These are the stars who have endured ridiculously long makeup sessions, heavyweight prosthetics and suffocating costumes all in the name of art.

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With all the glamor that comes with the territory, it’s easy to forget that professional acting is a tough – if slightly overpaid – gig. But a tough gig can become outright torturous when wearing 50 pounds of makeup, a corset that squeezes your guts like a toothpaste tube, or prosthetics so suffocating that you need military training to endure them. Without a doubt, then, these 20 actors suffered greatly for their art.

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20. John Rhys-Davies as Gimli (The Lord of the Rings)

Ever notice how grouchy dwarf Gimli seemed to get increasingly angry with each successive Lord of the Rings movie? Well, maybe that had something do with the fact that John Rhys-Davies was in perpetual suffering. His makeup took five hours to put on and caused him constant allergic reactions. In fact, his experience was so bad that it put him off ever starring in the franchise again. So it’s no wonder that, after the last day of shooting, the actor actually set his prosthetics alight as an act of vengeance!

19. Michael Chiklis as The Thing (Fantastic Four)

Michael Chiklis is a fairly burly guy, but his natural frame has nothing on the rock-bound body of The Thing. And so, to bulk up, the actor initially had to endure over five hours of makeup – though they did get it down to one and a half eventually. Chiklis later revealed, “I dealt with it through comedy. I end up ranting schtick and making them laugh while they attack me physically.”

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19. Kelsey Grammer as Beast (X-Men)

Kelsey Grammer’s bespectacled blue mutant costume in X-Men was so clunky that he could barely move around in it, let alone pull off all the high-flying antics of his role. He told Superhero Hype that the suit was claustrophobic and that it was “very strange to have to attend to makeup at the same time you’re trying to attend to a character.” Doesn’t that describe just about every Marvel movie ever made?

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18. Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swann (Pirates of the Caribbean)

Corsets might not look painful when compared to a bulky blue Beast outfit, but it’s telling that these undergarments were in fashion at the same time as dungeons and iron maidens. Keira Knightley found wearing one literally suffocating in Pirates of the Caribbean. So much so, in fact, that she refused to put one on for her next movie, King Arthur. And she’s actually now made an explicit effort to avoid costume dramas, opting for nice jeans-wearing roles in indie films like Begin Again instead.

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17. Selma Blair as Ursula Udders (A Dirty Shame)

Best-known for her stringy kiss with Sarah Michelle-Gellar in Cruel Intentions, Selma Blair had an equally, er, prominent turn as the busty Ursula Udders in A Dirty Shame. And to get into character, she had to strap on a pair of humongous fake melons that required four hours of makeup and cost $5,000 to make. Plus, because of their high silicone content, the prominent structures would fracture if exposed to studio lighting for too long, so the pressure was on to shoot quickly.

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16. Buddy Ebsen as The Tin Man (Wizard of Oz)

Buddy Ebsen was the first choice to play the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, but he had to drop out when he suffered a near-fatal anaphylactic reaction to the aluminium soot in his costume. And in his autobiography, Ebsen described exactly how he had suffered, revealing, “The cramps in my arms advanced into my chest to the muscles that controlled my breathing. If this continued, I wouldn’t even be able to take a breath. I was sure I was dying.”

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15. Boris Karloff as The Monster (Frankenstein)

The 1931 version of Frankenstein remains the most iconic, though this would’ve been of little comfort to Boris Karloff, who had to wear 70 pounds of makeup for the ghoulish role. Oh, and add to that the fact that the makeup contained poisonous lead – and that the role involved lugging other actors around, all while Karloff had a bad back. In sum, then, it sounds about as much fun as having a couple of giant bolts rammed into your neck.

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13. Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique (X-Men: First Class)

“It used to take eight hours, which is lovely. Now it only takes three,” Jennifer Lawrence told The Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon when he asked about getting gussied up for her turn as Mystique in X-Men: First Class. So yes, the process was pretty arduous, but on top of the long hours, the makeup actually aggravated Lawrence’s skin, too. And so for the sequel of the hit movie, she got to wear a body suit instead – which seems like a fair reward for her suffering.

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12. Peter Weller as RoboCop (RoboCop)

How could anyone complain about wearing one of the most iconic outfits ever? Well, maybe ask Peter Weller, whose initial suit-up sessions lasted ten hours. And afterwards, he’d often burn out on-set from the weight, heat and exertion. In fact, simply because the suit was so hard to move in, the filmmakers decided to make the struggle part of the character, which explains RoboCop’s very distinctive stiff walk.

