Everybody gets a little stinky sometimes, but there are definitely some standard hygiene rules we can mostly agree on…right?
If you notice someone close to you is skipping one too many showers, you might tell them privately. But imagine being called out publicly! Here are 15 actors who called out their costars’ hygiene habits:
1.
In 2025, BBC Radio 1 asked Timothée Chalamet about the “smelliest actor” he’s worked with. He replied, “I’m not gonna say any names ’cause, you know, that would just be mean. But I did work on a Western years ago, and somebody was — quote, unquote — ‘in character’ the whole time, and, uh, it was something. It was quite something on set. That waft coming in every day. They just weren’t washing, and the nails…I was there for two months, but they were really committed. Not too many descriptive details, I’ll give it away. This gentleman’s wife came, and she, you know, they were very in love. She didn’t care.
2.
During a 2024 appearance on Watch What Happens Live, Kate Hudson addressed the “old urban legend” that she “forced Matthew McConaughey to wear deodorant while filming Fool’s Gold.” She said, “No. No, he doesn’t wear deodorant. And by the way, I don’t either. My thing was I could smell him from a mile…because we were so close. We’re au naturals.”
3.
Kate wasn’t the first costar to comment on Matthew’s smell. In 2021, his Tropic Thunder costar Yvette Nicole Brown told SiriusXM, “I’m a huge Matthew McConaughey fan. I remember that Matthew McConaughey said that he did not use deodorant and that he didn’t have an odor, so my first thought was, ‘I’m gonna get as close as I can to him to see if he’s right.’ He does not have an odor. He smells like granola and good living. He has a sweet, sweet scent that is just him, and it’s not musty or crazy. And he was very kind to me, and all of my scenes were with him.”
4.
Per ABC News, during a 2014 appearance on Watch What Happens Live, Dane Cook named Kate Hudson as his worst onscreen kiss. he said, “I did a movie with her, My Best Friend’s Girl, and I think she purposely ate like a feast of onions before our scene. I had to burn her on that one!”
5.
In 2022, Miriam Margolyes alleged to I’ve Got News For You that her End of Days costar Arnold Schwarzenegger farted in her face on purpose. She said, “He’s a bit too full of himself, and I don’t care for him at all. He’s a Republican, which I don’t like. He was actually quite rude. He farted in my face. Now, I fart, of course, I do — but I don’t fart in people’s faces. He did it deliberately, right in my face. I was playing Satan’s sister, and he was killing me [in the scene], so he had me in a position where I couldn’t escape and lying on the floor. And he just farted. It wasn’t on film. It was in one of the pauses, but I haven’t forgiven him for it.”
6.
In 2009, an unnamed person who purportedly worked closely with Robert Pattinson on the Twilight set told E!, “He stinks. I mean, it’s awful. He never showers, and it drives people on the set crazy.” A few months later, his costar Peter Facinelli seemingly explained the source of his alleged smell, telling Vulture, “He’s smart, because if he doesn’t change his clothes and the paparazzi get pictures of him in the same outfit all the time, then they can’t sell the pictures. That’s what I said he should do. I said, ‘You should not change your clothes. This way, how are they going to sell the picture of you in the same outfit all the time, because it will look like it was from the same batch.'”
Robert himself has claimed to be stinky over the years. In 2009, he reportedly told Extra that he didn’t “really see the point in washing your hair” or particularly “care if it’s clean or not.” However, in 2022, he told MovieMaker, “[His previous lie about not working out is] the same thing as saying in an interview when I was like 21 that I didn’t wash my hair. It just sticks for 15 years.”
7.
At the 2013 The Spectacular Now premiere, Miles Teller told Variety, “Before our first kissing scene, Shailene [Woodley] took these Chinese dirt supplements and shoved them in her mouth. It’s like a dirt pouch, and it smells like crap. She always has a mason jar, and 100% of the time, it smells like crap.”
8.
