Actors Come Clean On What The Worst Movie Of Their Career Was

Getting actors to open up and discuss how they really feel about the worst movie of their career is harder than getting them to talk about who they're dating. And, yeah, okay, we get it. Even the projects we all know are duds take a lot of time and effort, so it definitely pays to look on the bright side. Plus, there are the professional repercussions that come with criticizing a movie you're supposed to be promoting. For example, when Katherine Heigl criticized Knocked Up for being "a little bit sexist," she was forever labeled as someone who was "difficult." So yes, we totally understand why convincing an actor to share their unfiltered opinions on their work is a tough proposition. But fortunately for our curiosity, a handful of stars have opened up over the years and taken aim at their least favorite films. And when actors come clean, things get really dirty.

The British actor most famous for his role as grim-faced P.I. Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? had no sense of humor when it came to his least favorite acting job. In a 2011 Q&A with The Guardian, when he was asked to name the worst job he'd ever done, Hoskins responded, "Super Mario Bros." He then described the 1993 bomb based on the world's most famous plumber as his "biggest disappointment," saying that if he could edit his past, he wouldn't do the film again.

This wasn't just hindsight creeping in after bad box office results. During shooting, Hoskins would drink whiskey in between scenes and give snarky comments to the press, telling an LA Times reporter, "My seven-year-old son is quite depressed about my playing Mario. He knows I can't even program a VCR, let alone play the game." To add injury to insult, he broke a finger during a stunt.

Hoskins wasn't the only person associated with the movie who had regrets. Even before the notoriously disastrous shoot was over, Dennis Hopper, who was playing villainous businessman King Koopa, let everyone know that he'd only taken the role for the money. The actor also spent three hours screaming at the directors over one of the endless script changes. The film ultimately made only $20 million — about half its budget — and directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton never made another Hollywood movie.

In a life and career marked by extreme highs and lows, Mark Wahlberg identified a surprising candidate for his biggest regret. In 2017, at an appearance at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago, Wahlberg said that Boogie Nights is his number one mistake.

Wahlberg played well-endowed porn star Dirk Diggler in Paul Thomas Anderson's period drama about the '70s and '80s porn industry, which is now widely considered to be a cult classic. Despite the success it brought him, Wahlberg said that as a devout Catholic, he now sees the role as a mistake, telling the audience that, "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." A few months earlier, he'd told ABC News that another reason he wouldn't take the role today is because of his children. Still, it's one of the biggest movies of Wahlberg's career and largely responsible for all his success, and while he might regret the role, that doesn't make the movie any less awesome. Plus, we can think of some things he's done that are way worse than Boogie Nights.

Sylvester Stallone was just an underdog actor until Rocky turned him into a Hollywood champion. Of course, the guy has made a lot of questionable content over the years, and in a 2006 interview with Ain't It Cool News, Stallone said his worst film was Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, a 1992 "comedy" co-starring Estelle Getty. And Stallone didn't stop there. The action star described Stop! as "maybe one of the worst films in the entire solar system, including alien productions we've never seen."

However, over a decade after those comments, Stallone may have topped even Stop! In June 2019, he posted a video to Instagram where he said that Escape Plan 2: Hades was "the most horribly produced film" that he'd ever had "the misfortune to be in." Escape Plan 2 co-starred 50 Cent and Dave Bautista, but despite the star power, the movie was critically reviled. Evidently, Stallone hates it too, and the man isn't worried about pulling punches when dissing his own projects.

In 2002, Halle Berry delivered a tearful, impassioned speech on the Oscars stage, clutching the Best Actress statuette that she'd just earned for her performance in Monster's Ball. In 2005, she brought the statuette with her to accept her Razzie Award for Worst Actress in the super-zero flop Catwoman. Berry delighted the audience with her mocking speech, in which she thanked studio Warner Brothers for putting her "in a piece of s***, god-awful movie." Berry went on to say, "It was just what my career needed. You know, I was at the top, and then Catwoman has plummeted me to the bottom."

