Tattoos can be an incredible means of self-expression, especially for the creative-minded among us. As such, plenty of celebrities, including some of our biggest names in acting, singing, and performing, have meaningful tattoos—sometimes dozens of them.
From dark, bold body art to the tiniest line tattoos to a cluster of ink drawings that form a larger whole, the celebrities on this list have shown ingenuity and detail in their wearable art. Should you be searching for tattoo inspiration, there's something for everyone here.
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie has a ton of cool, intricate tattoos. In this case, her left arm originally had a dragon and Billy Bob Thornton's name on it, but she had that removed after their divorce. Instead, she replaced it with a list of coordinates for the birthplace of each of her children.
Selena Gomez
Selena Gomez (here in costume for Only Murders in the Building) has a tattoo of a rose with a dripping black stem on her back. It actually matches one that her pal Cara Delevingne has. Gomez explained in 2022, "She calls me Rosebud so it's a nickname. And I've always wanted a rose and now I got one, and I love it."
Kaley Cuoco
Fun fact: Kaley Cuoco has never actually confirmed what this tattoo's meaning is. It looks like a hummingbird with some cursive? It's actually one of several tattoos Cuoco has, including a large moth on her back and a paper plane for her show The Flight Attendant.
Sophie Turner
This pretty graphic triangle is actually three triangles representing Plato's theory that the soul is reason, spirit, and appetite; it's a matching tattoo with her brother. On her opposite elbow, she and Maisie Williams have "07.08.09" tattooed to remember the day they discovered they were cast in Game of Thrones.
Rihanna
You could put a lot of Rihanna's tattoos on this list (she has more than two dozen, after all). I happen to like the ones on her feet, from an elaborate crown (which is covering up a matching shark tattoo she had with Drake), and a "1988" for her birth year. Less visible on her inner ankle: a falcon representing light shining in the darkness.
Lena Headey
Lena Headey has a dragonfly tattoo on her foot; while she hasn't shared the exact meaning, she does talk about her love of getting inked. “I always want more. It’s a terrible thing,” she explained to MORE in 2015, reported by PEOPLE. “I’ll be outside a tattoo shop and hear the needle and think, ‘I could just get a little one that nobody would see...’”
Lily Collins
Lily Collin's rose tattoo on her foot dates back to 2014. If you look closely, the stem is actually made up of words and cites an Alice Walker quote: "the nature of this flower is to bloom." She also has a "Love Always and Forever" back tattoo with a small rose attached to the letter "L."
Lady Gaga
It's hard to pick from the couple dozen tattoos that Lady Gaga has amassed since she was 17, but the "monster paw" on her back was once her favorite. In a Reddit AMA, she explained, "It's the Monster Paw, the symbol of my fans as they have held their paws high in the crowd every night since we became a community...I cherish it for its meaning, the loyalty, devotion, and strength we share. I wanted it engraved on me forever."
Megan Fox
Megan Fox's most memorable tattoo—that of Marilyn Monroe on her forearm—is actually one she had covered up. She got it when she was 18 out of love for the late star, but in 2011 she confirmed she was having it lasered off because of its "negative energy."
Lana Del Rey
Each of Lana Del Rey's visible, known tattoos are in a script design, with cursive handwriting that are reflective of her sources of inspiration and loved ones. The side of her left hand has "Paradise," referencing her album name, and her right hand has "Trust No One" in the same place.
Emma Stone
Emma Stone has freely admitted to wanting to laser off her tattoo, but the story behind it is quite sweet: her mom was sick with cancer, and the whole family got tattoos when she successfully completed tratment (her mom's favorite song is "Blackbird" by Paul McCartney, and Stone had the singer draw blackbird feet for her as the basis of the design. It's supposed to be pencil thin!).
Thandiwe Newton
In 2022 Thandiwe Newton showed off a new chest tattoo of a beating heart. She did not discuss the tattoo when she debuted it, but what's awesome about the ink is that it's only ever visible when she wears a dramatic, deep-v-necked outfit—there's something a bit secretive about it, in other words.
Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson fully debuted her back tattoos in 2023 at the premiere of Asteroid City (although the rose design was first spotted in 2017 and is rumored to be a reference to her daughter Rose). The second, under her right shoulder-blade, is a lamb.
Jessica Alba
In an intriguing detail, Jessica Alba explained that she got this tiny wrist tattoo ("lotus" in Sanskrit) after a breakup but didn't offer many more details. She actually has a few more, including constellations for each of her children's Zodiac signs.
Dakota Johnson
Dakota Johnson has numerous tattoos, including a cluster on her right arm. Their fine-line style is particularly delicate; the script "tender" underneath a wilted daisy—"It's a lil ****ed up, but it's still a flower, like me," she noted of the latter—are both by tattoo artist Dr. Woo.