However, Shailene also disagreed with Miles’s pre-kissing scene routine. In 2013, he told Vulture, “I would be drinking a Gatorade right before a kissing scene. She would be like, ‘Are you serious? You’re gonna kiss me after that?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I am.’ Shailene also told the outlet, “We’d have to kiss in a scene, and he’d be like, ‘Shay, you just ate dirt.’ And I’d be like, ‘Miles, you just ate licorice.’ It was just this ongoing back-and-forth.”
9.
Per People, Viggo Mortensen reportedly told the Toronto Star that, to get in character as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, he slept in the forest. His costar Sean Bean reportedly told the outlet, “Bear in mind, he was very smelly.”
10.
In 2014, Liam Hemsworth told The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that, while filming The Hunger Games, “Any time I had to kiss Jennifer [Lawrence] was pretty uncomfortable, pretty awkward. When you look at it on the outside, it looks like a great picture. She’s one of my best friends. I love her. But if we had a kissing scene, she would make a point of eating garlic or tuna fish or, you know, something that was disgusting. And right before the scene, she be like, ‘Yeah, I had tuna’ or ‘I had garlic, and I didn’t brush my teeth.’ Fantastic. I can’t wait to get in there and taste it.”
11.
Per Digital Spy, during a 2022 appearance on Sunday Brunch, Kunal Nayyar exposed his The Big Bang Theory costar Johnny Galecki for sticking chewed gum behind the apartment staircase set. Kunal said, “The way it works is, you go down the stairs, and then they yell, ‘Hold’. They change the scenery from, like, if the apartment says 1A, it suddenly says 2A or 3. They change the set so it looks exactly like another floor. You run back up the stairs that go nowhere, and then you walk back down as if it’s a new floor. Down there is nothing. There’s a wall there where Johnny Galecki, for 12 years, would stick his chewing gum on. I’m not joking. There’s a wall of 3,000 dried chewing gum from Johnny Galecki.”
12.
In 2008, Alyson Hannigan told Digital Spy that she didn’t like kissing her How I Met Your Mother costar Jason Segel because he was a smoker. She said, “I cannot stand cigarette smoke. It’s like kissing an ashtray and he’s trying to be polite by having gum or mints, but it doesn’t help. When we started the pilot [for the show] he was like, ‘Get me to stop smoking, I’ll be your best friend.’ So we did this bet where he would owe me $10 every time he had a cigarette. After the first day, he owed me $200. So he said, ‘I’m just quitting,’ and he quit cold turkey for about a year. It was fantastic but then…he got stressed out, and he started smoking again.”
13.
In 2009, Eli Roth told Entertainment Weekly about his Inglourious Basterds costar Brad Pitt’s hygiene tip. Eli said, “He shared that when you’re sweating and don’t have time to take a shower, you just take a baby wipe and rub it under your armpits. After a scene, Brad had to get next to me for a close-up shot, and he said, ‘Damn, you’re ripe.’ I said, ‘I didn’t have time to shower.’ He said, ‘Baby wipes, man, baby wipes.'” Eli also alleged Brad told him, “I got six kids. All you’ve got to do is just take them, a couple quick wipes under the pits. Man, I’m getting [peed] on all day. I don’t have time to take a shower.” Eli “thought that was the greatest tip.”
14.
In 2002, the Telegraph reported that Sandra Bullock allegedly complained about Ben Affleck’s bad breath on the Forces of Nature set. In 2009, the Guardian reported that she allegedly gifted him a box of mints to deal with his halitosis.
15.
And finally, Matt Damon lightheartedly called out his We Bought a Zoo costar Scarlett Johansson for her onion breath during their kissing scene. In 2023, he told LADbible, “We did a shot before lunch, and it was, like, this nice, little two-shot that ended in the kiss. And it was really good. And we went to lunch, and she and I both thought it was over. She ate, like, an onion sandwich for lunch, and she came in, and [director] Cameron Crowe had set the camera up and it was, like, a tight shot of the kiss. And she goes ‘Aw shit! I literally just had — I had, like, an onion sandwich.’ I was making fun of her the entire time about her onion breath, which I didn’t even smell.”
Which actor’s on-set hygiene habit grossed you out the most? Let us know in the comments!
