Celebrities who don't wash until they smell: Jake Gyllenhaal labels bathing 'unnecessary'

Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell have all said they wait for the 'stink' or visible dirt before they wash themselves and their children

In a recent interview, Jake Gyllenhaal labelled washing 'unnecessary'. EPA

The debate about Hollywood bathing etiquette continues.

A week after Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis sparked controversy for not bathing their children daily, actor Jake Gyllenhaal has said he doesn't bathe himself regularly.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, the Brokeback Mountain star said he finds bathing "unnecessary".

“More and more I find bathing to be less necessary, at times,” Gyllenhaal, 40, said.

“I do believe, because Elvis Costello is wonderful, that good manners and bad breath get you nowhere. So I do that. But I do also think that there’s a whole world of not bathing that is also really helpful for skin maintenance, and we naturally clean ourselves.”

Kutcher, 43, and Kunis, 37, opened up about their showering habits while speaking to fellow actor Dax Shepard on his Armchair Expert podcast.

The couple are parents to Wyatt, 6, and Dimitri, 4, and said they only bathe the children when “you can see the dirt on them”.

“I didn’t have hot water growing up as a child, so I didn’t shower much anyway,” Kunis said. “But when I had children, I also didn’t wash them every day. I wasn’t that parent that bathed my newborns – ever.”

Kutcher backed his wife up, saying, "If you can see the dirt on them, clean them. Otherwise, there’s no point."

Since the podcast was release Shepard, 46, and his wife, Kristen Bell, 41, have said they take a similar approach to washing their own daughters, Lincoln, 8, and Delta, 6.

"We bathed our children every single night prior to bed as their routine, then somehow, they just started going to sleep on their own without their routine and we had to start saying [to each other] like, ‘Hey, when was the last time you bathed them?'," Shepard said when appearing on The View with his wife.

"I’m a big fan of waiting for the stink. Once you catch a whiff, that’s biology’s way of letting you know you need to clean it up," Bell agreed. "There’s a red flag. Honestly, it’s just bacteria; once you get bacteria you gotta be like, ‘Get in the tub or the shower.’ So, I don’t hate what Mila and Ashton are doing. I wait for the stink."