Terrible Movie Roles From Great Actors
Most people in the world have made a mistake at least once in their lives. And actors are no exception to this rule. Even some of the greatest actors have picked really bad roles or just had performances where they didn’t deliver the way we know they can. Oftentimes it’s a combination of both situations. On the one hand it can be a massive disappointment when you go see a movie because of a specific actor you love and they turn out to be underwhelming in that role. But on the other hand, there’s something very human about it.
People are naming the worst roles that talented actors have taken, and some of these picks are surprising!
Alan Cumming in Son of the Mask
This Scottish actor is undeniably very talented and really shines in some of his roles. We loved him in Burlesque and he even got nominated for an Emmy for his role as Eli Gold in The Good Wife. But occasionally he makes some pretty odd choices. His portrayal of Loki in Son of the Mask actually earned him a Razzie nomination!
He is not a typical actor by any means so he probably gets some less successful roles because he takes risks. And anyone who takes a lot of risks knows that some of them will pay off less than others. That’s definitely something to be appreciated.
Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending
Razzie nominations and wins are going to be a recurring theme on this list. The brilliantly talented Eddie Redmayne, who actually has an Oscar for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, won a Razzie award for his abysmal performance in Jupiter Ascending. Though we have to say, this performance was definitely not just his fault.
It was an odd script with weird characters and it was probably very challenging to make any of it work. After we watched him in Jupiter Ascending it gave us the strong urge to quickly put on Les Miserables to remember how convincing he was as the passionate and charming Marius.
Keanu Reeves in Much Ado About Nothing
It really hurts us to say a bad word about Keanu Reeves. The man is known for being one of the kindest and most genuine celebrities and he has given us numerous great performances. But in Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare adaptation, we have to admit he felt out of place. He was in the presence of some legends who really knew what to do with the source material and was simply out of his depth.
We still love you, Keanu! And we appreciate that he went for this type of role, as it was different from what he usually does. It’s still a brilliant Shakespeare adaptation that we recommend everyone to watch if they haven’t.
Jodie Foster in Elysium
This movie had so much potential and so many good ideas, but we were very disappointed to see that they weren’t properly realized. And Jodie Foster’s supposed British accent in this film is one of the most confusing we’ve ever heard. It sounds anything but natural and her American inflection is obviously still coming through.
When Foster plays roles with her own American accent it’s hard to fault her. From Silence of the Lambs to the underrated Contact, her strong roles always fascinate us. Whatever happened in this film isn’t something we’re used to from her, but we forgive her for this weird performance.
Jessica Chastain in The Huntsman: Winter’s War
Scottish accents aren’t easy to do by any means, and that’s especially true for non-Brits. So when Jessica Chastain attempted to do one in The Huntsman: Winter’s War, we can’t say we were surprised that she didn’t succeed. Chastain is a very talented actress, when she gives a poor performance it really is a big contrast with her high level of acting.
She was certainly not the only one with a bad accent in this film, as her Australian co-star Chris Hemsworth’s attempt also sounded pretty baffling. For crying out loud, please force these actors to work with an accent coach for a few months before letting them do a movie like this!
Emily Blunt in The Girl on the Train
This is one of those cases of an underwhelming movie that probably caused some of the performances to suffer. Due to many undeniable similarities, many people have called this film a less successful imitation of Gone Girl. The way the characters behave is just a bit odd and unnatural. According to most, Emily Blunt’s star power couldn’t even save this movie.
The film was an adaptation of a very successful novel and the decision to cast Emily Blunt actually shocked a few people in the first place. Her character’s looks are described to be quite unattractive in the book and of course Emily Blunt is a stunning woman, even with a smidge of unflattering makeup.
Marion Cotillard in The Dark Knight Rises
As we know, Christopher Nolan worked with Marion Cotillard more than once. She’s the perfect person to portray his brand of typical female characters: a mysterious dramatic woman with a tragic life and death. In the Dark Knight Rises she had a role that ended up surprising many people as she turned out to be Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter.
For most of the film she just mysteriously tags along with Batman and the other characters. But her death scene is hard to take seriously. She has a super dramatic speech and then super abruptly closes her eyes and drops her head. It looks like a death from a school play, and it’s so weird because the rest of her performance was convincing up until that point.
