Kate Bosworth is well known for her roles in movies such as her debut film, Blue Crush, and Bobby Darin’s biopic Beyond The Sea, which gave her widespread exposure.

But apart from her films, the actress is equally famous for her unique coloured eyes caused by a condition called heterochromia iridium.

For the unversed, the condition is a genetic and sometimes acquired condition in which a person has different-colored eyes. This subtle anomaly is extremely rare, with less than one percent of the world’s population being affected. 

Kate Bosworth's unique eyes caused by heterochromia iridius

Kate Bosworth's unique eyes caused by heterochromia iridius. (Source: Instagram)

The condition can manifest in three ways. Complete heterochromia is when both irises are a completely different color; segmental heterochromia when an iris has a segment that is a different color, and central heterochromia is when the irises match each other but have a ring of a different color around the pupils.

In Bosworth’s case, her left eye is blue, and her right one is hazel with a mixture of blue. 

Kate Bosworth Wore Contacts to Hide Heterochromia

These days she embraces her unique feature, but the change only came about recently.

During an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Bosworth said her condition was a defect, and she usually noticed it more “when the light is very grey.”

For most of her career, especially when she was starting in Hollywood, she wore contact lenses to hide her condition.

But it was not necessarily because the actress wanted to. Bosworth had to ‘even out’ her eye color because casting agents and directors had her wear colored contacts while filming to make her eyes appear less strange.

According to The Things, the negative attitude that people had towards her unqiue feature affected her acting appearances for a decade.

Kate Bosworth Encouraged to Embrace Natural Eye Color

Fortunately for Bosworth, she eventually met a casting director who did not mind her condition and allowed her to embrace it. 

In 2006 when she went to Australia to film Superman Returns, Bosworth met director Bryan Singer, who told her to ditch the lenses for the movie and go natural.

“One of the first things I had to do when I got to Australia was a screen test for my eyes with a wig and a costume just to see if Bryan wanted to keep them the way they are. And he decided that he wanted to,” the actress told The Sydney Morning Herald in a July 2006 interview.

Strangely, the director’s decision did not just influence how Bosworth’s character Lois Lane was perceived.

It also created visibility for people with different coloured eyes and led to the production of Lois Lane dolls with mismatched eyes. The actress noted that she found it strange that the dolls took after her in the interview.