How Much Would These Actors Give To Take Back These Disastrous Roles?
25. Tommy Lee Jones (Batman Forever)
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Tommy Lee Jones is one of those actors with a clearly defined type. He certainly has his wry no-bulls*it thing. It’s most closely associated with his Oscar-winning role in The Fugitive. In 1995, Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever cast Jim Carrey as the Riddler and Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face. Although an undeniably talented actor, Jones comes off as gruff and cranky even when he’s playing happy. This causes him to fail at capturing the character’s fundamental duality.
24. Kathy Bates (The Day the Earth Stood Still)
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A space alien called Klaatu comes to Earth and ponders whether to wipe out humanity in this remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic. Bates made her reputation playing larger-than-life yet deeply human personalities. Here, her blustery portrayal of the U.S. defense secretary consists mainly of issuing orders and doomsday pronouncements. It’s a rather lackluster performance from this Academy Award winner.
23. Julia Roberts (Mirror, Mirror)
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Julia Roberts is a gifted actress. She has a charm that defies language. But her last few years have been filled with questionable career moves (i.e. her performance in Mirror, Mirror.) In the retelling of Snow White, Roberts played the Evil Queen. This role should’ve been an opportunity for her to really cut loose. Unfortunately, she played the character like the slightly meaner version of one of her rom-com portrayals.
22. Marion Cotillard (The Dark Knight Rises)
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All great actors are prone to having that one role that is so inferior to all their other work, and so bad that you wonder how they could have possibly been that bad. The first example of a great actor with a bad performance that comes to mind is Marion Cotillard in The Dark Knight Rises. Playing Miranda Tate, a board member of Wayne Enterprises, she isn’t given much to do with the role. This results in one of the most underwhelming villains.
21. Jared Leto (Blade Runner 2049)
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Blade Runner 2049 was visually stunning, and managed to find new ways to explore the questions of what it means to be alive. However, Leto’s stoic, soft-spoken portrayal of Niander Wallace didn’t mesh well with this movie at all. In a film about genetically created human clones, he was by far the least authentic character.
20. Robert De Niro (The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle)
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The Oscar winner is celebrated for his intense dramatic performances. He’s had some success with comedy, but Rocky and Bullwinkle proved to be an absolute low point for the actor. In the film, He tries to lampoon his Travis Bickle ‘You talkin’ to me?’ scene, but instead he just comes off like a geriatric crazy person with a really bad haircut.
19. Demi Moore (A Few Good Men)
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Director Rob Reiner’s 1992 military legal drama A Few Good Men (the first movie written by Aaron Sorkin) was an instant classic. Both Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson gave powerful performances that have endured the test of time. Unfortunately, as Lieutenant Commander JoAnne Galloway, Moore was stiff. She barely spoke above a whisper, and couldn’t match the emotional level or range of her cast mates.
18. Arnold Schwarzenegger (Batman & Robin)
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By the time of 1997’s Batman & Robin, a template was established that required huge stars to be cast as the Dark Knight’s famous foes. No star was bigger at that time than Arnold Schwarzenegger. No one doubts Schwarzenegger is a smart guy, but he’s really not credible as the brilliant scientist Victor Fries. His specialty is action, not emotion, so the scenes where he’s required to tear up at the thought of his terminally ill wife are rather dull and unconvincing.
17. Ingrid Bergman (Fear)
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The noir thriller, directed by Bergman’s husband Roberto Rossellini, revolves around the blackmailing of a cheating wife. Unfortunately, the parallels of her real life (he actress and Rossellini had a scandalous real-life extramarital affair in the late 1940s) seem to have paralyzed Bergman. She sleep-walks through her role, giving the bare minimum of the talent that she possesses. She and Rossellini never worked together again, and they divorced in 1957.
16. Tom Hanks (The Ladykillers)
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The actor’s most out-there performance to date caps what is, arguably, the Coen Brothers’ worst film. The scenery in this film gets chewed to bits, and out-of-touch racial caricatures provoke discomfort. Film critic Roger Ebert laid some of the blame for Hanks’ Kentucky-friend performance in this oddball comedy crime caper on the filmmakers, declaring that they “have made [Hanks’] character so bizarre that we get distracted just by looking at him.” The beloved actor makes the situation even worse than it had to be as he seems to be channeling a weird amalgam of Tennessee Williams, Edgar Allan Poe and Vincent Price.
15. Brad Pitt (Troy)
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Brad Pitt’s always been that rare combination of handsome and talented. As such, nothing felt wrong when he was cast as Achilles in Wolfgang Peterson’s Troy. Most of the blame can rest with the script, which was loosely based on Homer’s The Iliad. Troy lacked the poetry and epic feel of Homer’s work; it turns Achilles into a shell. Also, why does Pitt make him speak with that weird, inconsistent accent?
14. Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
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Don’t start with the Academy Award crap…did you even watch this movie? This is Oscar bait, pure and simple. The truth is, Bullock’s performance does not have the power and raw emotion advertised. Perhaps all the attention she received for this role has made us jaded, but we still can’t understand the praise Bullock got for playing an overbearing mother figure. She dyed her hair, affected a hammy accent, and acted like the suburban mother from hell.
