Actors Who Regret The Role That Made Them Famous

For many actors, there can be a fine line between taking roles that bring in paychecks and those that bring in prestige. Sometimes, we get Daniel Day-Lewis, who seems like he becomes the front runner for the Oscars every time he steps on screen. Other times, we get Nicolas Cage, who has to fund his habit of buying dinosaur skulls somehow.

Oftentimes, however, one role becomes the role of an actor's career, regardless of why they chose it. Anthony Hopkins is an amazing actor with almost 150 roles to his name, yet he will always be Hannibal Lecter. Hopkins has played Shakespearean leads, the Pope, Chris Hemsworth's dad, and some of the greatest writers and artists of all time, but he will always be known for enjoying some very particular fine dining with a nice Chianti.

Today, we're looking at a specific type of iconic role — the kind that the actors themselves regret doing. It's easy to say that once you've cashed the check, but these performers have made no bones about wishing they had turned down the role that made them famous.

Kate Winslet was the lead role in one of the biggest blockbusters of all time and, to hear her tell the tale, it was an awful experience. Winslet has discussed how much she hated doing the nude scene in "Titanic," confessing that nude scenes are "a profoundly bizarre thing to do" and that she finds them "unethical." But there are plenty of other aspects about her performance as Rose that she dislikes.

In fact, Winslet thinks her entire performance in the film is dreadful. At the 2012 premiere of "Titanic's" 3D re-release, she revealed her disdain for her own "awful" American accent. For such an iconic role, she's pretty hard on herself.

However, it wasn't just her own performance that Winslet hated about "Titanic." In an interview with the LA Times, the actress dished on the awful set conditions of the film. She almost drowned on one occasion, and she cited James Cameron as a "nice guy," but with "a temper like you wouldn't believe." She concluded the interview by saying, "I'd never do a shoot for that length of time again. It's hard to hang on to your integrity, your train of thought, what you feel about your character. And for the first time in my life on a film set I was thinking, 'I wish I wasn't here.' Some days I'd wake up and think, 'Please, God, let me die.'"

For many, "Star Wars" is the defining piece of pop culture. It is one of the most valuable movie franchises ever created, but very few people involved knew exactly what they'd be getting into when George Lucas came calling in the '70s. The late, great Carrie Fisher was one such person.

Fisher wished the film had not blown up in quite the way it did. The always outspoken actress told Today that, if she knew how huge the film would get, "I would never have done it. All I did when I was really famous was wait for it to end." Granted, she was a 19-year-old actress (who was told by some, at 5'1" and 105 pounds, that she was "too fat" for the role) looking for her big break. "Star Wars" certainly provided it.

One scene in particular stood out as the subject of Fisher's ire: Princess Leia's infamous gold bikini in "Return of the Jedi." She told NPR, "When [Lucas] showed me the outfit, I thought he was kidding and it made me very nervous... What redeems it is I get to kill him, which was so enjoyable... I sawed [Jabba the Hutt's] neck off with that chain that I killed him with. I really relished that because I hated wearing that outfit... and I couldn't wait to kill him." Audiences weren't the only ones cheering when she murdered that space slug, apparently.

Et tu, Solo? Harrison Ford also did not relish the direction the "Star Wars" films took, and seemed to think that his character, Han Solo, wasn't as interesting as some of the other roles that he eventually took on. The Huffington Post wrote an entire feature on how Ford's mindset towards the character changed over the course of the original trilogy, eventually leading him to ask George Lucas to kill Solo off at the end of the third film.

Ford was not even supposed to be up for the role, as Lucas did not want to cast anyone in Star Wars who had been in his previous film, "American Graffiti." The actor was ultimately too perfect for the role, however, and as his stardom grew, so did his dislike for Han Solo.

When his character was finally killed off in "The Force Awakens," Ford was asked about "passing the baton." He reportedly said, "I don't know that I thought of it that way at all. I was there to die. And I didn't really give a rat's ass who got my sword."

It does appear that much of Ford's antagonism towards the character came about the time "Return of the Jedi" was filming, but we don't have a great clue as to why. Considering Ford's prickly nature regarding questions about "Star Wars," it's doubtful we'll get a clear explanation any time soon.