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11. Tim Curry as Darkness (Legend)

After his liberating cross-dressing turn in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Tim Curry must have been distraught at having to sit through five-hour makeup sessions to transform into a goofy demon overlord in Legend. In fact, the neck injuries that Curry endured from his three-foot horns were probably only slightly more painful than having to listen to Tom Cruise hamming up an awful English accent.

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10. Julia Roberts as The Queen (Mirror Mirror)

Remember that Snow White movie that was made a few years back before The Huntsman? Thought not. Well, in it, Julia Roberts plays an evil queen with an oversized dress that was so heavy it actually caused her to strain a leg muscle. In fact, the 60-pound bronze dress was so massive that it wouldn’t fit through doorways, meaning that Roberts actually had to get dressed in a special tent.

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9. Jim Carrey as The Grinch (The Grinch)

Jim Carrey’s turn as Dr. Seuss’ villainous Christmas party pooper The Grinch is legendary simply for how awful his costume was to wear. In fact, Carrey told U.K. TV host Graham Norton that the experience was “like being buried alive each day” and revealed that he actually had to undergo torture training from a CIA coach to deal with it. Plus, he mastered his own survival technique when he was getting suited up: he listened to the Bee Gees to stay calm… Or stay alive?

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8. Idris Elba as Krall (Star Trek Beyond)

Idris Elba is unrecognizable as the evil alien Krall in Star Trek: Beyond. It took a full four hours to falsify his face, and he had to spend up to 18 hours donning the outfit on-set, too. (Which, on reflection, sounds like a breach of workers’ rights.) It’s no surprise, then, that Elba was so eager to get out of the outfit at the end of the day that he’d usually just tear it off. And once he tore his eyebrows off with it!

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7. John Matuszak as Sloth (The Goonies)

Before proper CGI, animatronics were used to animate things like dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and Sloth in The Goonies. John Matuszak’s Sloth outfit took five hours to get on, consisted of 15 layers of prosthetics and also included mechanics, which were used to coordinate his prosthetic left eye to blink with his real right peeper. That said, just imagine how freaky he would’ve been if his eyes had blinked separately!

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6. Robin Williams as Popeye (Popeye)

Those distinctive oversized forearms on Robin Williams’ Popeye may not look too extreme, but they actually took an hour and a half to get on. Plus, the fake brawn had the nasty side-effect of cutting off the circulation to his real arms. As Williams later told Playboy, “They tied me off almost as if I were a junkie.” So much so that, in fact, that shooting would have to stop while Williams regained his blood-flow – and then they’d only get in about half an hour of shooting before it got cut off again!

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5. Jeff Goldblum as Seth Brundle (The Fly)

You’ll never look at Jeff “Cool dude in Jurassic Park” Goldblum the same way again after seeing him deformed and eating his own vomit in The Fly. In fact, several actors turned down the role because of the plethora of prosthetics it required. And to achieve his stomach-churning look at the end of the film, Goldblum had to undergo makeup sessions that would last up to five hours. Plus, he even needed a speech therapist to help him talk through his countless fake teeth.

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4. John Hurt as John Merrick (The Elephant Man)

Given the amount of torment John Hurt went through in portraying Elephant Man John Merrick, what living with his condition must actually have been like is unthinkable. Hurt’s prosthetics took eight hours to dollop on and another two to remove. The actor didn’t hide his anguish over the process, though, and was once heard telling his wife, “I think they finally managed to make me hate acting.”

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3. Gwyneth Paltrow as Rosemary (Shallow Hal)

Gooey 2001 rom-com Shallow Hal saw Gwyneth Paltrow wear an elaborate fat suit and prosthetics that took four hours to get on. The suit weighed 25 pounds, and it forced Paltrow to change everything about her movements, from walking to sitting. Paltrow later told the LA Times that wearing the outfit was an eye-opening experience, and she said the way strangers interacted with her obese self was both “upsetting” and “isolating.”

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2. Max von Sydow as Father Merrin (The Exorcist)

Legendary actor Max von Sydow was such a perfect fit for the role of Father Merrin in The Exorcist that he got the part despite being 36 years younger than the character he portrayed. This meant a lot of work had to be done to age him, however. And so – as if being on the cursed film set weren’t enough – von Sydow had to endure having his face stretched and covered in latex in a four-hour makeup process.

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1. Paul Bettany as Vision (Avengers: Age of Ultron)

Looking at Paul Bettany’s character in Avengers: Age of Ultron, you’d think that he was just wearing very elaborate makeup, right? Nope. It’s actually a skin-tight mask that, along with the skin-tight body suit, took over three hours to put on. And Bettany said that after four days he had to keep telling himself how lucky he was in life, just so he could struggle on inside it. Plus, just like Idris Elba, he relished literally ripping it off after a long ten-hour day.