13. Denzel Washington (Man on Fire)
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The Oscar-winner plays a bodyguard seeking revenge in this action film. Washington spends the movie inflicting physical damage on bad guys and barking out catchphrases that will never catch on. Washington invests this hero with real nobility, a broken man who knows he’s broken. However, he’s so much more enjoyable in pictures like the nicely crafted romantic thriller Out of Time. Man on Fire is a sadistic mess masquerading as a morality tale.
12. Will Smith (Seven Pounds)
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Will Smith is careful, and has made precious few mistakes as he’s ascended the Hollywood heap to become king. But no one can deny that Seven Pounds is anything but a complete train wreck from start to finish. Moments where the part calls for dramatic, Smith serves up as melodramatic. Audiences expect Smith to turn in powerful performances that are both emotional and energetic, but things don’t really work here. Sorry, Fresh Prince.
11. Russell Crowe (Les Miserables)
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Like a drunk at a funeral, Russell Crowe walked into the very stately Tom Hooper-directed adaptation of Les Mis wanting to sing (but not quite being able to). Russ can’t sing, and when placed next to the likes of a singing-n-dancin’ veterans like Hugh Jackman, it’s all the more obvious. Crowe is still one of the best actors out there, but that’s the thing, he’s a great actor; He’s not a Broadway star.
10. Sigourney Weaver (Ghostbusters)
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It’s not easy being the straight woman for Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. The Alien star just doesn’t know what to do, except affix a smile to her face and wait for an opportunity to deliver her lines. Her character is forgettable as a woman whose apartment is possessed by demons. On the other hand, Rick Moranis and Annie Potts score laughs as a nerdy neighbor and a bespectacled secretary, respectively.
9. Jack Nicholson (The Two Jakes)
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The 3-time Oscar winner secured his iconic status with Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, in which he played gritty private eye Jake Gittes. Nicholson should have left the character there. However 16 years later, he directed and starred in the sequel that no one asked for. The actor in middle age seems detached from the role he brought so vividly to life earlier in his career. As a director, lets just say, Nicholson is no Polanski.
8. Jodie Foster (Nell)
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It would be better for the world if we could destroy all copies of Nell. It’s the story of a feral woman who’s been living on her own in the forests of North Carolina (with the town doctor attempting to save her). Jodie Foster plays the titular character Nell. She growls, and speaks in tongues. Cuba Gooding Jr. has Radio. Jodie Foster has Nell.
7. George Clooney (Batman & Robin)
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The failures of Batman & Robin are well documented. Clooney has the distinction of a performance so atrocious that it made the prospect of Adam West slipping into a pair of gray tights sound appealing. Clooney almost single-handedly destroyed the big screen future of Batman by using the Bat Credit Card.
6. Johnny Depp (Charlie and the Charlie Factory)
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When Johnny Depp was in movies like Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood, he was demonstrating evolution (impressing both fans and critics alike in the process). However, as the years went on and Depp’s star began to soar, he seemed to grow complacent with his roles. As Willy Wonka in Charlie, Depp is manic, colorful, and over-the-top.
5. Leonardo DiCaprio (The Beach)
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It’d be impossible to name the greatest actors working today without mentioning Leonardo DiCaprio. However in the ‘90s and early ‘2000s, his rep wasn’t so solid. His performance in Danny Boyle’s The Beach had people believing that he was nothing more than a flash-in-the-pan heartthrob. The Beach is a complete bore, which is hard to reconcile given how spastic DiCaprio is. At one point, his character is so wigged out, he imagines that he’s in a video game. DiCaprio’s work was so bad, that it earned him a Razzie nomination.
4. Nicole Kidman (The Invasion)
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From start to finish, The Invasion is an absolute mess. It was supposed to be a modern retelling of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but it was so poorly written and marketed that this didn’t hit home with the public. Kidman’s performance is a single, dull note resounding for the film’s 99 minutes. The movie was a complete waste of her talent, and Kidman basically sleepwalks through the entire movie.
3. Cate Blanchett (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)
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There is more than enough blame to go around when it comes to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. With that said, we’d be remiss to not mention Cate Blanchett as the villainous Irina Spalko. The character was an irritating caricature of the highest order with her efficient communist haircut and thick accent. It’s a shame that Blanchett and Spielberg decided to go so broad with Spalko, because Blanchett is more than capable of pulling off a menacing villain without resorting to cartoonish conventions.
2. Nicolas Cage (The Wicker Man)
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Cage spends most of the movie screaming at the top of his lungs at pagan women (“How’d it get burned!?”). He then physically assaults them, often times unprovoked. Cage bizarrely dressed up in a cheap bear costume. For good measure, he also screamed his head off during the infamous bees scene. It’s a sight to behold, especially because Cage being crazy can work. It’s bad and incredibly hilarious. But please, don’t sit through the entire film.
1. Tommy Wiseau (The Room)
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Dubbed “the Citizen Kane of bad movies”, The Room has been ironically entertaining audiences since it came to public attention in the mid-nighties. It transitioned via word-of-mouth to cult classic status. The star, director, writer, producer and sole financier of the project, Wiseau, is a strange marble-mouthed provocateur of unknown origin. His performance as Johnny is so fantastically awful. Like an heir to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Room has spent the following decade developing its own rabid fanbase. Many of them can recite the film’s numerous catchphrases (“Oh hi, Mark”) during midnight screenings worldwide.
