If you do a quick Google search for “Celebrities who wear dentures”, you’ll get a torrent of results about celebs that have veneers, crowns, and other dental cosmetics completely unrelated to dentures.
It’s great if you’re actually interested in celebs who have veneers or crowns, but we’re living in the 2020s—the age of perfect teeth and affordable veneers—and that category spans 90% of models, film stars, and entertainers.
It’s confusing, and as most sites seem to be falling victim to this misleading information, we decided to turn the tables and do something a little more authentic.
In this guide, we’ll look at the famous people who actually wear dentures. Admittedly, they are not easy to find, which is likely why so many people are reluctant to write about them. After all, very few celebs are willing to admit to having dentures or other cosmetic dental work, even if the signs are glaringly obvious.
Still, we’ve done a little digging and have arrived at some interesting conclusions. But before we get to those, we should add that this article is for entertainment purposes only and everything contained herein is just our opinion—we’re not stating conclusively that these guys wear dentures!
Eddie van Halen
Eddie van Halen is one of the greatest rock guitarists that the world has ever seen, a true legend of his time and one of the many unfortunate victims of 2020—the year we’d all like to forget.
Eddie lived a life of excess, with reports suggesting that he was drinking and smoking regularly by the age of 12. When we were playing with GI Joe, he was getting drunk and chain-smoking!
Unsurprisingly, his life of excess caught up with him and he began losing his teeth.
In one interview, he remembers struggling to play a reed instrument when he began losing his bottom teeth. Rather than book an appointment with a dentist, he made his own prosthesis and just popped it in his mouth when he needed to play.
There are many reports of Van Halen wearing dentures and while none of these have been confirmed, it would be a fair assumption to make.
And if they’re good enough for a rock god, they’re good enough for everyone!
Joe Biden
In 2019, during the Democratic debate, Joe Biden seemed to lose control of his dentures, albeit momentarily. It fueled the debate on whether or not Biden wore dentures and lead many to conclude that he did.
There is also a chance that he was just repositioning a piece of gum, but Biden was 76 at the time and had near-perfect teeth, so it certainly wouldn’t be a surprise if he did wear dentures.
For a time, Joe Biden’s dentures even had their own Twitter account, although the author clearly got bored with the gimmick quite quickly, as only a handful of posts were made back when Biden was the VP.
A hashtag referring to his dentures still makes an appearance now and then, and more often than not it’s used by his detractors to mock the fact that he wears dentures. But come on…we’re talking about a 78-year-old man who has lived through some incredibly tough times and still looks good.
Regardless of what you think of his politics, he’s still walking, talking, and making big decisions past the average life expectancy for US males. People definitely shouldn’t be deriding his health or looks.
If you can get to that age without losing your mobility, mind, or smile (fake or not) you’re doing something right.
Also, it goes without saying, but there’s nothing wrong with wearing dentures!
A year after this apparent mishap, Biden became the 46th president of the United States, and if he does indeed wear dentures, he’s in pretty good company.
George Washington famously wore dentures after suffering from oral health problems throughout his life. According to legend, his dentures were made of wood, but in reality, they were made from ivory, animal teeth, human teeth, and metal alloys.
Because, like all denture wearers, he didn’t just have one set. Even modern dentures rarely last beyond 10 years, so you can imagine how flimsy they were back in the 18th century!
Steve-O (Nearly)
Steve-O is one of many celebs with dentures…according to the internet. But in reality, he doesn’t, and he has been pretty clear about this in the past. In fact, he documented his entire oral health history in a YouTube video posted in late-2019.
He admits to never paying much attention to his dental health and to having problems with his gums, teeth, and breath. In the early days, his teeth were ground down to nubs and fitted with crowns, but they didn’t last, and he says that he had a new set of teeth for each of the three Jackass movies.
Despite having a lot of expensive cosmetic work done, he continued to neglect his oral hygiene. He brushed but didn’t floss, and the bacteria got so bad that it began to eat away at his gums.
His most recent set of fake teeth required extensive bone grafts, as he had very little of his original teeth left for the fake ones to latch onto.
