Celebrities You Didn't Know Wore Braces as Adults

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Hollywood sells the fantasy that perfect teeth just happen. Stars flash blinding smiles on red carpets and everyone assumes genetics did the work. The truth is funnier and way more relatable: a shocking number of A-listers strapped brackets onto their teeth well into adulthood, some of them at the absolute peak of their fame. Movie stars, Grammy winners, athletes with sponsorship deals worth millions... all walking around with the same hardware as a random eighth grader.

And honestly, good for them. Getting braces for teeth as a grown adult takes a certain confidence when your face is your business card and paparazzi shoot every grocery run. Adult orthodontic treatment has exploded over the past two decades, with the American Association of Orthodontists reporting that adults make up roughly one in four orthodontic patients. Celebrities helped normalize that shift, one metal smile at a time. Here are the famous faces who wore braces long after high school, ranked by how much the reveal surprised the public.

Tom Cruise, age 39

The biggest movie star on the planet showed up to a Minority Report event in 2002 wearing ceramic braces, and the internet of that era briefly lost its mind. Cruise was pushing 40 and mid-blockbuster-run when he decided his slightly off-center teeth needed fixing. He went with tooth-colored ceramic brackets, which photographed subtly, though "subtle" is a relative term when a thousand cameras point at your mouth. The gamble paid off. His post-treatment smile became part of the brand.

Faith Hill, age 45

Country royalty, 2013 Grammys, red carpet, full braces, zero shame. Faith Hill told reporters she'd worn braces as a kid and skipped the retainer afterward, so her teeth drifted back. Decades later she returned to finish the job and wore the hardware to music's biggest night like it was another accessory. Orthodontists still reference her when lecturing patients about wearing their retainers, which might be her most lasting contribution to dentistry.

Gwen Stefani, age 30

Stefani got braces in 1999 during the No Doubt years and treated them as a fashion statement. She'd wanted them as a kid and her family couldn't swing it, so the moment success arrived, she booked the appointment and wore the metal proudly through videos and performances. A platinum-blonde pop star turning orthodontics into a flex did more for teenage braces-wearers' self-esteem than any pep talk ever could.

Danny Glover, age 50s

The Lethal Weapon star quietly wore braces in his fifties, proving there's no expiration date on fixing your bite. Glover barely acknowledged the hardware publicly, which somehow made it cooler. No press tour, no interviews about the journey. Just a working actor who decided his teeth deserved attention and got on with it.

Faye Dunaway, age 61

The Oscar winner reportedly got braces at 61, making her one of the oldest celebrity orthodontic patients on record. Bonnie and Clyde was thirty-plus years behind her and she still figured the investment was worth making. Orthodontists confirm there's no upper age limit for treatment as long as gums and bone are healthy, and Dunaway is the proof people cite.

The Invisalign wave

Plenty of stars picked the invisible route, and the list reads like an awards-show seating chart:

• Katherine Heigl, aligners before her wedding at 29
• Khloe Kardashian, documented her treatment on social media
• Serena Williams, straightened mid-career as a brand ambassador
• Justin Bieber, showed off his trays in a YouTube video
• Zac Efron, fixed a gap early in his Hollywood run
• Eva Longoria, wore aligners during the Desperate Housewives era
• Niall Horan, went from braces to global heartthrob mid-One Direction

Heigl's case is the fan favorite. She openly said she wanted her smile perfect for wedding photos and called the aligners her pre-wedding project, snapping them out for scenes and events. Horan technically started as a teen, but he wore his braces through sold-out arena tours, which counts as hard mode.

The scoreboard

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Why the stars keep doing it

The obvious answer is vanity, and sure, a smile is professional equipment in entertainment. The less obvious answer comes straight from the orthodontic chair: crooked and crowded teeth trap plaque, wear unevenly, and can strain the jaw. Several of these celebrities cited function alongside looks. Cruise's misalignment reportedly affected his bite. Hill's relapse case is a textbook example of what happens when retainers get abandoned. Treatment for adults typically runs 18 to 30 months, a blip compared to the decades of use the result gets.

There's also the money angle, which celebrities conveniently never mention. Treatment that costs a star pocket change runs $3,000 to $8,000 for regular humans. The upside is that the same options exist at every price point now: classic metal, ceramic, lingual braces hidden behind the teeth, and clear aligners. The stars simply proved the stigma was imaginary.

The takeaway nobody expected

Somewhere between Cruise's ceramic reveal and Khloe's aligner selfies, adult braces stopped being embarrassing. Orthodontists report waves of adult consultations following celebrity braces moments, and the "brace face" jokes that haunted 90s teenagers barely exist for today's adults. If a 61-year-old Oscar winner and the world's biggest action star can rock brackets under studio lighting, the coworker in accounting with new metal on her teeth is officially the least remarkable smile story in the room. The famous faces went first so the rest of us could fix our teeth in peace.