From one classic franchise to another (bear with us), we've got to talk about "Twilight." Don't worry — star Robert Pattinson, who played sparkly vampire Edward, is just as confused about some of the aspects of the films as you are. Pattinson has never hesitated to question "Twilight's" logic, and has spoken out about how little sense the plot makes. He told W Magazine, "I mean, if it hadn't been so successful, I think people would have thought it was really weird. It's a really weird story. But I think once it becomes mainstream, it's difficult for people to see how strange the story is."

Even fans of "Twilight" could probably tell you how bizarre the story is, but Pattinson has also made no qualms about how much he doesn't like the film. In an interview with Moviefone, when asked if he would enjoy the films if he hadn't been in them, he couldn't even pretend to be excited about (the then-upcoming) "Breaking Dawn Part I." He responded, "I think I am a judgmental and cynical person who would just mindlessly hate it without having seen anything. I just think I'm a bad person."

The producers surely loved that one.

Quick — think of a punny way to make fun of 1965 classic "The Sound of Music." Was it "The Sound of Mucus?" Because that's how Academy Award winning actor Christopher Plummer, who starred as Captain Von Trapp in the film, apparently refers to it. Plummer saw "he Sound of Music" as silly and, even though he was only 36 at the time he was cast in the film, was already quite an accomplished stage actor. That silly little movie launched him into Hollywood stardom, however, and he doesn't hesitate to unleash on "The Sound of Music" whenever he gets the chance.

Case in point: at a roundtable interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2011, Plummer (who was 82 at the time) was asked about the most challenging role he ever played. He surprised everyone by claiming it was Von Trapp. When pressed about why, he laughed and responded, "Because it was so awful and sentimental and gooey. You had to work terribly hard to try and infuse some minuscule bit of humor into it."

Even by musical comedy standards, "Grease 2" has a completely bananas plot. If, for some bizarre reason, you ever decide to sit down and watch this forgettable sequel, you may think you're in for a treat when you discover that it stars Michelle Pfeiffer. Do not be deceived. You will not be in for a treat.

Michelle Pfeiffer hates the film and her role in it so much that she actually has floated the idea of remaking the original "Grease" with her playing the role of Principal McGee to atone for her performance as Stephanie in "Grease 2." Of her experience in the unnecessary follow-up, Pfeiffer said, "I hated that film with a vengeance and could not believe how bad it was. At the time, I was young and didn't know better... I hear it's a cult movie now."

Considering some of the amazing roles Pfeiffer has gone on to play in her career, it's a good thing "Grease 2" helped launch her to stardom. We're glad she can't "Turn Back the Hands of Time" on that one.

Watching the evolution of Sean Connery's relationship to James Bond is a bit like watching a car wreck in slow motion. The actor has always been outspoken, uncompromising, and extremely private, so hearing him discuss the process of helping to establish the origin of one of the most famous roles in all of film is fascinating stuff.

In 1963's "Dr. No," Connery relished the chance to take on the role of the deadly, womanizing spy. However, he thought he was miscast, and The Independent claims it took him three films to really come into his own in the part. By that time, he seemed to dread the notoriety that came with being one of Hollywood's leading men.

In a 1964 New York Times interview, Connery stated, "I would never deny that Bond made me, and I'll be everlastingly grateful to him. But that doesn't make me a Bond‐slave. I can cut the shackles free any time I want to. And they aren't made of steel chains any longer, either, but smoothest silk." He later told Playboy, "Bond's been good to me, so I shouldn't knock him, but I'm fed up to here with the whole Bond bit."

Fed up is a bit of an understatement, as Connery had this to say after filming "Diamonds are Forever:" "I have always hated that damned James Bond. I'd like to kill him." 

That escalated rather quickly.

Viola Davis had taken on some meaty roles before starring in 2011's "The Help" as Aibileen Clark, but that role bagged her an Oscar nomination for Actress in a Leading Role and some serious clout in Hollywood. Davis would eventually get an Oscar (for a supporting role in 2016's "Fences"), but she looks back on "The Help" with a few twinges of regret.

