Jewel finally corrected her snaggletooth smile for a movie role, and 50 Cent filled in his gaps. From Lindsay Lohan to Zac Efron to Gwen Stefani, see celebrities who did some grill work.
After years of being criticized for her crooked smile, Jewel finally fixed her teeth to play June Carter Cash in an upcoming Lifetime movie. “Here I am as June in my trailer with her blue eyes and perfect teeth #ringoffire” the singer tweeted Thursday. But as with her new hair and eye color, the pearly whites are just temporary—she’ll revert to her original smile when filming ends. As Jewel told Jimmy Kimmel in 2009: “I am proud of my flaws and you should be, too. Not only do I think horrible snaggletooth is uniquely beautiful, it also comes in handy.”
Given some of Lindsay Lohan’s troubles in the past few years, stained yellow teeth seemed like the least of her worries, but in October 2011 her dingy smile became cause for concern. “I think of all the things going on in the world today—from deteriorating public education to rampant homelessness to political unrest—there is no way I’m going to comment on Lindsay’s teeth," Lohan’s publicist told ABCNews.com. But several days later, Lohan was photographed with a much brighter smile and went on Twitter to thank her dentist. “Thanks Dr. Dorfman for the zoom...” she wrote, referring to the Zoom! whitening procedure. “My gums are so sore though!”
It was Zac Efron’s goofy smile that first caught Vanessa Hudgens’s eye when they auditioned together for High School Musical. “He was adorable,” she told Glamour. “I mean, he wasn’t the guy that he is today. Like, he had a gap in his teeth. He doesn't have his gap anymore. I look at him, and I see a man." Despite Hudgens’s affection for his grin, Efron couldn’t stand his smile. “I got teased more about my gap than anything else," he lamented to People in 2007.
“I'll show you my teeth so much you'll get tired,” 50 Cent once joked about all his smiling. "You'll be like, ‘Man, is everything they said about him true? Because he's out there showing his teeth like he's happy.’” Or maybe he’s just pleased with the porcelain veneers and other the good dental work he’s had done to close up the gaps in his teeth? The rap star certainly doesn’t seem shy about it. Last October he even tweeted a photo of himself at the dentist’s office: “This is my dentist brian kantor every time I see him he tells me there something else wrong lol.”
In 2005, actress Hilary Duff made over her smile with porcelain veneers after reportedly chipping a tooth on a microphone. But apparently that wasn’t enough to protect Duff on her wedding day. The morning she was set to walk down the aisle with hockey player Mike Comrie, the 23-year-old singer and actress bit into a bagel with disastrous results. "My tooth fell out in my hand," she confessed to Ellen DeGeneres. "Thank God I didn't swallow it. Not good. Not good for a bride on a wedding day!" Luckily, Duff’s wedding planner knew a dentist and Duff got an emergency veneer.
Having changed his last name and reconstructed his hairline several times, why shouldn’t Nicolas Cage have gotten some dental work to improve his smile? The Oscar-winning actor replaced his snaggletooth smile early in his career with porcelain veneers, but some fans take Cage’s killer smile too seriously: In 2011, a collector auctioned a Civil War-era photo purporting to depict the actor with the headline: “Nic Cage Is a Vampire.”
In an effort to transition from Disney child star to adulthood, Miley Cyrus polished up her smile in 2008 with some shiny new chompers. “It looks as though she’s had some porcelain veneers put on her front teeth,” a Burbank dentist told the Star magazine. “And her small incisors appear to have been covered to make them look longer and more balanced with the rest of her mouth.” And these days Cyrus has much to smile about—she just got engaged to Hunger Games star Liam Hemsworth.
AP Photo; Getty Images
“I had braces when I was young and I couldn’t afford to finish treatment," Crystal Bowersox said of her crooked teeth that became a distraction when she was a contestant on American Idol in 2010. But after finishing as the runner-up to Lee DeWyze, the 24-year-old singer finally fixed her smile. “"whats NOT missing in this picture?????? Yeah. That's right," she tweeted last June with a bright white grin on her face.
Early in her career, Catherine Zeta-Jones upgraded her crooked smile with bright veneers. But the Oscar winner has an unusual secret for keeping her teeth white: fruit. “I love to eat an apple after a meal, just to cleanse my teeth—they always look polished afterwards,” she said in a ++2009 interview, adding that strawberries also work wonders. “The juice or pulp of strawberries contains malic acid which serves as an astringent and can lighten surface stains. Pineapples work the same way.”
Back in the late 1990s, Gwen Stefani turned heads with her tinsel teeth. But the singer claimed didn’t actually need the braces she wore—she was just making a fashion statement. As Stefani explained to Access Hollywood, she had always wanted to wear braces when she was younger and when she became successful, "I could afford them at that point and that's when I went and got them." Still, there’s no doubt her teeth looked better after the braces came off.
Retna; Getty Images
