13 Celebrities Who Totally Regret Their Tattoos

News By TooFab Staff | 12/29/2021 2:05 PM PT

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Tattoos are with you for life, but sometimes the idea of their permanence doesn’t set in until it’s too late. For some celebs, getting inked seemed like a good idea at the time but down the road, they found themselves having second thoughts about their tats. While it’s now possible to get tattoos removed, it’s safe to say that stars like Khloé Kardashian and Jessica Alba definitely regret getting inked in the first place. Whether it was an unfortunate location, a tribute to an ex, or just not a great move for their career, these celebs all recommend thinking twice before getting tattoos.

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Khloe Kardashian

Khloé Kardashian’s regrettable tattoo may have been a tribute to her late father but she isn’t a fan of the placement. When she was just a teen, she had a cross and angel wings tattooed on her lower back along with the words “Daddy.” Khloé, who eventually got the ink removed, says she should have listened to her sister Kim’s philosophy about tattoos. “The end of an era...Got this bad boy when I was 16...Not so cute anymore. I should’ve listened to Kim when she told me ‘you don’t put a bumper sticker on a Bentley.’ Bye-bye bumper sticker!!!” Khloé wrote on Instagram.

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Pete Davidson

Pete Davidson may be known for his numerous tattoos but earlier this year he revealed that he’s getting many of them removed. He explained that having over 100 tats has been somewhat of a hindrance to his career – especially when he has to sit in the makeup chair for hours getting them covered up. "I honestly never thought that I would get the opportunity to act and I love it a lot. You have to get there three hours earlier to cover all your tattoos, because for some reason, people in movies, they don’t have them that much. So now I’m burning them off, but burning them off is worse than getting them. Because not only are they, like, burning off your skin, but you’re wearing these big goggles, right? So you can’t see anything and the doctor’s in there with you,” Pete said on “Late Night With Seth Meyers.”

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Adam Levine

Adam Levine has a Russian prisoner-inspired tattoo on his right shoulder but definitely doesn’t like how it looks. He’s tried to improve it on multiple occasions to no avail. “I would never cover any of them up...I have one that’s pretty stupid. I don’t even know what it is. I saw a guy with these really cool Russian tattoos I can’t get because I’m not tough. Kind of prison tattoos. Really beautiful, interesting work but I couldn’t get that so I kind of got some sort of horrible bastardized version of that...It’s just hideous. I tried to surround it with something and it got even worse. It kind of looks like a cauliflower with a sun in the middle of it. It's just despicable-looking,” Adam said on “Anderson.”

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Hailey Bieber

Hailey Bieber has over 20 tattoos but it’s the tiny ink on her finger that she regrets. When she was a teen, she got a small handgun tattooed on the inside of her middle finger, which she says she would never get today. “I think at 18, I was like, 'Yeah! That looks cool.' But now, as a 24-year-old, I would never do that. I think guns are violent,” Hailey told Elle.

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Pharrell Williams

Pharrell Williams was willing to go to extreme measures to get rid of the tattoos on his arms. While at one point he was considering Regenerative Skin Treatment in order to cover up his sleeves, he ultimately decided to get them removed using laser treatment. “I got fire on my arms, I don't need fire on my arms! I'm a grown man,” Pharrell told Daily News.

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Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence got a spur of the moment tattoo with her “Hunger Games” co-star Liam Hemsworth but learned an important lesson along the way. While she thought the small ink featuring the chemical name for water would stand the test of time, she actually ended up getting the wrong notation. "I was with Liam'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. 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,” she told HitFix.

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Eva Longoria

Eva Longoria once had a small tat of a cross on her lower back which she says she got on a dare! She was egged on by her longtime friend Oscar de la Hoya over 20 years ago but she’s since had it removed. “This was over 20 years ago when Oscar dared me to get a tattoo. 🤦🏻‍♀️ (It has since been removed!),” Eva wrote on Instagram, along with a throwback photo.

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Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Reynolds isn’t a fan of any of the tattoos that he got during his youth and especially doesn’t like how long it takes to cover them up while working on movies. He admits he would probably get them all removed if it wasn’t for the long and painful process. “I hate them all...I’d get them all lasered off if it wasn’t hours and hours of brutal pain. But my wife says I should keep them, keep a record of the choices I’ve made,” Ryan told The New Yorker.

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Nicole Richie

Nicole Richie actually lists one of her tattoos as her biggest regret ever. The tattoo on her inner wrist says “virgin” in reference to her astrological sign but she wishes she had never gotten it at all. "See this tattoo? It says ‘virgin,' you guys. It's embarrassing and desperate. Now, I am a Virgo so when I was 16 I thought, 'Ooh I'm going to be different and I'm going to put...I'd add an ‘i’ and an ‘a’ and say I'm from Virginia, but I just don't think people are going to believe me. So I'm just stuck,” Nicole told E! News.

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Megan Fox

When Megan Fox was a teenager, she paid tribute to Marilyn Monroe with a tattoo of the actress on her forearm. But just a few years later, she was already over the ink and was ready to get it removed, which ended up being a pretty painful process. “I was just over it. I got it when I was 18, and now I’m 25. It is so painful. It’s a hundred times worse than the tattoo itself. I think it will come off really easily, though, and I’m not going to put something over it. I have the right skin type for removing it, so I think it will look fine,” Megan told Vulture.

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Jessica Alba

Jessica Alba has quite a few tattoos but there’s only two that she regrets. One is a bow on the middle of her lower back which she’s called “kind of a tramp stamp” and the other is a bundle of blue flowers on the back of her neck that she just can’t seem to get rid of. "I do have a few tattoos, and I regret one of them...maybe two...I got [the flowers] when I was, like, 17 and I’m so irritated that I got it. I got it lasered many times and it’s not coming out,” Jessica told Refinery 29.

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Kaley Cuoco

After Kaley Cuoco tied the knot with Ryan Sweeting she got the roman numerals of their wedding knot tattooed on her upper back. When the couple split, she almost immediately covered up the ink with a large image of an insect. “the deep, meaningful, larger than life meaning behind this beautiful piece of ink, is..... It covered the last one,” Kaley wrote on Instagram, later adding, “note to self- do not mark your body with any future wedding dates 😂 #under30mistakes #donttakeyourselftooseriouslykids”

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Britney Spears has a few tattoos but the one she likes the least is a pair of pink dice on her wrist, which she shares with ex-husband Kevin Federline. Britney explained that she doesn’t even really like tattoos and thinks she should probably get it removed. “Albert Einstein once said ‘God does not play dice with the universe’ …so maybe I shouldn’t have gotten the pink dice 7 on my left arm 🤔🤔🤔🤔🎲🎲 !!!!! I don’t even like ink …. guess I should remove it ?!?!!!!” Britney wrote on her Instagram.