16 Actors Who Are Too Attractive For Hollywood

Hollywood has always been full of beautiful people, from the blonde bombshells and dashing gentlemen of the golden era to the hotties and hunks of today. As it goes with most aspects of life, being attractive has always gone a long way to getting an actor into the door of being successful.

Is there a downside to being ridiculously good looking– beyond all the people that are jealous of you, that is? To hear some actors tell it, there is indeed such a thing as being too beautiful in terms of having fulfilling acting careers. Some actors say that they are always typecast as “cute guy” or “hot girl” and can’t seem to get more complex parts because of their good looks. Other actors complain of being told they are simply too gorgeous to play “normal” characters.

It’s tough to find pity for beautiful people who are supposedly being discriminated against for being beautiful, especially since not getting the occasional acting role seems like a small price to pay for winning the genetic lottery. The supposed struggle of the aesthetically gifted actor seems like the kind of thing they’d either keep to themselves or only vent about with other beautiful actors– and yet, a number of them find it necessary to share with the whole world how hard it is being an actor who is also hot.

Here are 16 Actors Who Are TOO Attractive For Hollywood.

16 Scarlett Johansson

In the past 15 years of her career as an adult actor, we’ve seen plenty of Scarlett Johansson, as the actress has never seemed shy about blending her acting gifts with her physical ones.

So it might seem a little strange that Johansson has seen her attractiveness as a curse for her career. She says she has been considered “too sexy” for roles, and that she gets frustrated when she is passed over for non-sexpot parts because casting agents don’t believe she can play normal, Plain Jane-type roles. In fact, she says that casting agents should want to “challenge themselves” when lining up actors for movies, and passing over beautiful people for non-beautiful roles is the opposite of challenging.

15 Halle Berry

When you hear about an actress having to literally beg for parts, you probably aren’t assuming that it’s because she’s just too beautiful. But that’s exactly what Halle Berry says she has had to do to keep her beauty from interfering with choice roles.

In a 2016 interview with W Magazine, Berry says that director Spike Lee didn’t want to cast her in what would become her breakout role in Jungle Fever because the director felt she was too good looking for the part. It was only after persistent begging that Lee finally looked beyond Berry’s beauty pageant past and gave her a shot.

Years later, for what would become her first Oscar win, Berry said director Lee Daniels was “disgusted” at the thought of giving her the part in Monster’s Ball and, again, she had to turn to strong pleading to be given the chance to prove herself.

14 Jessica Biel

After beginning her career playing a preacher’s daughter on the family-friendly drama 7th Heaven, actress Jessica Biel seemed like she couldn’t break away from that role soon enough with risqué photo shoots and parts in hard-R movies. But after a few years, Biel seemed to regret how hard she worked to turn herself into a Hollywood dreamboat.

Not only is Biel another actress who reports being told she’s too attractive for roles, she says things really got bad for her after Elle magazine named her 2005’s sexiest woman alive. Biel says a director told her, “‘I’m not looking for the sexiest woman; I’m looking for the girl next door.'”

Seems like Biel has decided to make her own substantial roles, as she snagged her first Golden Globe nomination for her performance as a traumatized housewife in The Sinner, which she also executive-produced.

13 Armie Hammer

It’s apparently not only women who struggle with being typecast because of their good looks. Armie Hammer says that Hollywood immediately tried to make him into a hunky leading man following his breakout role as both Winklevoss twins in the Oscar-winning The Social Network. “People thought, ‘Big, tall, handsome guy, let’s get him in front of a franchise, let’s make some big movies!'” Hammer says of Hollywood’s plans for him after his mainstream breakthrough.

Hammer spent the next few years trying to be turned into a dashing leading man because of his Adonis-like looks, an effort that ultimately proved futile and caused the actor to be involved in several high-profile flops. It was only after he began to retreat from the major Hollywood machine and take smaller parts that had nothing to do with his hotness that Hammer says he finally began to find his groove as an actor. He, too, has snagged his first Golden Globe nomination this year.

12 Megan Fox

Megan Fox quickly shot to stardom when she made her leading role debut bent over the hood of a car in the first Transformers movie. But for as quickly as her hotness gained her fame, her outspokenness earned her infamy. She was allegedly fired from the Transformers franchise after comparing director Michael Bay to Adolf Hitler, for instance. And she also hasn’t been shy on her feelings about how Hollywood treats beautiful people like herself.

