20 Stars Who Regret Their Tattoos
Eva Longoria
The Tattoo: A cross on her lower back — and she recently shared a throwback pic of the day she got it, egged on by pal Oscar de la Hoya.
The Status: “??♀️ (It has since been removed!)” she wrote in the Instagram caption.
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MARK WAHLBERG
The Tattoo: Early on in his career, the former Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch frontman was rarely spotted with his shirt on. Wahlberg flaunted his famous muscular figure — and eye-catching arm tattoos — on stage and on screen throughout the ’90s and early 2000s. On one bicep, he tattooed a portrait of reggae legend Bob Marley and on the other, he inked his initials and last name in large, ombré font. The Departed actor once said, “all the tattoos have meaning to me,” before getting them removed in the mid-2000s.
The Status: Wahlberg removed all of his body art because “I don’t want my kids getting tattoos.” Plus, he didn’t like spending hours in the makeup chair on set. “I wanted them to be [removed] by the time I did The Fighter because putting makeup on and covering them up has always been a pain in the butt,” he told the Today Show.
Wahlberg recently told E! News about the painful removal process — which he’s already warned his Spenser Confidential costar Post Malone about: “I told him, eventually he’s gonna want to remove his and it’s gonna be painful,” he said. “It’s more painful taking them off.”
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TALLULAH WILLIS
The Tattoo: After getting some ink on her left arm when she was “20 and impulsive,” she decided to undergo the removal process, telling a fan on Instagram she didn’t “understand the word ‘permanent'” at the time.
The Status: Gone! In Feb. 2020 the star shared an Instagram photo of her arm in a white bandage. “TATTOOS R FUN UNTIL THER [sic] NOT ~~,” Tallulah, 26, captioned the post, from inside LaserAway — a laser hair and tattoo removal clinic in Beverly Hills.
“Thankful that magic erasers for skeen exists @laseraway *disclaimer my arms are burning as deep as my ego, but it really does work,” Tallulah added.
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SARAH HYLAND
The Tattoo: Back in 2017, the actress got a dinosaur tattoo on her butt with her bestie Katie Welch.
The Status: In Nov. 2019, she shared a selfie during the tattoo removal process from inside the doctor’s office. Though Hyland “believe[d] in dinosaurs” two years ago, the pain of her laser tattoo removal is much more real now.
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Jessica Alba
The Tattoo: The actress has multiple tattoos but says she regrets “maybe two,” she tells Refinery 29: one that’s “kind of a tramp stamp” of a bow on her lower back (not pictured) and an image of flowers on her neck that “I got when I was, like, 17 and I’m so irritated that I got it.”
The Status: Still there, despite her best efforts (you can see it faintly in the lower right image). “I got it lasered many times and it’s not coming out,” she says.
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Jessie J
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The Tattoo: The singer got her own lyrics inked on her hip when she was 18. Just one problem: She misspelled a key word.
The Status: Still there! “Yes my tattoo says… don’t loose who you are in the blur of the stars. Yes they are MY lyrics from my song who you are,” she wrote on Instagram, adding that she still doesn’t know the difference between loose and lose. “Yes It’s the reason I wear everything high waisted.”
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ARIANA GRANDE
The Tattoo: She had to keep breathin’ through the pain when her initial attempt at inking “7 Rings” in Japanese characters on her palm didn’t quite work out as planned, ending up with something that translated more closely to “tiny charcoal grill” – and sending her back for a fix.
The Status: After some consultation, she ended up with the “slightly better” version above, though she noted, “I actually really liked” the botched first tattoo.
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KHLOÉ KARDASHIAN
The Tattoo: A self-professed “tramp stamp” tribute to her late father over a cross on her lower back. “I should’ve listened to [sister] Kim when she told me ‘You don’t put a bumper sticker on a Bentley’,” Khloé wrote on Instagram.
The Status: Zapped away, thanks to a few sessions with Dr. Ourian and Nurse Jamie.
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AMY SCHUMER
The Tattoo: An artistic design that inspired the title of her book, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo.
The Status: Still there, whether you like it or not: #yesiknowmytattoosucks was one of the hashtags she used for this photo.
