Tattoos have always fascinated children and horrified parents. The same thing that kids love is what parents fear: that a tattoo lasts forever.
This is why celebrity tattoos are so fascinating to us. For actors and singers, their brand is intimately tied to how they look. And getting a tattoo proves they aren’t afraid to change their famous looks up, even if it does possibly affect their bottom line.
Some celeb tattoos are breathtakingly beautiful. And some may just be the stupidest things you’ve ever seen. To help you pick the best (and worst) ones out, we’ve rounded up the most fascinating celebrity tattoos.
Miley Cyrus
When you imagine a celebrity tattoo, you probably imagine some kind of very colorful image. But for Miley Cyrus, her favorite tattoo is a handwritten note.
Cyrus is a longtime fan of both Yoko Ono and her husband, late Beatles legend John Lennon. She even went so far as to do a cover of Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s song “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” with their son, Sean Lennon.
All of this seemingly made a positive impression on Ono, and she sent Cyrus a handwritten note expressing her pride. And Cyrus loves that note so much that she had it immortalized as a tattoo.
Rihanna
Over the years, many people have declared that Rihanna is a musical goddess. But to this legendary singer, the real goddess was her grandmother, a late family member that Rihanna idolized.
In order to remember her grandmother, Rihanna got an impressive tattoo of the Egyptian goddess Isis. If you’re rusty on your mythology, Isis is the symbol of motherhood. This ink matches Rihanna’s love of all things Egyptian (she also has a tattoo of the god Horus Behdety on her ankle) while honoring her grandmother’s life.
Paris Jackson
Not that it’s a competition, but when it comes to honoring the lives of others, Paris Jackson may have everyone else beat. That is because this daughter of Michael Jackson has about 50 tattoos, and at least nine of them are explicitly there to honor the life and success of her famous father.
But she didn’t stop at honoring Michael Jackson. She also has ink to honor Prince, John Lennon, Van Halen, and David Bowie. All of these singers led amazing lives, and those lives now live on through Paris Jackson.
Scarlett Johansson
It’s possible Scarlett Johansson’s tattoo is meant to honor family as well. But since this celeb is even more tight-lipped than her character Black Widow, we may never know.
What we can tell is that the tattoo is a very elaborate rose vine. This may be to honor her daughter, Rose. Then again, it may just be the famous actor’s way of telling the world that she really, really likes roses!
Christina Aguilera
Not all tattoos are very complex or have a deeper meaning. In some cases, they are just as silly as they look.
That’s certainly the case with Christina Aguilera, who has a tattoo on her neck that reads “Xtina.” The ink helps to memorialize her nickname, but her nickname is basically her actual name.
We love Aguilera, but we have to say it: tattooing your own name on your body is downright weird!
Eve
Some people spend their whole lives trying to come up with the idea for a perfect tattoo. Some people, though, have a far less selective process!
That definitely includes the rap star Eve. She has a pair of dog paw prints on her chest that she got when she was only 18. Why did she get this ink? Because someone dared her to, of course!
She has other tattoos as well, but we can’t help but admire the moxy of getting a strange tattoo in her youth and proudly showing it to the world when her career began to explode.
Ben Affleck
By now, we’ve seen Ben Affleck in all manner of silly costumes for roles, especially when he plays Batman. But it turns out that the silliest thing Ben Affleck has ever worn is tucked safely underneath the suit.
That’s because Ben Affleck has an absolutely massive tattoo of a Phoenix on his back. You know how some people get small tattoos in places that are easy to hide? This is basically the exact opposite.
Now that Jennifer Lopez is back in his life, is it too much to hope that she will convince Affleck to laser the tattoo off? Then again, if he did that and the two broke up, we have a feeling that ink-happy Affleck would make sure this Phoenix rose again.
Hayden Panettiere
These days, many people get the deliberately misspelled motto “no regerts” on their bodies as a joke. Hayden Panettiere did something that is nearly the same thing, but now she has no choice but to laugh about it.
When she was young, her dad gave her the classic advice that whenever one door closes, another one opens. As an adult, she wanted to get a tattoo of this advice, opting for the Italian phrase “Vivere senza rimpianti.”
It translates to “Live without regrets,” but she only noticed that she misspelled the Italian after the ink was on her body. As she laughingly told Glamour, “I literally have to live by that advice” regarding her tattoo.
Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp has made some bad tattoo choices before. The most famous example is when he got a “Winona Forever” tattoo while briefly dating Winona Ryder and changed it to “Wino Forever” after they broke up.
But we can’t help but love this tattoo of a sparrow flying over the word “Jack.” It effectively has two meanings. One obviously honors his famous role in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Jack Sparrow. The other meaning is to honor his son, who also happens to be named “Jack.”
Jennifer Lawrence
Jennifer Lawrence has cultivated a reputation for being very quirky. And some cynical fans have debated how much of that is a kind of manic pixie dream girl act she puts on to land roles or if she really is that weird.
Based on this tattoo, we’re going to go with “just that weird.” If you didn’t recognize it, this chemical formula for water. According to Lawrence in an interview with HitFix, her thought process was “Well, I’m always going to need to be hydrated, so I guess I should just get ‘H2O’ on my hand.”
The story was already pretty weird, but Lawrence later found out that the two should have been placed below the laters instead of above. “I should’ve Googled it before I got it tattooed on my body forever,” she ruefully said.