Stars That Refuse To Watch Their Own Movies

Actors are often accused of being vain and self-absorbed, but believe it or not, there are some in Hollywood who can't stand the thought of watching themselves on the big screen. There are plenty of reasons for this: it's hard to watch yourself without being self-critical (think of how you feel every time you see a photo of yourself, even if you look fabulous), the performance may bring back the emotional state the actor had to get into, and so on. 

And it doesn't matter whether you're a superstar or a struggling thespian, the impulse to avoid watching yourself onscreen remains the same. Which world-famous actors would rather get a root canal than watch one of their own movies? The answers may surprise you.

Given how long he's been a big screen heavyweight at this point, it's easy to forget that Adam Driver was once mostly just known as that one guy from "Girls." While he had already racked up a number of noteworthy film roles prior to 2015, it was certainly when Driver began his time as "Star Wars" villain Kylo Ren that year that he truly became a household name. Since then, he's done an admirable job of cultivating a career that blends small indie dramas and more quirky fare with big budget studio releases, across just about every genre imaginable.

Still, though he seems to have a lot of confidence in how he guides his career and has proven time and time again to be fearless on screen, Driver told Howard Stern in 2015 that he hates watching his own work. He owes that in part to his theater background, reasoning that theater actors don't really have the option to watch their performances so it's not something he ever got used to. Driver also explained to Stern, "I saw all the mistakes, the things that I wish I could change, but I can't because it's permanent."

And it isn't just watching his performances that makes Driver uncomfortable, but also listening to them — the actor famously stormed out of an NPR interview in 2019 when the interviewer played an audio clip from Driver's film, "Marriage Story."

What do you do when you are the star of one the most beloved movies in the history of cinema? Well, if you're Al Pacino, you don't bother watching it, apparently. One of the many surprising revelations in his 2024 memoir "Sonny Boy" was that Pacino attended the premiere of "The Godfather" — and walked out of the screening before the movie even started. He wrote, "I could never watch myself on-screen while other people were watching me. It was a bit disconcerting and it made me shy, almost embarrassed." It wasn't until the movie returned to theaters for its 50th anniversary that the actor sat down and watched it in its entirety for the first time.

While Pacino doesn't go out of his way to watch his own movies, he has admitted that he won't necessarily turn them off if he happens across them while flipping through channels. But even then, he tends to focus on the other performances in the movie rather than his own. In a 2019 interview with USA Today, he shared an experience he had coming across another of his iconic films while channel surfing. 

Pacino said, "I wasn't able to sleep the other night, so I turned on the television and it was Jack Lemmon in 'Glengarry Glen Ross.' I couldn't believe how great he was -– it was a beautiful thing to see." But on rewatching his old movies in general, he continued, "... there's no real need (to go back). I've seen it; I know what it is."

Most widely known for her roles in period dramas, the "Harry Potter" franchise, and her collaborations with filmmaker and ex-husband Tim Burton while they were still married, actor Helena Bonham Carter has definitely racked up a lot of film projects that people love to watch over and over again. According to Carter herself, that's exactly the point of being an actor — to make art for other people to enjoy. "You do it so that other people can watch it if they want to watch it," she said in an interview with The Telegraph, as part of her reasoning for not seeing a point in watching her own stuff. 

Beyond that, Carter says that her tendency to not be a franchise actor who returns for sequel after sequel — something she has certainly done a couple of times, but it's been much more the exception in her career than the rule — is another reason why she doesn't study her own performances. "It's not like I am going to do exactly the same part next year, so what's the point?" she explained. It's reasoning that is tough to argue with, as Carter is definitely one of those actors who disappears into her roles and rarely plays the same type of character twice. 

It probably won't surprise anyone to learn that Dakota Johnson was pretty apathetic to the idea of ever seeing "Madame Web" while doing press for it — especially since the moviegoing public as a whole ended up feeling the same way about the film. But as easy as it might be to take that as confirmation of Johnson's perceived opinion about her Spiderverse-adjacent outing in particular, it would seem that the actor has that same approach to anything she makes.