In a New York Times interview, Davis specifically called out "The Help" for ignoring the plight of its black characters and instead focusing on its central white character. The film has been blasted for falling into "White Savior" tropes, and Davis tends to agree. She told the Times, "I just felt that at the end of the day that it wasn't the voices of the maids that were heard. I know Aibileen. I know Minny. They're my grandma. They're my mom. And I know that if you do a movie where the whole premise is, I want to know what it feels like to work for white people and to bring up children in 1963, I want to hear how you really feel about it. I never heard that in the course of the movie."

Betsy Palmer was an established name before her completely table-turning role in "Friday the 13th," but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who remembers her as anything besides "Mrs. Voorhees" at this point. And Palmer certainly wished that wasn't the case. In a behind-the-scenes interview for the documentary "Return to Crystal Lake," Palmer revealed that she thought the film was a "piece of [awkward silence]" and that she only took the role because she wanted to buy a new car.

It really is incredible to watch Palmer discuss her role as Pamela Voorhees. "I had a Mercedes... and it broke down on the Connecticut turnpike. So I said to myself, 'I need a new car, universe,'" she recalled. "The phone rang and my agent said, 'How would you like to do a movie?' and I said, 'Great. That will pay for the car that I want to buy.'" 

When her agent told her it was a horror film, Palmer accepted with something of a shrug. "So, the script came and I read it and I said, 'What a piece of...' And I said, 'No one is ever going to see this. It will come, and it will go, and I will have my Scirocco.'"

There are, as of this writing, 12 "Friday the 13th" films. There were comics, novels, a TV series, and merchandising tie-ins. Jason Voorhees is one of the most iconic horror villains of all time. Whoops.

Megan Fox seems like she regrets her harsh words now, but she was extraordinarily critical of her star-making role as Mikaela Banes in Michael Bay's "Transformers" franchise. She was especially critical of Bay himself, claiming (and this is all in a single interview) that he has no social skills, that she could beat him up because "if Michael Bay ever was in a fight, he would drop to the ground immediately in the fetal position," and even invoking Godwin's Law by comparing him to Hitler.

Not surprisingly, Fox was replaced in the next "Transformers" film, "Dark of the Moon."

She can reflect now and, in an interview with Cosmopolitan, called her behavior and the subsequent consequences "the low point of [her] career." She continued, "But without 'that thing,' I wouldn't have learned as quickly as I did. All I had to do was apologize — and I refused. I was so self-righteous at 23, I couldn't see [that] it was for the greater good. I really thought I was Joan of Arc."

Even though she regrets both the role and the way she acted towards it, it's good to know that she learned from the experience. Maybe we'll eventually see her return in "Transformers 18: Dear God, The Robot Now Transforms Into a Planet or Something."

Just because multiple generations grew up watching a show and loving its characters doesn't automatically mean that the actors involved share that same fondness. While most of the cast of "Gilligan's Island" were always grateful for the show's impact on their careers and couldn't get enough of reminiscing about it in the decades after it went off the air, Tina Louise wasn't one of them.

Louise had a strong body of big-screen work as well as several major stage productions under her belt when she signed on to "Gilligan's Island" as spoiled movie star Ginger. She was skeptical about taking the role in the first place, fearing she would be typecast, and nearly quit before filming her first scene once she saw what the show had in mind for her character. But though she honored her commitment and stuck it out for all three seasons the series aired, she didn't return for any of the live-action or animated follow-ups and spin-offs and has seldom participated in reunions or other celebrations of the franchise.

Though she continued to find acting work for many years, it's tough to argue that playing Ginger didn't have a negative impact on her career, as the quality of film roles she landed once the show had run its course paled in comparison to her pre-"Gilligan" work. To add insult to injury, the show that hurt her career, the one Louise barely wanted to do in the first place, didn't even make her rich. In fact, she recently revealed that she's never received a single penny in royalties from her time playing her most famous role as a glamorous castaway.