Emilia Clarke
At the Me Before You premiere, Emilia Clarke first showed off this bumblebee tattoo, done by Dr. Woo; her character also has a bumblebee tattoo. Clarke also has three dragons (naturally, a Game of Thrones reference to her character) inside her right wrist.
Hilary Duff
Hilary Duff has more than 20 teeny, tiny tattoos, and prefers celebrity artist Dr. Woo for her ink. She has a few on her arms, including this little heart that she got in 2013, and she also has a two-cent coin a little farther down (matching with Alanna Masterson).
Gisele Bündchen
Gisele Bündchen actually has a few subtle tattoos, but the star on her wrist (small, delicate, and meaningful) reportedly is one she got to honor her later grandmother, and was originally a design she drew on herself when she was younger that she turned into something permanent.
Cara Delevingne
Cara Delevingne has a number of various-sized tattoos, totaling more than 20 in all (including one she shares with pal Selena Gomez!); the elephant on her arm—courtesy of Dr. Woo—is particularly delicate, as is "breathe deep" in white ink on the same arm.
Kaia Gerber
Kaia Gerber has a bunch of teeny tiny tattoos that—unless you look carefully—you might miss. Here, we see the mini “23” on her right arm (which might refer to her walking the Chanel show on January 23, 2018), and her shoulder “Prez” for her brother.
Doja Cat
Doja Cat has seriously intricate and impressive ink. Getting a full back tattoo in fine-line style is not for the faint of heart, but this one's extremely cool: it's a bat skeleton by Mr. K, and she explained, "Bats often represent death in the sense of letting go of the old, and bringing in the new."
Halsey
One of our most-inked celebrities is probably Halsey, with over 40 to their name. You could honestly take your pick if you were looking for inspiration, but the script "I'm a loser baby" on the side of their neck as a reference "Loser" by Beck is a gorgeous delicate design.
Gigi Hadid
Blink and you'll miss Gigi Hadid's red tattoo on her inner arm: this one is from early 2021, and it is of her daughter Khai's name in Arabic. She also has a few others, including a pretty enormous dragon on her right hip, although it wasn't clear if it was temporary.
Bella Hadid
The Hadids have great tiny tattoos; Bella's "micro ink" includes two matching tattoos on each arm. Courtesy of Dr. Woo in 2020, they're Arabic script and they translate to “I love you” and “my love." She also has a teeny tiny delicate rose and angel wings.
Ashley Benson
Ashley Benson's has a dainty collection of tattoos, most of which are by JonBoy. Her right arm includes a block letter line tattoo of the words "pommes frites" (indicating a love of french fries—relatable), a plane, a delicate constellation, and the word "muggsy."
Miley Cyrus
If you like tattoos, Miley Cyrus should be a source of inspo, considering she has many. Some are delicate and fine-line, and others (like her pit bull Mary Jane on her right forearm, one of a few pets she has on her body) are more substantial but still quite detailed.
Billie Lourd
In 2017, Billie Lourd got a particularly meaningful tattoo. It's an ankle tattoo of a planet, moon, and stars, roughly the same one that her late mother Carrie Fisher had. She tagged Dr. Woo at the time and wrote "Happy birthday Mom" (Fisher would have just turned 61 at the time of the post).
Chrissy Teigen
Chrissy Teigen's tattoos honor her life and family. She has "John Luna Miles" in script on her right arm (and "Jack" underneath, following a pregnancy loss), the birthdays of important family members on her left, an elephant symbolizing a past life on her wrist, and a hand-drawn butterfly by her daughter Luna that she decided to make permanent.
Jourdan Dunn
Jourdan Dunn has some great (and often enormous) tattoos—including an enormous phoenix tattoo on her ribcage. The one at the nape of her neck is a tattoo of the Egyptian goddess Isis, and her left shoulder bears her name written in Arabic font—she's had them for a long time.
Zoe Kravitz
If you go down the rabbit hole of Zoë Kravitz's tattoos, you're bound to find inspiration—she has more than 50, some of them extremely delicate. It's obviously hard to pick, but her right hand and forearm are particularly ornate: leaf, crown, crescent moons with dots, and an arrow, cross, and the number five.
Hailey Bieber
Hailey Bieber's hand tattoos bring new meaning to the word delicate. There are honestly too many to count, but they include little chevron designs, star, flower, moon, dots, the last name "Baldwin," and even a small cursive "B" (courtesy of Dr. Woo).
Ariana Grande
With more than 60 tattoos, Ariana Grande has some good ink. Interestingly, the butterfly arm tattoos have faded with time, sometimes appearing very faintly and sometimes disappearing entirely. She also has some incredible and dark hand tattoos on that side.