As she explained to U.K. radio station Magic FM (via TikTok), not watching her work on screen is "a way to not have, like, an existential crisis." Johnson went on to say, "Not watching my movies is like self-care." Johnson has never said much about watching the finished films of either mother Melanie Griffith or father Don Johnson, but she has spoken about how hard it was to see her parents film sex scenes, or watch her mother on the receiving end of fictional violence, as she grew up on the various movie sets that her parents worked on. It's amazing that those experiences didn't scare her off from pursuing acting herself. 

Constance Wu's breakthrough role, at least to mainstream audiences, was when she played the matriarch of the very loosely autobiographical sitcom "Fresh Off The Boat." She had already done some movies prior to that, but it wasn't until after her stint on that show that Wu's film career really started to take off — in particular, when she played the female lead in the 2018 romantic comedy "Crazy Rich Asians." Which, to hear Wu tell it, is the last film of hers that she has watched.

As she explained on "Live with Kelly and Ryan" while promoting "Hustlers," it was viewing "Crazy Rich Asians" that led her to stop watching her own stuff. Not that she disliked that film, but as Wu said, "I want to focus on the present, and not be self-critical and think too much, dwell too much on the past." So she not only hadn't watched "Hustlers" either, but no longer rewatched episodes of "Fresh Off The Boat" or even her interviews or talk show appearances. 

Wu has occasionally faced criticism about the frankness with which she discusses fame, her career, and even particular projects, so it stands to reason that she would want to keep some distance between her work on screen and her life off screen. 

Jared Leto is one of those actors who can come across as more than a little pretentious in how he presents himself and his career. With that in mind, it might almost seem like a given that he wouldn't want to watch his own movies, as that tends to go hand in hand with actors who appear to take themselves far too seriously. But in Leto's defense, there is something else at play here. 

The actor claims that he vowed to never watch another one of his movies after filmmaker Darren Aronofsky made Leto sit through the premiere screening of 2001's "Requiem for a Dream." That was a traumatizing viewing experience for those of us who weren't in the movie — so we can only imagine what it must have been like to make the movie in the first place, let alone have to watch yourself in it. 

In a 2021 discussion with SiriusXM, Leto actually got a bit more playful about why he doesn't like to watch his movies, offering, "Who wants to look at themselves that much, you know? I read the script. I know exactly what happens." He then explained that he doesn't mind watching himself in the music videos he makes with his rock band, 30 Seconds to Mars, because he's just playing himself — so there isn't anything to critique in terms of an acting performance.

Just because you make movies, that doesn't necessarily mean you watch movies. To hear Angelina Jolie tell it, that describes her relationship with Hollywood. "I like the process of doing [movies] more than watching them. I don't really like to watch movies," she told "Good Morning America" (via The Telegraph) in 2009, apparently talking not just about her own films but movies in general. Well, except for the films of then-husband Brad Pitt, as Jolie added, "I love to watch Brad's movies" — a sweet sentiment at the time but probably no longer the case.

Jolie did admit that she's seen a lot of her movies once, but only once, which it's easy to assume encompasses the premiere but no subsequent viewings. Jolie again reiterated in 2024 that she enjoys making movies but doesn't like to watch herself in them — including not even wanting to watch freshly shot footage — saying that it would interfere with her ability to give herself to her craft if she was always worrying about how she looked and sounded on screen. 

She also claimed that there are numerous films of hers that she hasn't seen, after having stated there was "only a film or two" of hers she'd never watched during the 2009 "GMA" appearance — suggesting that she's becoming less and less comfortable with and/or interested in watching her movies as time goes on. 

During a 2019 career retrospective, Megan Fox instantly got uncomfortable when presented with clips of her earliest film roles. The actor said she was both nervous and nauseous as she was made to watch scenes from her movies, particularly those that were filmed while she was still a teenager. Which is understandable, of course — who doesn't cringe at pictures and videos of their teenage years? At least most of us have the luxury of not having our awkward adolescence forever immortalized in movies and on television.