Most actors don't bother to collect their Razzies in person, but while Berry's speech was beloved by fans who love to see actors open up about their more regrettable career choices, her resentment towards the movie had mellowed in recent years. In a 2018 acceptance speech, this time for the Matrix Award from New York Women in Communication, Berry said of her Razzie-winning role, "While it failed to most people, it wasn't a failure for me because I met so many interesting people that I wouldn't have met otherwise, I learned two forms of martial arts, and I learned not what to do." It also helped, she added, that the film made her a life-changing amount of money.

Dev Patel found stardom with the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire. So naturally, everyone was curious about his next film, 2010's Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was a huge studio movie with expectations and bureaucracy to match the budget. Of course, once it hit theaters, the movie was hated by pretty much everyone on planet Earth, but for a while, Patel didn't really want to talk about the picture. 

Back in 2014, the most he would say was, "Yeah, that wasn't the best move, was it?" Rumors about his dissatisfaction with the M. Night Shyamalan picture gathered pace in 2015, when Patel was filmed apologizing to a fan, saying, "I'm sorry about this film. It was a little bit s***, wasn't it?" While the video didn't show what movie Patel was talking about, the folks at IndieWire theorized he had to be referencing The Last Airbender. 

Patel opened up a little further in a 2016 roundtable interview with The Hollywood Reporter, saying, "I don't know what I would like to play, but I know what I'm afraid of playing: those big studio movies." Patel went on to add that he felt "overwhelmed by the experience" of making The Last Airbender, and he says he felt like he "wasn't being heard." Still, Patel tried to throw in a learning experience, adding that while making the movie was scary, it taught him the valuable lesson about saying "no." So the next time Patel is offered a major bomb, chances are good he's going to turn it down.

In recent years, prestigious actors like Robert Redford and Anthony Hopkins have taken major roles in superhero films. However, there's one two-time Oscar winner who majorly regrets signing up for a superhero flick. As it turns out, Sally Field though her part as Aunt May in the Amazing Spider-Man movies was an absolute bore. 

In an appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Field talked about the failed trilogy, at first saying, "It's not my kind of movie." She also added that she did it for her friend, Amazing Spider-Man producer Laura Ziskin, who died a year before the film was released. But when asked how much thought she put into the character, Field responded, "Not a great deal," going on to say, "It's really hard to find three dimensional character in it, and you work it as much as you can, but you know, you can't put 10 pounds of s*** in a five pound bag." Still, Field managed to find a bright side in all the mess. As the actress put it, working with Andrew Garfield was a lot of fun because the guy "is such a lovely, lovely actor." So even if she hated the film, at least she made a friend.

Long before he became the Caped Crusader, Robert Pattinson launched his career with another batty role. The man got his big break playing a vampire in the Twilight series — although Edward Cullen was more sparkly than sinister. 

Based on a series of YA novels, the Twilight franchise was loved and loathed with almost equal passion ... and Pattinson was firmly on the latter side of the equation. In interviews on press tours for the films, his comments ranged from bewildered to outright dismissive. Gems include, "I hardly get to do any vampire stuff. I don't get to kill anyone," and, "If Edward was a non-fictional character, if you met him in reality, he's one of those guys who'd be like an ax murderer." 

Since the final installment came out in 2012, Pattinson has mostly stuck to more artistic movies, working with acclaimed indie-focused directors like Werner Herzog, David Cronenberg, and the Safdie brothers. However, he's managed to find a few positive things about Twilight since then, saying now that the intensity around the films has died down, he appreciates fans' enjoyment of it a lot more. He even found a part of the film that he enjoyed, saying, "[New Moon] genuinely does have an incredibly good soundtrack. I completely forgot, but the soundtracks were quite ahead of their time."

Harry Potter made Daniel Radcliffe a household name, but that doesn't mean he's fond of every film in the series. In 2014, Radcliffe told the Daily Mail that his favorite of the franchise is Order of the Phoenix, and that the sixth movie, The Half-Blood Prince, was his least favorite of the bunch. In 2015, Playboy asked Radcliffe about this, and he explained, "In every movie up to the sixth one, you can see a big step forward in my acting. And then it stopped, or went backward maybe, in the sixth film. I really enjoyed my performance in the fifth. ... On the sixth, I remember watching it and thinking, 'Wow, there's been no growth. You're watching a mistake you made every day for 11 months.' That's the way I saw it." 