At the time of the video, he was just 45 years old, but had already accepted his fate and acknowledged that a full set of dentures was in his near future.
So, while he doesn’t have dentures now, he may have them in the future. It’s a shame for the Jackass star, but he has accepted his fate.
His story serves as a warning and an inspiration.
Firstly, if you don’t practice proper dental hygiene, you will get gum disease and suffer from problems such as severe bad breath, receding gums, and decay, all of which can lead to tooth loss.
You need to brush regularly and floss at least once per day to remove the bacteria that forms in between your teeth.
After all, Steve-o is a former drug addict who has spent time in prison, dived head-first into a pool of elephant poo, worn a jellyfish for a hat, shot fireworks out of his backside, and snorted wasabi, and yet he claims that “not flossing” is his biggest regret.
If that doesn’t spur you into action and have you reaching for the floss, nothing will.
Secondly, while dentures are often given negative connotations, they are usually better than the alternative and when done properly, they can look like the real deal.
Think about it this way, would you rather have misshaped, stained, and half-rotten teeth with really bad breath, or a mouthful of pristine dentures?
If Steve-o had his time again, he would probably do things a little differently. He might still have walked alligator tightropes and jumped from buildings, but maybe he would have flossed more and been less wary of dentists.
Florence Henderson
Florence Henderson is best known for her role as Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch, where she featured in over 100 episodes from 1969 to 1974. In the 2000s, she became a spokesperson for a leading denture cleaner and it’s widely assumed that she was a denture wearer as well.
However, it’s still debated. While you’ll find a plethora of articles stating that she did indeed wear dentures, she seems to have suggested that she still had her own teeth.
We have no reason not to believe her. After all, she wouldn’t be the first to endorse a product that she didn’t actually use, and as she had great teeth and was within the usual age range for denture wearers, it’s easy to see why she was chosen.
Unfortunately, Florence Henderson passed away in 2016. She was 82 at the time and only a year or two earlier she had admitted to still having her own teeth.
She claims to have had four impacted wisdom teeth removed when she was in her early 20s and said that this scared her straight. From that point, she committed herself to a strict dental hygiene routine, with regular brushing, flossing, and visits to her dentist.
It clearly worked!
If you make it to 82 with teeth so straight and healthy that people think they’re fake, you’re clearly doing something right. If true, it’s proof that you can hold onto your own teeth well into your senior years if you practice good dental hygiene.
Winston Churchill
Churchill was the British Prime Minister during World War II and is considered to be one of the greatest Brits ever. He was also a denture wearer, and he didn’t shy away from the fact.
There are stories of Churchill spitting out his dentures and throwing them across the room when he was angry. And when his dentist was drafted to join the war effort, Churchill tore up his papers, insisting that he was needed at home and would be more useful as a dentist.
Legend has it that Churchill’s dentist was ordered to manufacture the dentures in a way that preserved the great orator’s famous lisp. He understood that his lisp was one of the things that made him unique and ensured his voice was instantly recognizable, and he didn’t want to lose that.
If not for that minor adjustment, those great speeches (“we shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on the landing grounds”, “never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”, etc.,) would have sounded decidedly different.
If you’re wondering what a prime minister’s teeth looked like circa 1940, wonder no more, as they are currently owned by a collector and there are multiple pictures of them online. The teeth, made when Churchill was around 65 years old, fetched £15,200 at auction (around $20,000) back in 2010.
Clark Gable
Clark Gable is a true legend of the silver screen and a man known for his charm and good looks, but legend has it that he removed all of his teeth in his thirties following a bad gum infection.
This didn’t entirely fix his issues, either, because just like Steve-o, he began suffering from extremely bad breath.
In fact, his co-stars often complained about his breath, noting that it made filming with him very difficult and unpleasant. It may have been caused by bad hygiene after the dentures were fitted but they could have also been low quality.
After all, we’re talking about a major dental surgery that took place in 1933 and involved multiple tooth extractions and severe gum disease. It would be a challenge even for modern dentists, and we’re talking about a time before even antibiotics were in common use!