But it goes deeper than that for Fox. The actor had previously told The Sun in 2009 that she has an actual fear of watching her own work. "I usually don't watch myself. I don't watch playback. I don't look at still photos. I have a phobia of it," she told the tabloid. She then went on to describe making herself watch "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," but needing a lot of liquid courage in order to do so. Insert easy joke here about how everyone needed alcohol to enjoy that movie.  

Despite how many highly watchable movies Gwyneth Paltrow has starred in — especially given her presence in some of the best entries of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — the actor and lifestyle brand entrepreneur can only stand to watch one of her own films. And not only that, but basically just one specific scene in that film. 

The movie is "The Royal Tenenbaums," which Paltrow revealed during a panel that followed a special 20th anniversary screening of the film in 2021. And the scene is when her character, Margot, is getting off a bus. The actor explained that her dad, who passed away the year after the movie was released, was visiting the set on the day she shot the scene, so she has a special connection to the memories attached to filming it. Paltrow went on to tell the crowd at the screening (via USA Today), "I also really hate, hate, hate seeing myself in a movie ever and it's kind of like the only scene that I can watch of myself of my whole career."

It certainly takes a fair bit of confidence to admit that you haven't watched the movie you starred in, while attending a party for the release of that movie. Andrew Garfield had that assuredness in 2010 while being interviewed during a shindig for his sci-fi romance drama "Never Let Me Go." He had also just recently been announced as the next big screen Spider-Man, so it's not as though Garfield was lacking in reasons to feel good about himself.

When asked about "Never Let Me Go" during the party by The Hollywood Reporter, Garfield confessed, "I haven't actually seen the movie. I try not to." The actor then explained why he prefers not to watch his films, saying, "I don't want to be aware of what I'm doing. As soon as I am, I'm less open." 

Garfield believes that actors go into a sort of magical autopilot when they're doing their best work, and as soon as you start being consciously aware of it — which tends to happen when you watch yourself acting — the magic is broken. That being said, he did famously sneak into an opening night showing of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" with co-star Tobey Maguire so that they could watch it together, after the pair were unable to attend the movie's official premiere. 

When Emma Stone and Timothée Chalamet interviewed each other about their respective careers in 2019, Stone revealed that she had only seen bits and pieces of her breakthrough film, "Easy A." The two-time Oscar winner confessed that she ended up ducking out of a friends and family screening of the movie because she couldn't bear to watch herself for that long. 

It was a sentiment about watching her own movies that she previously expressed on "The Late Show with David Letterman" back in 2011. Stone said that she was invited to watch a screening of her then new movie, "The Help," with Michelle Obama at the White House — and that she very much wanted to get up and leave, as she had with "Easy A," but wasn't exactly in a position to do so given the venue and its host. In describing the fears that arise when she sees herself on screen, Stone told Letterman, "You can't really separate yourself. And then you think, 'That's what I chose to do there? That's how that came across? Great!'"

Given that Johnny Depp is one of Hollywood's most mysterious and elusive actors, it should come as little surprise that the Oscar nominee has no interest in watching his own work. "I made a choice a long time ago that I was better off not watching my films, which is a drag because you miss out on a lot of your friends' incredible work," he told The Independent in 2013. "But I feel like it would just harm me. I would rather stay as ignorant as possible about the result of anything because once you're done playing that character, it's really not your business anymore."

However, Depp did admit to watching a reel of recent films he had done. "When I saw the characters line up in a row like that, I thought it was amazing that I was able to get away with it," he quipped. "Truly. I am just amazed that I still get jobs. I am shocked." Considering how some of his later films have performed, he may have a point there.

Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon has been a staple on the big screen since the '90s; between "Legally Blonde," "Walk the Line," "Wild," and many more, she's amassed the kind of résumé most actresses would kill to have.

And yet, given the chance to watch her own movies, Witherspoon admits she'd almost rather die. "I have absolute amnesia about every movie I have ever made," she told the Daily Express in 2010. "I won't watch them because if I did I would spiral into a state of self-hate, but I sometimes catch the odd clip of something. I look at it and think, 'I have absolutely no memory of that.' It's really weird."