Before landing her breakthrough film roles in movies like "The Descendants" and "The Spectacular Now," Shailene Woodley was known for her television work. The gig that truly put her on the map was playing Amy Juergens, the de facto lead role on the ABC Family teen drama series "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." Though an ensemble piece with many characters, the show's main storyline centered around Amy as she finds herself pregnant before facing the struggles of teen motherhood.

As it turned out, Woodley wasn't a big fan of how the show handled those themes. She discussed her issues with the storyline in a 2020 interview with Bustle, explaining, "When I signed onto 'Secret Life,' I read [three] episodes and I signed a contract for six years." Woodley says she was impressed by and related to what she saw in those scripts and their depiction of what teenagers go through, saying, "It felt like everything that I wanted to be sending into the world."

But, according to Woodley, it didn't take long before that message shifted. Once the initial episodes were shot, she says the show got a lot more preachy, pushing a message of total abstinence and subsequently shaming Amy — and, by proxy, real women like her — for her choices. "There were belief systems that were pushed that were different than my own. Yet legally I was stuck there," Woodley said. "To this day it's one of the hardest things I've ever had to do."

CBS's "Two and a Half Men" is one of the most successful sitcoms of the 21st century, a consistent ratings winner right up to the end that subsequently led to some of the largest salaries any actor has received, in the history of television. As for why the show was so popular, it's easy to point to its tendency towards bawdy humor, edgy storylines, and a steady stream of attractive young actresses shown in as much undress as could be gotten away with in a primetime network television comedy.

And it's for those exact aspects of the series that the actor who played the show's titular "half man" eventually turned on "Two and a Half Men" and now calls on audiences to do the same. Angus T. Jones played Jake Harper, son of Jon Cryer's Alan Harper, for the show's first ten seasons, winning two Young Artist Awards out of three nominations in the process. But Jones didn't like his character's transition to more adult-oriented storylines after Jake turned 18 on the show, as the young actor said he didn't yet feel like the adult he was suddenly asked to portray. Once Jones found religion in 2012, his criticisms of the show and its content became much more pointed.

In a video for the YouTube channel of the Christian group ForeRunner Chronicles, Young didn't hold back, saying, "If you watch 'Two and a Half Men,' please stop watching 'Two and a Half Men.' I'm on 'Two and a Half Men' and I don't want to be on it. Please stop watching it and filling your head with filth."

Though not the first person to portray Superman in live action, George Reeves' take was long considered the definitive screen version of the character — essentially up until the coincidentally similarly named Christopher Reeve took on the mantle for the 1978 feature film and its sequels. As for Reeves with an "s," he first played the iconic Kryptonian in the 1951 film "Superman and the Mole Men" before reprising the role for the extremely popular "Adventures of Superman" TV series that ran for six seasons, from 1952 to 1958.

At first, Reeves relished playing Superman, as well as the fame and adoration that came with it. But a couple seasons in, Reeves grew bored of the role, feeling that the character wasn't growing or evolving and that he was just doing the same thing over and over again. He also felt that he was being underpaid, and, coupled with being in his 40s by this point, he was ready to stop playing a guy flying around in a cape. Reeves wanted to get back to more complex roles, but he found that the Hollywood that had previously allowed him to have an extremely busy career could no longer see him playing anything other than the Man of Steel.

About a year after "Adventures of Superman" ended, Reeves was dead. It was initially reported and officially ruled to have been a self-inflicted gunshot wound, with people saying he was in a bad way mentally due to the decline of his career. But some of his friends and family have long disputed that claim, saying there was never enough evidence to definitively declare his death a suicide.

Before he became famous for playing zombie slayer Rick Grimes in AMC's "The Walking Dead," Andrew Lincoln first gained the attention of the global audience when he portrayed Mark in the classic Christmas rom-com "Love Actually." In fact, he was in one of the movie's most famous scenes, wherein he stood at the door of Keira Knightley's Juliet while flipping through a stack of poster board cards with romantic messages written on them.

In retrospective viewings of the movie, many people have noticed that the love story between Mark and Juliet isn't quite as sweet as many of us first read it, and among those people is Lincoln himself. It turns out that the fan-favorite role that Andrew Lincoln regrets taking is, in fact, Mark from "Love Actually."