Brad Pitt in 12 Years a Slave
Brad Pitt has reached such a high status in Hollywood that he seems completely untouchable. He produces countless projects all the time and still stars in movies that gain critical and commercial acclaim. But when he appeared in 12 Years a Slave, his performance felt a bit nonchalant, not the kind of captivating performance we’ve grown accustomed to.
He comes in at the very end of the movie as a mindblowingly reasonable and likable character, considering the times and the context. The fact his production company made the film while he was cast as this savior character gives us an undeniable amount of secondhand embarrassment for him.
Christian Bale in Terminator Salvation
Christian Bale has given us so many stellar performances. He’s known for physically transforming into his roles, gaining or losing weight, and fully immersing himself in the character. But even Bale has a performance that made us question his taste. When he appeared as John Connor in Terminator Salvation, he proved that everybody makes mistakes. And this seemed like an easy one to avoid!
Throughout the movie, the Welsh actor sounded like he got stuck in his Batman voice. The film itself was very soulless and we didn’t care for any of the characters, including Bale’s. Thank god for all the much better movies he’s made over the course of his career.
Michael Caine in The Weather Man
Some people are synonymous with their iconic accents, and Michael Caine is one of the best examples. His cockney accent is unmistakably recognizable. When he embraces it, which he usually does for most of his characters, it works and he’s able to bring some very different characters to life, though they all sound very similar.
But when Michael Caine attempted to sound American in The Weather Man we felt like we were watching his usual self desperately fighting to get out. The accent itself wasn’t even that bad, but his way of speaking is so connected to how we view him that it is really hard to accept him in roles that sound different.
Chloe Grace Moretz in Carrie
Despite being a very capable actress in films like Kick-Ass and Hugo, when Chloe Grace Moretz took on the iconic horror role of Carrie White, she unfortunately didn’t carry. She just came across as inauthentic and exaggerated in many scenes. And we just didn’t buy her as an insecure and socially awkward teenager. She looks way too much like she’d be a popular girl in a high school setting.
But it wasn’t just Moretz. Even Julianne Moore wasn’t very good in this film, and that’s telling because it’s hard to get a bad performance out of her. So there were probably many issues that made Moretz’ performance unconvincing. But we think we can all agree that she wasn’t right for the role in the first place.
Tom Hanks in The Terminal
Maybe Tom Hanks reverted back to playing Forrest Gump when he got into this character, that’s the best explanation we can come up with. When he played the Eastern European man who got stuck in an airport, we didn’t understand why he had to make the character come across stupid. It’s like he subconsciously views any person with a non-standard accent as less intelligent.
We’re sure this wasn’t intentional. This is also the type of casting where we ask ourselves if they really couldn’t have found a real Eastern European actor. There are plenty of great ones who could have played this role with a bit more dignity and authenticity.
Bill Murray in Osmosis Jones
Bill Murray pretty much always plays Bill Murray, and in some cases it’s absolutely brilliant but in others it just doesn’t work. The story is also pretty gross as we get to see all the details of the disgusting things that are taking place in his character’s body. He portrays this appropriately but it’s hard to deny how repulsive it is to watch at times.
But we’ve gotta say that Murray’s eternal nonchalance can get a bit tiring at times. With all these animated characters doing interesting things and their voice actors bringing them to life in fun ways, Murray seems very disinterested. This behavior in combination with the grossness is just a bit unappealing. Let’s say it’s not one of our favorite performances from him.
Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street
We wonder if Johnny Depp knew how many monsters he was going to play after his innocent film debut as one of the victims in Nightmare on Elm Street. And that was probably the biggest takeaway for him after this performance: he should go for the monster roles. After this, he did a great job in films like Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd, and Dark Shadows to name a few.
You don’t always know where your talent lies right away. In his portrayal of the young teenager in Nightmare on Elm Street, his acting is not very good and we could tell he lacked experience as an actor. Though he definitely made up for that afterward!
Natalie Portman in Thor
To be honest, rewatching the first Thor movie definitely reminded us that the Marvel movies have come a long way. Compared to some of the later films like Guardians of the Galaxy and The Avengers, it’s so incredibly lackluster. It may have been directed by the brilliant Kenneth Branagh, but someone made the inconceivable decision to cast Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth as love interests while they have some of the least convincing romantic chemistry we’ve ever witnessed on screen.
Portman plays an astrophysicist whose work unexpectedly prompts her to meet the eccentric hammer-wielding god Thor. The story is fun and Portman is an immensely talented actress, but in this movie she’s just out of place. Her character mainly exists to help introduce Thor to Earth and she doesn’t have enough depth on her own.
