More than two decades later, Taylor Momsen still (mostly) fits into her childhood Grinch costume.
In a new Instagram video, 32-year-old Momsen, who starred as Cindy Lou Who in the 2000 live-action version of Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, tried on the same festive dress that her character wore in the movie.
“Yes…that is my real Cindy costume from the Grinch movie 25 years later…it still (kind of) fits,” she captioned the post. “What a surreal holiday season.”
The clip shows the Gossip Girl alum trying to finagle the sleeves around her arm with the help of an assistant. As she lifts the garment over her head and positions it onto her body, the dress barely hits the top of her thighs. The next scene sees Momsen standing in front of a mirror as she gets the dress readjusted to wear strapless.
She then moves to a photoshoot, where a recording of her band’s latest single, “Where Are You Christmas?,” a remix of the song she sang in the Ron Howard movie, plays overhead.
Momsen was just seven when she landed the role of Cindy Lou Who opposite Jim Carrey in the holiday classic. Reflecting on her time working with Carrey in a recent interview with Vulture, she said: “I always felt really safe with Jim. I liked being around him.
“At such a young age, to watch an artist who is that serious at what they’re doing even while playing this very over-the-top character, it was clear to me how much he was putting into it and how much of an artist he was,” she continued.
She has previously opened up about how she was “made fun of relentlessly” for her role.
“The Grinch changed my life in a multitude of ways,” she said on a 2023 episode of the Podcrushed podcast, adding that she and her family moved around constantly for her career following her breakout role.
“So any time I would start school or go somewhere else, I don’t even think the kids knew my name. I was just Grinch girl. So it was, ‘Grinch girl, Grinch girl, Grinch girl.’ Not even character name. Just Grinch girl.
“I got used to it, but it was alienating,” she said.
Later, Momsen went on to land her most notable role as Jenny Humphrey in the hit series Gossip Girl. However, she decided to exit the series ahead of its fifth and penultimate season in 2011 to focus on music.
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She currently performs as the lead singer of her punk rock band The Pretty Reckless, which recently released a holiday album, Taylor Momsen’s Pretty Reckless Christmas.