Never one to mince words, Fox once told The Sun: “It pisses me off when people f***ing complain that I’m too beautiful to get a part. That’s bulls***.” But she also acknowledged the double-edged sword of the privilege that good looks brings an actor, adding, “And if I weren’t attractive I wouldn’t be working at all.”

11 John Hamm

Everyone knows Jon Hamm struggled to make ends meet as an actor for many years before scoring his breakout role in Mad Men. But what nobody considered is that maybe Hamm was just too handsome.

While doing press for Baby Driver, Hamm told The Guardian, “I bring more to the table than what I represent physically. And it’s a daily struggle to prove that,” adding that while it’s nice to hear how good-looking he is, “it usually comes with a sh***y dig underneath.” In particular, Hamm has complained that being gorgeous makes it difficult for people to take him seriously as a funnyman, and that he would love to do more comedies if directors would look past his rugged leading-man looks.

Hamm at least has a sense of humor about the whole thing, poking fun at the empty-headed hunk cliché via his role on 30 Rock.

10 Emily Ratajkowski

While it might be difficult to go from lingerie and swimsuit model to legitimate actress, it’s certainly not impossible: Tyra Banks, Brooklyn Decker, and Kate Upton have all had varying levels of success transitioning from magazine covers to acting careers. But in the case of Emily Ratajkowski, who first earned fame as a Victoria’s Secret angle and later for appearing in the controversial music video for “Blurred Lines”, the transition hasn’t gone quite so smoothly. And to hear her tell it, her cup size is to blame.

Despite a strong start appearing in acclaimed thriller Gone Girl, Ratajkowski’s acting career hasn’t had the trajectory she’d hoped it would– and she says it’s all because she’s not only too sexy for roles, but that “people don’t want to work with [her] because [her] boobs are too big.”

9 Charlize Theron

Charlize Theron comes off like an actress who is in complete control of her career, and has played characters ranging from beautiful to, well, Aileen Wuornos.  And if one thing hasn’t seemed to hold her back at all, it’s her almost flawless looks. Well, that’s certainly not how Theron sees things.

It’s definitely not fair how beautiful actresses don’t seem to be taken seriously until they “go ugly” for a role, suddenly getting raves and awards (like when Theron played Wuornos). But when the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned, long-legged Theron makes ridiculous statements like, “How many roles are out there for the gorgeous, f***ing, gown-wearing eight-foot model?”, it’s tough to have any reaction beyond an eye-roll.

She also laments, “When meaty roles come through…pretty people get turned away first.” Probably true, but it’s hard to imagine how many great roles Theron has truly missed out on simply for being pretty.

8 Diogo Morgado

Portuguese actor Diogo Morgado might not be too attractive for Hollywood in general, but he has been criticized for being too hot to play his most iconic role.

Playing the part of Jesus Christ is always going to be a touchy thing for any actor, and few of the men who have portrayed Jesus have done so without encountering problems. Passion of the Christ‘s Jim Caviezel endured serious injury while playing Jesus, even being struck by lightning.

What did Morgado have to deal with when he took on the role? Being called too hunky to be playing the son of God, earning the nickname “Hot Jesus” after portraying the religious figure in the miniseries The Bible and its film adaptation Son of Man.

In response to the reaction to Hot Jesus, Bible producer Mark Burnett quipped, “Whatever attracts the biggest, youngest audience.”

7 Christina Hendricks

Another actor who spent years in roles that failed to make a splash until Mad Men came calling, Christina Hendricks, like co-star Jon Hamm, has also complained about how her looks have robbed her of roles.

Hendricks has always seemed to have conflicted feelings about her shapely figure, embracing it in photo shoots and appreciating being recognized for being sexy without being a size 0– but also rejecting labels like “plus-sized” and “full-figured” and hating how her voluptuousness has gotten in the way of her acting career.

In addition to saying it is “outrageous” that a greater variety of female body types aren’t represented on TV, Hendricks says that she has “killed” many auditions only to be told later that her curves aren’t right for the part. Recalling one particular rejection, she said a casting agent told her, “We just don’t think a doctor would look like that.”

