that defies the rules of the game. The star of films like "Interview with the Vampire" and "Spider-Man," Dunst has made it far in the industry with her trademark protruding smile — and undying spunk that helped protect it from people who wanted to change it. In an interview with the Independent, she recalled how a film producer once non-consensually took her to the dentist in hopes of getting her teeth aligned. But she put her foot down and stayed in the car, "I was like, 'Mmmmm, no, I like my teeth.'"

Having grown up in a home where her mother more or less agreed with mainstream beauty standards made Dunst all the more averse to them. Her rebellion showed up in how she independently presented herself in public as a young actor — right from the way she dressed, down to the color of the lipstick she chose to wear. It also helped that Dunst's own bullheaded decision to keep her physical appearance intact in an industry that tried to perfect it was backed by her lifelong friend and "The Virgin Suicides" director Sofia Coppola. "The fact that the coolest girl liked how I looked, that's what preserved me. She made me feel pretty," Dunst said.

Throughout her singing career, Jewel has carved out just as much of a distinction for herself with her snaggletoothed smile as she has for her charming country vocals — if not more. And she is hardly oblivious to this unusual aspect of her fame. As she quipped in a piece for Redbook magazine, "Because I — despite having written 500 songs, having hits in nearly every genre, getting Grammy nominations, singing for a pope and a president — am best known for having crooked teeth." The headline of the essay — "Sorry, Haters: My Teeth Don't Need Fixing" — was an apt summation of Jewel's own take on the endless scrutiny her features are subjected to. 

That is not to say that the road has been smooth for the "You Were Meant For Me" singer, who — for all her steady self-acceptance — has admitted to chewing over the idea of getting her teeth cosmetically altered. "But I knew that if I started down that path, it would be a slippery slope," she wrote. "I had to define beauty for myself." The only time Jewel gave in to the noise of getting her teeth tweaked, of her own accord apparently, was to play the straight-toothed June Carter Cash in the film "Ring of Fire." This amendment caused such a firestorm when she went public with her new look on social media that her publicists had to come forward and clarify that her beloved crooked smile was still intact.

Imagine thinking someone like Kate Moss isn't cut out to be a model. But it's an idea the industry-altering beauty held about her own self throughout her youth. "I wasn't the prettiest girl in class. No breasts, short legs, gangly teeth. I didn't think I was model material, that's for sure," she told British Vogue, admitting that she was not a fan of how she looked, before her stardom began presenting a different reality to her. With her grunge persona and those same gangly teeth she once disliked, Moss took over the fashion world — working with market-leading brands and calling into question the infamous stereotype of bad British teeth. 

"Americans are really obsessed with their teeth being white and straight, aren't they?" she quipped to Interview magazine once. Apparently, that kind of symmetry is not something Moss is crazy about, recalling an incident where a dentist capped all her teeth when she went in to get a single cap made. "He thought this straight line of big white teeth looked good." Thankfully, Moss, and even several people around her, didn't think so and she went back to her original, iconic set of tusks. "I hate dentists," she concluded.