Jack Nicholson in Prizzi’s Honor
Jack Nicholson is one of the biggest Hollywood legends of our time, and for good reason. No one can do it like Jack Nicholson. When he flashes that mischievous smile of his, we know we’d let him get away with murder. But in Prizzi’s Honor, we wouldn’t. The Mafia movie is just incredibly boring and despite the talented actors, which also include Kathleen Turner and Anjelica Huston, it couldn’t hold our attention.
It should be a thrilling subject matter, but we just couldn’t get into it. Even though it’s a comedy, it’s not fun to watch. All the phony New York-Italian accents make this feel like a parody of itself, and not even a very entertaining one at that.
Russell Crowe in Virtuosity
The Australian actor has given us many memorable performances throughout his career in films like Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Noah, and Les Miserables. But in 1995 he starred beside Denzel Washington in a wacky role in a wacky movie. He played SID 6.7, the ultimate virtual reality killer that came to life and went on a violent spree. It’s hard for us to take Russell Crowe seriously as this outrageous killing machine.
He usually plays very cerebral characters and it’s just very odd to see him as this impulsive murderer. However, we weren’t the only ones to notice his undeniable chemistry with Denzel Washington. So we weren’t surprised one bit when Ridley Scott reunited them for American Gangster in 2007.
Kristen Wiig in Ghostbusters
This movie brought a bunch of the funniest actresses together and somehow managed to be unfunny. We’re not sure what went wrong, because Kristen Wiig usually has us laughing out loud. The entirety of Bridesmaids is so quotable and her character is so hilariously relatable. And when she was on Saturday Night Live, every sketch she took part in was hilarious.
For some reason, she really didn’t make us laugh in Ghostbusters. The way her co-stars also let us down leads us to believe that it wasn’t her fault, but part of a larger problem with the movie. And to be very honest and perhaps controversial, the original Ghostbusters from the 80s was not as funny as we remembered it to be. Maybe some things really should be left in the past!
Paul Giamatti in The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Superhero movies often have really wacky source material to pull from. The villains are often the most outrageous characters and this can inspire actors to create really memorable and fun roles. But sometimes when the actor doesn’t pull it off, or the director doesn’t know what to do with it, it just doesn’t work. One example of this is Paul Giamatti in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
While he only appears in one scene, his character was a bit too crazy for some people. They felt like the way he acted was just too over the top. Especially in contrast with Andrew Garfield’s pretty down-to-earth Spider-Man it just didn’t work.
Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
For starters, we’re wondering who came up with the idea to cast the least Persian-looking human being in the world as a Persian prince. Having him grow out his hair didn’t really help. Maybe this lack of authenticity ended up being Gyllenhaal’s downfall when it came to this movie. The logic of having him do a vaguely British accent to sell the reality of being Middle Eastern is quite far-fetched, and so is his attempt at the accent.
Watching his performance feels like watching someone who knows he’s wrong for this job. Don’t get it twisted though, Gyllenhaal blew us away in other performances like Prisoners, Brokeback Mountain, and Donnie Darko.
Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia!
Yes, most of the actors in this movie could have ended up in his place. But his singing is what pushed him over the edge for us. Let’s take a moment to think of the number of actors who are great singers who could’ve played this part. Why did they have to do this to us? He looks so out of place in this musical and it’s just the funniest thing to remember that he was once James Bond.
At least he probably had fun. All the stories that have come out about the set of this movie sound like it was one hell of a good time and all the actors were pretty much partying throughout the shoot!
Angelina Jolie in Alexander
To be fair to Angelina, everyone’s accents in this movie were one huge mess. There is no logic to them and no one knows how they sounded in the first place because these civilizations lived thousands of years ago. Having everyone do either an American or a British accent would at least make some sense because it’s consistent. But in Alexander, Angelina Jolie went for a vague mystical accent that we couldn’t place.
Her performance is actually quite strong, but every time she speaks we can’t look past the outrageous accent. It’s just too distracting. We understand that they couldn’t have hired ancient Macedonian actors, but whatever they did just didn’t work.