Talking to TheWrap in 2016, Lincoln mused, "He is a stalker. That was my question to [director] Richard Curtis, 'Do you not think we're sort of borderline stalker territory here?'" Curtis, however, swears that neither he nor anyone involved in the movie at the time considered Mark and Juliet's romance — and the famous poster board scene in question — to be creepy. That said, the director is willing to concede that he can see why people view it that way when viewed under a more modern and progressive lens.

Crispin Glover's biggest legacy with the "Back to the Future" franchise, at least away from the screen, is the battles he had with the studio using a lookalike actor for the sequel after he chose not to return himself. But that's only half of the reason why he has bad blood with the series. The other half is that Glover simply didn't like the way "Back to the Future" ended, and, in the years since, the actor has continued to double down on his problem with the movie's overall message.

Glover takes issue with the fact that the movie seemed to be saying that things automatically get better for Marty (Michael J. Fox) and the rest of the McFly family just because they're richer and have nicer things after the changes that Marty makes in 1965. Glover felt it would've meant more for them to just be happier and more content with the same house, same car, and same income bracket that they already had, rather than implying that the McFlys needed more money in order to be content. Glover even tried to bring this up to the film's director and co-writer, Robert Zemeckis, who reportedly didn't take too kindly to the criticism. 

It all resulted in Glover not wanting to reprise the role of George McFly for the sequels and mostly distancing himself from the "Back to the Future" franchise indefinitely. To this day, he almost never participates in cast reunions, retrospectives, or anything of the sort.

It's one thing to regret making a movie because of the effect it had on your career; it's another thing entirely to regret starring in a movie so much that you feel compelled to ask God for forgiveness. But that's exactly what happened with Mark Wahlberg, who, as of late, has been feeling morally icky for having played an adult film star in the movie "Boogie Nights" now that he's reconnecting with his Catholic faith.

To be fair, the "role" that truly made Wahlberg famous was Marky Mark, his stage name as a musician before he even got into acting. However, he doesn't have the best feelings about that part of his career, and he's never had much of a sense of humor about it, either. And while he was in a few movies prior to "Boogie Nights," including "Fear" and "The Basketball Diaries," most people agree that it's "Boogie Nights" that truly announced Wahlberg as a legitimate actor to watch, with a performance that suggested that he was destined for great things in Hollywood. This isn't surprising, given that filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson has always had a knack for culling career-best performances out of his stars, helping to make people see more in an actor than they previously had.

Ultimately, Wahlberg doesn't look at "Boogie Nights" with gratitude — at least, not anymore. In 2017, he told People (via IndieWire), "I just always hope that God is a movie fan and also forgiving, because I've made some poor choices in my past. 'Boogie Nights' is up there at the top of the list." His "Boogie Nights" co-star, Burt Reynolds, also famously hated the movie and ragged on it for the rest of his life — despite his role as director Jack Horner earning him an Oscar nomination. 

The truth is, Jennette McCurdy regrets her acting career as a whole. It might have been "iCarly" that truly made her famous, and she certainly has regrets about that show in particular, but given all we now know about the way McCurdy was allegedly treated on that series' set and various other Nickelodeon shows, as well as the unhealthy and abusive way that her mother pushed her into and then subsequently guided her career, McCurdy would probably choose a completely different, non-acting, non-celebrity life for herself if she had the option.

Plenty has been said already about "Quiet on Set," the disturbing Max docuseries that ruined childhood memories when it aired in early 2024. Several of the actors who were children and teenagers at the time allege various forms of harassment, abuse, and outright assault at the hands of the adults who worked on many of the Nickelodeon shows of the 2000s and 2010s. McCurdy herself didn't participate in the investigative series, but she had already been vocal about what she says she went through, both on the set of "iCarly" and in her career and life during and after the show aired.

While McCurdy didn't exactly have her pick of acting gigs after she was done making Nick shows, that isn't the reason she regrets the time she spent working for the cable network and why she regrets just about everything about that time in her life. For her, it's what she was made to go through during that time that has understandably caused her to look back on her career with negativity.