Witherspoon elaborated on her hatred of watching herself on camera on Chelsea Lately, saying, "It's torture! Why would you want to watch yourself being stupid and pretending to be someone else?"

Javier Bardem is the kind of actor we could watch in any movie. Which is completely ironic, considering the Oscar-winning star of "No Country for Old Men" cringes at the thought of watching himself act.

"The fact that I like to make characters doesn't mean that I like to watch my characters being made, my performance," he told GQ magazine in 2012. "I can't even watch that f***ing nose, that f***ing voice, those ridiculous eyes. I can't handle that. But when I'm doing it, I don't see my nose or hear my voice; it's like there's something stronger, bigger than that. And I need to express it."

Despite starring in some of the greatest movies of all time, Tom Hanks finds the mere thought of watching himself absolutely absurd. "I don't watch any of my old movies," he told ShortList magazine. "The one that I might watch with great affection is a little movie I directed, 'That Thing You Do,' which I'm not in that much. I loved doing it so much that when I watch it now it still brings a smile to my face."

He continued: "I don't watch my own performances — who does that? That would be madness. I've seen all the movies once, but I don't need to see them again, because they don't change." Fair enough. But come on, Tom. "Big" is still awesome.

Considering that her résumé includes classics like "Boogie Nights" and "The Big Lebowski," as well as more recently acclaimed films like "May December," it's downright shocking to think that co-star Julianne Moore hasn't seen any of her own work — but that's exactly what she said in a 2013 interview with Britain's Daily Express. 

"I haven't seen any of my own movies..." she said (via Contact Music). "I can't sit there for a premiere or anything. I like being in the movie more than I like watching them. That's my big thrill, rather than seeing the finished product."

Given the generally nervous persona he emits in interviews, it's not altogether shocking that Jesse Eisenberg doesn't even bother trying to watch the movies in which he stars. "I don't like looking at myself," he told Moviepilot in 2013. "I like looking at the other actors, but I had opportunities to do that on the set. I think it's strange."

The Oscar-nominated actor and director reiterated his stance while promoting "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" in 2016. "I don't watch the movies I've been in, so I don't like to see any of it because if I'm in it, I'm critical, just like how you'd be if you saw pictures of yourself," he told Made in Hollywood. "The first thing you'd think of is, 'I look like an idiot.' So, could you imagine if you saw that in a movie? They film this in IMAX, so it's more traumatic. I try to avoid it."

In 2009, Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman admitted at the time that, of all the movies she's filmed, she's only seen "Moulin Rouge!" and "Australia." The reason: she did it as a favor to her director, Baz Lurhmann.

Kidman recounted the horrifying experience of sitting through the Sydney premiere of "Australia" to The Daily Mail, admitting she "squirmed" in her seat throughout the movie. "'I sat there and I looked at [my husband] Keith [Urban] and went 'Am I any good in this movie?' It's just impossible for me to connect to it emotionally at all."

In fact, the whole thing was so traumatic, Kidman and her family actually fled the country to avoid reading any press about the movie. Given that it received mostly mediocre reviews, she probably made the right decision.

While promoting his Oscar-nominated performance in "The Master" in 2012, Joaquin Phoenix spoke to Hollywood Outbreak about what he feels are the dangers of watching his own work.

"I don't ever really want to see myself as the camera sees me," he said. "I don't want to be objective; I don't think I'm capable of truly being able to ignore that. I think that it's just inevitable that you become self-aware [when watching your own performance]; there's just not a human being who wouldn't be affected by that. And I don't ever really want to think about that."

But that doesn't mean he hasn't been tempted to sneak a peek. "Of course, there's a part of [me] that's curious for a second ... and I have to consciously tell myself "no" because I know it's not going to be of any value to me," he said. "In fact, it stands a greater chance of having a negative effect on [my] future work, I think, than positive, even if the work is good."