6 Keira Knightley

For some actresses, it’s a particular body part that is “too attractive” for Hollywood. In the case of Keira Knightley, it’s her lips, so much so that one particular director had to ban her from pouting during the film.

While filming Pride & Prejudice, the actresses claimed that director Joe Wright finally had enough of Knightley pouting her lips, and had to actually ban her from pouting for the rest of the production. Actually, Wright initially felt that Knightley was too pretty for the film at all, and only after meeting her sans-makeup was he convinced she could play the “plain” Elizabeth Bennett.

On second thought, maybe Knightley isn’t too attractive for Hollywood– it just seems to be something that Joe Wright is hung up on. He eventually got over it though and let Knightley’s lips pout all they wanted in the series of sultry Chanel ads that the two worked on together.

5 Amber Heard

Before she hits the headlines for her high-profile divorce from – and reports of domestic abuse by – Johnny Depp, Amber Heard had spent years being an actress who not only struggled with how hot she was, but sought to finally legitimatize “pretty girl” roles.

Heard told Marie Claire magazine, “I wish I didn’t have to pick between being seen as sexually viable and something more substantial,” as if to presume that the two couldn’t co-exist– something that dozens of actresses will likely object to. Heard further drew the ire of many of her fellow attractive actresses when she told Ocean Drive that she has “worked really hard to bring something more to ‘pretty girl’ roles over the years.”

4 Sofia Vergara

Before securing a role on the acclaimed Modern Family, Sofia Vergara had it pretty tough. Her brother was murdered murdered in Colombia, she survived thyroid cancer, and she found herself getting typecast as a typical curvaceous Latin-American stereotype. Luckily, today Vergara is making $43 million per year playing a curvy character and is the highest-paid actress in television.

Speaking to The Sun, Vergara lamented, “Having a good figure is an advantage on TV and in getting certain kinds of publicity, but it also means you can’t play more normal kinds of roles. I can’t just play the ordinary girl.” In that same interview, Vergara went on to complain about how hard it was being a teenage girl who was “skinny but with big boobs.”

3 Olivia Wilde

This is definitely one for the history books: an actress that is so sexy that she was too sexy to play an adult film star.

Olivia Wilde explained to GQ that, despite initially being cast as iconic ’70s adult film star Linda Lovelace in the biopic Lovelace, she decided to drop out of the project because she felt as though she was already too sexualized to play an adult film star. Huh? She then said that her replacement, Amanda Seyfried, would do a great job because she hadn’t been as sexualized. So is that a compliment or a diss? Your guess is as good as ours.

But, again, Olivia Wilde thought she herself was too sexy to play the adult film star, just to repeat that bizarre humble brag.

2 Rob Lowe

Rob Lowe transitioned from being a ridiculously good-looking teen idol to a ridiculously good-looking adult actor and, most recently, he’s become a ridiculously good-looking older actor. All the while, he’s had to deal with the fact that ridiculously good-looking actors just aren’t taken seriously.

“There’s this unbelievable bias and prejudice against quote-unquote good-looking people,” Lowe told The New York Times, “that they can’t be…deep or interesting. They can’t be any of the things you long to play as an actor.” He admitted that he’s now finally getting to play those parts, presumably because he’s finally gotten slightly less good-looking as he’s gotten older.

To Lowe’s credit, he also admitted, “When I was a teen idol, I was so g*****n pretty I wouldn’t have taken myself seriously.”

1 Jayne Mansfield

While this list was primarily about currently-working actors and actresses, you can’t talk about being “too attractive for Hollywood” without talking about the original too-hot-for-Hollywood starlet, Jayne Mansfield.

Rising to popularity during a time when even bikinis were considered indecent, Jayne Mansfield shook up not only Hollywood, but American culture in general. Mansfield’s famously large chest became so idolized that bras were redesigned in the ’50s specifically so women could emulate Mansfield’s cleavage. There would’ve been no Marilyn Monroe without Mansfield whetting the world’s appetite for blonde bombshells.

Of course, Hollywood didn’t always know what to do with her, and struggled to balance Mansfield’s physical assets with her actual acting talent– far too often focusing on the former. And everyone has seen that famous photo of Sophia Loren glaring disgustedly at Mansfield’s décolletage, which summed up how many of her colleagues felt about her as well.

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Have you ever suffered from being too good looking? Share your pain in the comments!