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JUSTIN BIEBER
The Tattoo: While the majority of Bieber’s tattoos have religious meaning, he does have a few dedicated to important people in his life … including former flame Selena Gomez, who is drawn on his wrist.
The Status: “This is my ex-girlfriend, so I tried to cut her face up with some shading, but people still know,” Bieber told GQ.
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KALEY CUOCO
The Tattoo: Cuoco’s romance with ex-husband Ryan Sweeting was a whirlwind, with their entire courtship, engagement, wedding and a tattoo commemorating the event’s date in Roman numerals taking place within a year. The ink, however, lasted longer than the marriage.
The Status: Two months after announcing her divorce, Cuoco began taking steps to get rid of the reminders of her marriage. That included the tattoo, which she covered up with some new ink: An insect, whose “deep, meaningful, larger than life meaning” was to “cover the last one,” she joked on Instagram. “note to self- do not mark your body with any future wedding dates #under30mistakes #donttakeyourselftooseriouslykids,” she added in a separate post.
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JENNIFER LAWRENCE
The Tattoo: It’s a tiny hand tattoo that reads H2O – but not in the proper chemical notation. Don’t worry, she knows. “I was with Liam [Hemsworth]’s family and everybody was getting tattoos, and I was like, well, I’m always going to need to be hydrated, so I guess I should get H2O on my hand,” she told HitFix. “By the way, I know that the two is high and in H2O the two is supposed to be low. I should’ve Googled it before I got it tattooed on my body forever.”
The Status: It’s still there, but so faint it’s nearly impossible to see. “It’s literally the most unrebellious tattoo that anybody could ever get,” she commented.
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NICOLE RICHIE
The Tattoo: Multiple, actually: Nicole Richie has expressed regret for her “butt-crack cross”, “Virgin” wrist ink (she’s a Virgo, and she was 16 when she got it) and “Richie” neck tatt (“I was a 19-year-old idiot when I got this one”).
The Status: She’s visited L.A.’s Dr. Tattoff to have the “tramp stamp” (her words!) removed, but the others remain.
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ADAM LEVINE
The Tattoo: A Russian prisoner-inspired tattoo on his right shoulder that he has tried to improve to no avail. He told Anderson Cooper that the finished result looks like “a cauliflower with a sun in the middle of it. It’s just despicable-looking.”
The Status: Still there, because he doesn’t want to cover any of his ink up.
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DEMI LOVATO
The Tattoo: A rendering of her friend’s lips that she called a “spur of the moment, stupid decision” in 2012, then redubbed a “vagina tattoo” when she covered it up a few years later.
The Status: It’s currently replaced by a rose, which got her stamp of approval: “It looks beaaauutiful and I LOVE it!!” she Instagrammed.
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KELLY OSBOURNE
The Tattoo: Most of them, actually, though she started with the keyboard on her right forearm. “I did the crime I am now doing the time!” she wrote to accompany the video of the removal.
The Status: It’s fully gone, along with many of her other tattoos – though she’ll occasionally add new ones in surprising places.
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MEGAN FOX
The Tattoo: A giant Marilyn Monroe portrait that she was already “over” by 2011. Removing it was slow going, though: “It’s a hundred times worse than the tattoo itself.”
The Status: Barely detectable anymore (as you can tell by the picture of her visiting Jay Leno mid-removal!).
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BLAKE SHELTON
The Tattoo: It’s on the Voice judge’s forearm – and it’s meant to be deer tracks surrounded by barbed wire. But even he fully admits it looks like Sugar Smacks. “I can’t blame it on the tattoo guy, because I had been drinking,” he says. “I drew him this deer track and he just went to the copier and made a copy and slapped it on there.”
The Status: Still there!
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HAYDEN PANETTIERE
The Tattoo: An Italian phrase that would have meant “Live without regrets” … if it were spelled correctly.
The Status: Though she joked about the spelling error in Glamour (“It s misspelled … So I literally have to live by that advice!”) the star started the removal process in 2013.
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ADRIENNE BAILON
The Tattoo: An inscription of her ex-boyfriend’s name on her butt, which she called “ratchet.” As she put it, “Ten letter last name, Kardashian. I made a very bad decision!”
The Status: Though Bailon said she made it small and almost impossible to spot, she started getting it removed in 2013. “You can smell your flesh burning,” she shared.
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