Imagine putting your heart and soul and months of work into a movie...only for audiences to hate it so much that it tanks your whole career!
Here are 9 actors whose onscreen performances were so reviled, it basically ended their careers:
1.
In the '90s, Elizabeth Berkley rose to fame as Jessie Spano in the squeaky-clean teen sitcom Saved by the Bell. So, fans were pretty shocked when, two years after the series ended, she starred in the erotic drama Showgirls. Being in her early 20s, she was excited to take on a new challenge. She told People, "Saved by the Bell was a beautiful first rite of passage for me. But as an artist, I was excited to dive a little deeper and explore." Showgirls was the first — and only! — NC-17 film to get a mainstream wide theatrical release. The movie absolutely tanked, taking Elizabeth's image down with it.
She said, "I wasn't looking for shock value. That wasn't my intention. When I first read about the role, it was a visceral moment. I thought, 'that's mine.' ... Of course, it was disappointing that it didn't do well, but there was so much cruelty around it. I was bullied. And I didn't understand why I was being blamed. The job as an actor is to fulfill the vision of the director. And I did everything I was supposed to do. ... No one associated with the film spoke up on my behalf to protect me. I was left out in the cold, and I was a pariah in the industry I had worked so hard for."
2.
Alicia Silverstone was riding the high of "it girl" status after the success of Clueless. However, when she was cast as Batgirl in Batman & Robin, it all came tumbling down. She won the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress. But it wasn't just her performance that had critics up in arms — it was also her appearance. In the tabloids, she was given the cruel nickname "Fatgirl." Sometimes, when paparazzi chased her, they shouted the nickname at her. She told the Guardian, "They would make fun of my body when I was younger. It was hurtful, but I knew they were wrong. I wasn't confused. I knew that it was not right to make fun of someone's body shape; that doesn't seem like the right thing to be doing to a human."
Alicia had one more notable '90s role, Eve Rustikov in Blast from the Past, but for a while, she stepped back from the spotlight. She told the Hollywood Reporter, "I wasn't happy, and what I did was really extract myself a bit from my acting career and went more into my activism. I went to Africa to help the elephants. I went to Peru to try to help the rainforest. I found my passion for writing books on healing and health."
However, in 2007, her onstage role in Boston Marriage reignited her passion for performing. She said, "It was there, when I was on stage, doing a David Mamet play, being directed by David Mamet, it reminded me how much I really, really love acting, And I was sad I'd let go of so much of it. There were so many amazing opportunities that I said no to, because I didn't feel able. But after that play, I thought, geez, I'd really love to do that again. So when I came back to the movies, it was sort of continuing the journey I started in the theater. I started to be able to do really interesting things in film too."
3.
Sofia Coppola actually had cameos in the first two Godfather movies (literally as a baby/toddler) and other small child acting roles, but her first adult role — Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part III — is the most remembered. Originally, Winona Ryder was supposed to play the part, but when she was unavailable for rehearsals, director Francis Ford Coppola brought in his 18-year-old daughter as a stand-in. Winona eventually made it to Italy for filming, but she got sick and had to drop out. Francis told the New York Times, "Paramount had a list of many fine actresses who were older than I felt the character should be. I wanted a teenager. I wanted the baby fat on her face."
At the time, Sofia, whose college was on break, was visiting the set. So, seeing how much pressure her dad was under, she agreed to take the role to help him. She told the NYT, "I wasn't taking things super seriously. I was at the age of trying anything. I just jumped into it without thinking much about it." Unfortunately, while the movie earned seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Sofia was widely ridiculed. Critics panned her performance as "hopelessly amateurish" and said that her "gosling gracelessness comes close to wrecking the movie." She said, "It was embarrassing to be thrown out to the public in that kind of way. But it wasn't my dream to be an actress, so I wasn't crushed. I had other interests. It didn't destroy me."
Sofia had a few other small acting roles — notably Saché in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and Enzo's mistress in CQ, which her brother Roman directed — but Godfather III effectively ended her acting career. Of course, Sofia went on to become a celebrated filmmaker in her own right, known for movies like Marie Antoinette and The Virgin Suicides. In 2025, speaking at MOMA's Film Benefit Presented by Chanel, she joked, "When I started, I was in my 20s, and it was the '90s in LA, where I was known as the daughter of — this was before nepo babies were charming, and most of them ended up in rehab — and I was the amateur actress who single-handedly ruined The Godfather. Most people didn't think I had something to say that mattered, but I found a few that did."
4.
After rising to fame on Saturday Night Live in the '90s, Mike Myers made iconic comedies like Wayne's World and Austin Powers. But then, in 2008, he co-wrote and starred in The Love Guru, casting himself as an orphaned American who was raised by gurus in India. However, the rom-com was a failure on all fronts. It was also criticized for its depiction of Hinduism and India, with Hindu spiritual leader Swami Pooja Saraswati telling the Guardian, "I watched the trailer for the movie Love Guru and was shocked that any respectable movie producer would so blatantly ridicule a great world religion, a culture, spiritual path, and sincere way of life, portraying it as farce."
At the Razzies, The Love Guru "won" Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay, and Mike was named Worst Actor. The movie didn't even make any money — it only grossed $40 million, whereas the budget had been $62 million! It's also widely regarded as unfunny and cringey. Coming just five years after his other notorious bomb, The Cat and the Hat, The Love Guru ended his standing as a name-above-the-title comedy star. Since then, he has only had small roles in movies, mostly dramas (though he still has Shrek).
5.
