Perma-portraits... tattoo of choice for stars is face portrait

Forget star and heart tattoos, celebrities now have designs on portraits. Susannah Butter looks at the stars wearing faces under their sleeves
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What do Diego Maradona, Fearne Cotton and Rita Ora have in common? It’s not just that they have all been incredibly successful in their respective fields. They are just some of the celebrities who have people’s faces inked on their bodies.

Ten years ago it might have been dragon tattoos and Chinese symbols — as tastefully modelled by Spice Girl Mel B — that everyone wanted, but now it’s portraits.

Pop princess Rita Ora has a portrait of Aphrodite discreetly painted on the inside of her left arm. She likes Greek mythology and says Aphrodite was “almost like the cool Marilyn Monroe of the Greek goddesses. I like that”. The arm is a favourite body part for portrait tattoos. Like Ora, fellow singer Emeli Sandé chose it for an image of someone she admires. She has Frida Kahlo on her right forearm and says the rawness of the Mexican artist’s work was her inspiration. “I think a lot of females feel, especially in this industry, that they have to be pretty acceptable on all levels.”

With this in mind, Fearne Cotton had a sultry Fifties pin-up mermaid tattoed on her back, although she would like it to be more prominent. She says if she wasn’t on television she would cover her body in ink: “But I can’t do Children In Need with a naked woman on my arm, can I?”

Celebrities getting these tattoos has done wonders for business, says Craig Burton, an artist at Soho’s Frith Street Tattoo. “Many more people are coming in now that celebs are advertising body art. When Rihanna got a tattoo of a falcon we had 15 people in our shop the week after wanting the same one.” With this in mind, we are probably soon to see a crop of perma-portraits tattoed across Londoners. Stories of people getting their favourite public figures inked on their bodies are already common — there’s the man with 82 images of Julia Roberts on him, and 19-year-old Lewis Jolly, who paid £180 to have Boris Johnson on his thigh because he is “such a good bloke”. One woman even got all her 182 Facebook friends stamped on her torso.

Celebrity portrait tattoos are also popular at Frith Street. “I’ve seen Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, even Homer Simpson. But pictures of family members and loved ones are the most popular.”

This is something David Beckham will understand. He has so many tattoos that it would be rude for him not to include Mrs B in the collection. A copy of Victoria in a Brigitte Bardot-style photoshoot she did is on his left arm with the phrase “forever by your side” next to it.

Tattoo Posh Spice has company, though. There is an angel on David’s right arm and two images of Jesus on his torso. “Everybody’s got a way of expressing their feelings, and mine is through my tattoos,” he says.

Actor Sylvester Stallone has a tattoo of his wife, Jennifer Flavin; rapper Eminem has his daughter Hailie Jade Scott, and former boxing champion Mike Tyson still has ex-wife Robin Givens inked onto his arm, even though they are divorced.

It seems that once there’s one face adorning the body it’s hard to stop. Lily Allen recently got a series of symbols on her wrist, including a smiley face and Homer Simpson. Tyson also has a collection of faces. Along with the Givens tattoo, he has Che Guevara, Chairman Mao and tennis player Arthur Ashe, who in 1975 became the first black man to win Wimbledon.

Tyson is not the only admirer of Che Guevara. Diego Maradona carries the Cuban revolutionary on his arm and in his heart. He also has Fidel Castro, who, along with God, brings him good fortune and is the reason the Argentinian football legend says he gets up in the morning.

And we can hope having a portrait tattoo will bring good luck for Bradley Wiggins — who has a spooky face on his left bicep — across the Channel too. If the cyclist wins the Tour de France this weekend, perhaps everyone will soon be sporting a face under their sleeves.

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