Stars who got tattoos to mark their movie and TV roles

By Joseph Longo and Isaac Feldberg
July 24, 2018 at 04:00 PM EDT

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A (tatted) time to remember

Tommy Dorfman/Instagram; Andy Voegeli/Twitter; Janel Parrish/Instagram

It's common for castmates to say they've bonded while shooting movies and TV shows, but we have an inkling some get along betters than others. Here's a list of stars who proved they're family by getting inked.

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Maisie Williams: Game of Thrones

Maisie Williams/Instagram

The GoT star has been inked twice in honor of her role on the HBO fantasy epic. Her latest, revealed this week, will be the words “no one” in red, a reference to the way her character Arya was instructed to think of herself while being trained as an assassin at the House of Black and White.

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Sophie Turner: Game of Thrones

Lauren Winzer Instagram; ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images

Turner, who plays Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones, bears the sigil of House Stark and the inscription “The pack survives.” She also shares a tattoo with Williams, cementing the off-screen bond they also showcase on screen playing sister Starks: Both were inked with the date on which they were simultaneously hired onto the series.

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Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, and Jeremy Renner: Avengers: Infinity War

Susan Downey

Five of the original six Avengers were inked to mark the release of Avengers: Infinity War, the first of a two-part story intended to wind down some of the actors’ roles in the gargantuan Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Mark Ruffalo opted out.) The tat layers a numeral 6 on top of the Avengers logo, presumably in reference to heroes Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye.

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Neil Patrick Harris: A Series of Unfortunate Events

Neil Patrick Harris Instagram; Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

To honor the season 2 renewal of his Netflix hit, the Emmy winner got his first-ever tattoo: a Volunteer Fire Department (V.F.D.) insignia, a.k.a. a “scamp stamp.” The V.F.D. symbol represents an ultra-private society which Count Olaf's (Harris) young relatives Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire belong to.

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Tom Holland: Spider-Man: Homecoming

BacktotheMovies/YouTube

The British actor commemorated nabbing the role as the web-slinging superhero with some hidden ink. Holland has a tattoo of the Spider-man logo on the bottom of his foot, which he doesn’t recommend. He had to go through the “painful” process three times due to wear and tear.

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Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, Dominic Monaghan, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd and Sean Bean: Lord of the Rings

Orlando Bloom Instagram

There's nine of them, but only eight got tattoos. With the notable exception of John Rhys-Davies, the cast of Lord of the Rings celebrated their mega-franchise with tats of number 9 written in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Elvish Tengwar script. Monaghan told EW in 2016 they all went back to Middle Earth (a.k.a an old tattoo parlor in Wellington, New Zealand) to get inked.

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Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney, Cara Delevingne, and David Ayer: Suicide Squad

Courtesy David Ayer

It's one thing to go get tattoos with castmates, but it's another thing to give each other matching tattoos. Suicide Squad’s Margot Robbie dressed as Harley Quinn and bestowed director David Ayer with some ink, while Joel Kinnaman's tat is courtesy of Will Smith. Jai Courtney and Cara Delevingne also joined in on the permanant fun.

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Selena Gomez, Tommy Dorfman, and Alisha Boe: 13 Reasons Why

Tommy Dorfman/Instagram

Gomez is a producer on Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why, which tackled teen suicide at length across its first season. She and two cast members have semicolon tattoos, in reference to the show’s content and also to Project Semicolon, an organization dedicated to mental health advocacy. The tat references how a semicolon continues a sentence instead of ending it with an abrupt period, a metaphor for someone’s decision to keep living despite the inclination to take their own life.

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Troian Bellisario, Ashley Benson, Shay Mitchell, Sasha Pieterse, Lucy Hale, and Janel Parrish: Pretty Little Liars

Janel Parrish Instagram

As Pretty Little Liars wrapped production, the sudsy teen drama’s six stars marked the occasion by getting their characters’ first initials tatted on their shushing fingers.

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Bryan Cranston: Breaking Bad

Andy Voegeli Twitter; Jesse Grant/Getty Images

The dastardly meth chef at the center of AMC’s now-iconic drama decided to finish out his last day on set by having a set decorator who was also a tattoo artist give him a miniature version of the Breaking Bad logo on his right ring finger.

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Aaron Paul: Breaking Bad

Andy Voegeli Twitter

Meanwhile, Cranston's partner in crime chose to have “no half measures” written in ink across his bicep, a reference to a pivotal storyline on Breaking Bad.

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Abby Lee Kershaw, Zoë Kravitz, Courtney Eaton, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and Riley Keough: Mad Max: Fury Road

Everett Collection

The women of Mad Max: Fury Road may not be shiny and chrome, but they did commemorate their time shooting the George Miller-directed dystopian actioner by getting matching tattoos, all of three little dots and a triangle.

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By Joseph Longo and Isaac Feldberg