Still, the severe Halitosis didn’t stop him from having an endless string of flings and relationships with models and actresses.
Janice Dickinson
Janice Dickinson was a megastar model in the 1970s and 80s and she later appeared as a judge on America’s Top Model. We’ve also seen her on several other reality TV shows in the US and the UK, and she even appeared as a guest judge on Finland’s Top Model.
She has spoken extensively about her cosmetic surgery in the past and while she hasn’t been as open with her dental history, we do have one story to draw upon.
In 2011, she gave the tabloids something to get excited about when she lost a partial set of dentures while eating lunch with Kourtney Kardashian and friends. She took them out before eating and surreptitiously hid them in a napkin, only to completely forget about them.
We’ve all been there.
Janice scrambled around on the floor, desperately searching for her teeth, and admitted that she looked like “Lucille Ball on crack” as she caused a ruckus in the restaurant. She eventually found the fake teeth (she gave them a quick wash before popping them back in) but this story gives us a window into her dental history.
Janice, who turned 66 in February 2021, was just 56 at the time. However, she has been pretty vocal about her drug and alcohol problems in the past and this may have led to her tooth loss.
She states that she was using copious amounts of alcohol and cocaine and she may have smoked throughout this time. In fact, she was famously snapped smoking a cigarette in 2016, shortly after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Smoking not only increases the prevalence of stains and other unsightly issues, but it also limits blood flow, thus preventing the gums from properly healing. Over time, they recede, and the teeth become diseased.
If this continues for many years and is worsened by poor dental hygiene, drugs and/or alcohol, the teeth may loosen and require extraction. At this point, it’s possible to install implants, but in many instances, the gums and bone are just not strong enough for those implants to take and dentures are the only option.
Hopefully, Janice will avoid such issues and stay healthy for years to come. In an industry where people are scared to open up about their use of implants, veneers, crowns, and dentures, as well as general cosmetic surgery, it’s refreshing to hear someone talk so freely.
Does Emma Watson Wear Dentures?
The easy and quick answer to this question is “No”, and it’s a pretty resounding no.
Emma Watson is proof that the smallest of throwaway comments can lead to a snowball of misinformation and nonsense.
When she played Hermione in the Harry Potter films, Watson was just a child. In fact, the first film was released when she was just 11 years old, and she was even younger when it began filming.
As a result, she still had many of her baby teeth and these began falling out during filming, leaving unsightly gaps. In the Harry Potter books, Hermione was known for having big “buck teeth”, so Watson was given prosthetics to wear. These covered her missing teeth and ensured she had a consistently large smile throughout filming.
Those fake teeth were discarded when they no longer served their purpose, but because gossip spreads quickly and without anyone checking their sources, a significant portion of the internet now thinks that Emma Watson has false teeth.
We even saw a respectable denture manufacturer refer to Emma Watson as one of “Hollywood’s youngest denture wearers”.
It’s crazy, but just to clarify, while Emma Watson may have had some cosmetic dental work done (who hasn’t?) she does not wear dentures!
If we refer to her as a “denture wearer” just because she wore some fake teeth during a film, then Keanu Reeves is a hot-shot lawyer/son of Satan, Tom Cruise is a skilled cocktail waiter who works for the secret service, and Morgan Freeman is both God and a lowly prisoner.
Summary: Famous People who Wear Dentures
In similar articles about celebs who wear dentures, we’ve seen claims that everyone from Ben Affleck and George Clooney to “Snooki” wears dentures.
None of them do, but they do have crowns or veneers. In some cases, celebrities have been slated as “denture wearers” because of a single crown that they confessed to having several years ago.
It’s crazy. If you’re wondering why celebs are so reluctant to admit to having veneers or wearing dentures, you have your answer. It seems that you can’t say anything these days without someone picking it up, exaggerating it, and then making grand claims.
It’s important to remember that celebs are just like the rest of us, albeit with decidedly more money and bigger houses, and when it comes to cosmetic dentistry, they’re even more likely to splash the cash and get those fake pearly whites.