Halle Berry had already won an Emmy, an Oscar, and a Golden Globe when she was offered the titular role in Catwoman. She put a lot of work into the project and had a great shoot, but studio-mandated rewrites, reshoots that ran until a month before release, and other meddling made the production challenging. There was also the issue of the storyline. She told Entertainment Weekly, "I always thought the idea of Catwoman saving women from a face cream felt a bit soft. All the other superheroes save the world; they don't just save women from cracked faces. I always knew that was a soft superhero plight, but at that time in my career, I didn't have the agency I have today or belief that I could challenge that, so I went along with it."
The movie was met with backlash as soon as a photo of Halle's Catwoman costume leaked. Then, when it finally hit theaters, it made a dismal $16.7 million on opening weekend (compared to its reportedly $100 million budget). Halle was awarded the Razzie for Worst Actress, but she iconically accepted the award with her Oscar in hand. However, the criticism was still painful. She said, "I felt like it was Halle Berry's failure, but I didn't make it alone. All these years, I've absolutely carried it. ... I didn't love [the backlash]. Being a Black woman, I'm used to carrying negativity on my back, fighting, being a fish swimming upstream by myself. I'm used to defying stereotypes and making a way out of no way. I didn't want to be casual about it, but I went and collected that Razzie, laughed at myself, and kept it moving."
6.
Charlie Wright was just a teenager when he as cast as Rodrick Heffley in 2017's Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul. However, he had unexpectedly big shoes to fill, taking over from Devon Bostick, who played Roderick in the OG Diary of a Wimpy Kid. You might not think people would care that much about a relatively minor character from a 2010 kids' movie, but Devon's Rodrick is still so popular that people online have been shipping him with Regina George from Mean Girls in the big 2026. So, even though the entire cast had been replaced, fans zeroed in on Charlie with the viral #NotMyRodrick hashtag. He was targeted with hurtful messages as well as death threats, which he continued to receive for years.
In a 2024 YouTube video named "Life as #NotMyRodrick," Charlie said, "Let's just say that when the world found out I was playing Rodrick, they weren't very happy. ... Do I have any hatred or anger towards people who participated in the #NotMyRodrick thing? No, I don't. I did go through a depressive episode for almost three years afterwards, and it kind of ruined my acting career, but I'm still alive. I'm still here." The most difficult part of the hate campaign was "that [he] felt like [he] hadn't really done anything to deserve it."
7.
C. Thomas Howell had his breakout role as Ponyboy Curtis in The Outsiders. Over the next few years, he seemed poised to be one of Hollywood's next leading men, but then came Soul Man in 1986. In the comedy, the then-19-year-old actor played a rich white boy who, after his father refused to pay for his college, wore blackface to get a scholarship that was only for Black students. The film received widespread backlash. In a statement, Willis Edwards, the president of the NAACP's LA chapter, said, "We certainly believe it is possible to use humor to reveal the ridiculousness of racism. However, the unhumorous and quite seriously-made plot point of Soul Man is that NO Black student could be found in all of Los Angeles who was academically qualified for a scholarship geared to Blacks."
The promise of C. Thomas's film career fizzled out, though he found moderate success on the small screen. He went on to appear in TV shows like Amazon and Southland. In 2013, he defended Soul Man, telling AV Club, "I still don't understand, and I guess this is just my own ignorance, the fact that certain people really hate the whole blackface idea, because this isn't a movie about blackface. This isn't a movie that should be considered irresponsible on any level. This is a movie that is quite the opposite for me."
8.
Chris Elliott had an up-and-coming — if not unusual — comedy TV career until 1994's Cabin Boy. It's basically a universally accepted truth that the movie was one of the worst things to come out of the '90s (maybe even one of the worst movies of all time), but the production was practically cursed from the beginning. After his surrealist sitcom Get a Life got canned, Tim Burton came knocking. The director asked Chris and his Get a Life co-creator, Adam Resnick, to pen a Pee-wee Herman-esque script for him. But then Tim dropped out as director and suggested Adam take over. Adam had never directed before, and he would never direct again.
The very first screening was a disaster. Adam told the Ringer, "It was just so awful. One of the worst nights of my life. I can't imagine a screening going any worse than Cabin Boy. It was in Pasadena, and it was a pretty big theater, and easily more than half the theater emptied out by the time it was over. Not only did people walk out, you could hear them muttering angrily under their breath about it; things like, 'So fucking cheesy.'" Over opening weekend, the film earned basically nothing, and eventually, it only made back a third of its $10 million budget.
A few years later, Chris and Adam pitched a new show to Fox, and the network bought it in the room. However, the deal barely lasted. Chris said, "By the time we got to the parking lot, Adam's agent had gotten a call. There was one person who wasn't in the meeting. They went and told this person that it was Adam and me pitching the show. And she said, 'No.' There's absolutely no way they would do a show with us." Her issue was, unfortunately, Cabin Boy.
9.
And finally, in 1985, Lea Thompson famously played Lorraine Baines McFly, the teenage version of Marty's mom, in Back to the Future. The movie was a huge success, but her next role was a baffling choice — Beverly Switzler in Howard the Duck, a strange pre-MCU Marvel movie starring an anthropomorphic duck. Her character is the duck's love interest! It was an absolute box office bomb that is largely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made.
For Lea, the failure was "devastating." On the podcast Celebrity Catchup: Life After That Thing I Did, she said, "[I]n the course of a year, I was in the biggest hit and the biggest bomb, so that probably destroyed my film career. ... Even though I did some good films after that, it was really difficult."
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