Jeremy Irons in Dungeons & Dragons
The Oscar-winning Jeremy Irons is an incredibly talented actor. From Reversal of Fortune, which earned him his golden statuette, to Moonlighting, to Dead Ringers. And of course his perfect voice portrayal of Scar in The Lion King. He’s an incredibly talented actor and we love the intensity he brings to his roles. But in Dungeons & Dragons, that over-exaggerated intensity really just had us cracking up.
We’re not sure what he was thinking when he played this part. It’s very possible that he was having a lot of fun, but we just couldn’t take him very seriously here. The whole movie was already ridiculous in the first place, so we guess his performance matched the vibe!
Edward Norton in The Italian Job
Edward Norton is an actor who can take a role and always give it an interesting twist that audiences love. Take Fight Club, for instance. He plays a complex and layered character masterfully and does so in a way that the twist at the end of the movie makes so much sense.
But when we saw The Italian Job, we didn’t feel the same way while watching him. Apparently, he took the role due to a contract dispute, so he likely didn’t even want to play this part. And we don’t blame him because we wouldn’t want to appear in a movie with that soul patch either.
Jared Leto in Suicide Squad
Even if Leto hadn’t notoriously acted like a terrible person with the excuse that he was taking a method-acting approach, it would still be a cringeworthy performance. Seeing his horrendous portrayal of the comic book villain while knowing that he acted like a barbaric wannabe-Daniel Day-Lewis makes it so much worse.
Reportedly a lot of his footage was cut from the film and this made the whole method shtick even more ridiculous. We know he has some great acting chops, we’ve seen them in Requiem for a Dream and Dallas Buyers Club. But whatever he tried to do as The Joker really didn’t work. If you’ll excuse us, we’re going to put on The Dark Knight again to forget Leto’s performance as soon as possible.
Meryl Streep in The Giver
Being lauded for being the best actress of your generation can’t be an easy thing to uphold. Meryl Streep has blown us away time and time again and we’ll always respect her as an actress. But even Meryl Streep made mistakes throughout her career, and one of them was The Giver. This movie adaptation may have sounded great on paper because the book it was based on is very good. But as a movie, it really didn’t work.
The way she portrayed her character was really empty and we didn’t feel anything from her. All we can do is thank her for reminding us that she is merely a human being who makes mistakes like the rest of us.
Willem Dafoe in Aquaman
There are many things that are wrong with Aquaman, and Willem Dafoe’s performance is certainly one of them. His character is poorly written, while he might have tried his hardest to make something out of him, he didn’t succeed. He was really wasted on his role, and they really dulled him down into this expositional character.
Just take his performance as the Green Goblin/Norman Osborn in Spider-Man. He took a comic book role and used all of his eccentricity and imagination to create such a fun yet imposing character out of it. He likely felt way less inspired by his character in Aquaman as he had way less to work with. And it showed.
John Travolta in The Fanatic
There’s a reason why most people have not heard about The Fanatic even though it came out in 2019. It’s not very good, and it pains us to see John Travolta in this lackluster movie. We all fell in love with him as Danny in Grease. Since then he’s proved himself in roles in Pulp Fiction, Saturday Night Fever, and Hairspray (yes, we said what we said).
But the creepy stalker character that he played in The Fanatic was not enjoyable to watch. It’s not like his acting was terrible, but we didn’t understand the point of his character as a whole. We were quite confused why someone as cool as John Travolta would take this role and we simply felt like it didn’t suit him.
Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Trek: Into The Darkness
After everyone got to know and love him as the titular detective in BBC’s Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch was getting job offers left and right. And he probably should’ve left some of them where they were. He played Alan Turing wonderfully in The Imitation Game and we enjoyed him a lot as Doctor Strange in numerous Marvel movies. But when he took on the character of Khan, we were both confused about why he took the role and why he was offered it.
As an actor, he has an alluring vulnerability to him and an immense focus that makes him perfect for some of his roles. But his traits as an actor didn’t translate well at all for this antagonist role.
Cate Blanchett in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Why do Hollywood actors think they can just wing a Russian accent and get away with it? Russian accents in movies are done wrong so regularly that we’ve almost grown accustomed to hearing them done this way. But that doesn’t make them okay. Cate Blanchett’s bad attempt in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull baffled us because she’s done some convincing accents over the course of her career.
As an Australian Hollywood actress, she’s had to do convincing American accents many times and even a transatlantic one as Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator (which isn’t easy to master). Most of the time we are impressed with her ability to make different accents sound natural, but in this movie she sounded like a parody and we really couldn’t get past it.