It probably didn't help that Radcliffe had started drinking heavily when he turned 18, the age he filmed The Half-Blood Prince. Radcliffe didn't explicitly mention this when discussing his least favorite of the films, but the actor had previously spoken about his alcohol abuse in 2012. He said that while he never drank on set, he would still be drunk from the night before, and that watching the movies now, "I can point to many scenes where I'm just gone. Dead behind the eyes." He became teetotaler in 2010, but hey, in the movie's defense, we actually think The Half-Blood Prince is pretty good.

In 2012, when a 3D version of Titanic docked in theaters for the 15th anniversary, Kate Winslet told CNN, "Every single scene, I'm like 'Really, really? You did it like that? Oh my God.' ... I have a hard time watching any of my performances, but watching Titanic I was just like, 'Oh God, I want to do that again.'"

It's surprising to hear that Winslet wants to give her role as Rose a second go, given what she went through the first time around. Director James Cameron was notoriously explosive, and in 1997, Winslet told the LA Times, "There were times when I was genuinely frightened of him." On top of that, she nearly drowned while shooting one scene, and Cameron simply made her do it again. (Cameron dismissed her claim that she was in real danger.) She also chipped a bone, came out with various bruises and scrapes, and was regularly performing in cold water. For close-ups, she was submerged 12 feet underwater and weighted down so she wouldn't move. Small wonder she doesn't like watching that over and over again on the big screen.

In 2010, Jessica Alba told Elle magazine that shooting Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer nearly made her quit acting, as director Tim Story apparently made Alba doubt her abilities and her career choice. Evidently, Story didn't like the way she was crying in a scene because it looked "too real." According to Alba, the director then asked her to "cry pretty." As Alba put it, "And then it all got me thinking: Am I not good enough? Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough? Do people hate them so much that they don't want me to be a person? ... And so I just said, 'F*** it. I don't care about this business anymore.'"

Alba was as good as her word. In 2012, she traded Hollywood for business, setting up The Honest Company, which was focused on selling natural baby products. According to Forbes, that first year, her company made $10 million in revenue. Alba then expanded to beauty products in 2015, and she raised $200 million in funding in 2018. Sure, Alba is still acting, but in 2015, Forbes estimated that Alba's share of The Honest Company was worth $200 million. The company has dipped since then, but it's safe to say that if Alba really wants to quit acting, she's found a way.

Since the rise and demise of his relationship with Angelina Jolie, you could make the case that Brad Pitt has become more famous for his personal life than for his movie career. But back in the '90s, Brad Pitt was the iconic movie star, and he occasionally had some blunt comments about those fame-making movies. Specifically, in 1997, Pitt called out The Devil's Own, in which he starred as an undercover IRA terrorist, opposite Harrison Ford's cop. Pitt told Newsweek, "We had no script. Well, we had a great script ,but it got tossed for various reasons." 

According to Pitt, the cast and crew were forced "to make something up" as they went along, a move that Pitt labeled "the most irresponsible bit of filmmaking — if you can even call it that — that I've ever seen." He also called out then-head of Columbia studios, Mark Canton, for forcing production to continue. Pitt apparently regretted his comments pretty swiftly, adding in a follow-up interview reported on by CNN, "Everyone was working hard. We weren't trying to just throw out a crap film. You know, we were doing our best."

The Indiana Jones series is a nearly perfect franchise, with exception of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. To be fair, Crystal Skull actually did pretty well when it came out in 2008, at least box office-wise. But in the years since, it's come under scrutiny for its supposed betrayal of the classic Indiana Jones spirit. In fact, Shia LaBeouf, who played a motorcycle punk named Mutt, said that both he and director Steven Spielberg had "dropped the ball." Harrison Ford called out that comment, but that didn't stop LaBeouf. In 2018, he went back on the attack again, taking aim at the oft-mocked, Michael Bay-directed Transformers franchise that made him a star. 

As he told Esquire, "My hang-up with those films was that they felt irrelevant. They felt dated as f***. ... You come up on these stories about Easy Rider and Raging Bull and De Niro and Scorsese and Hopper, and you find value in what they do. Meanwhile, you're chasing energon crystals. It's very hard to keep doing what you're doing when you feel like it's the antithesis of your purpose on this planet." After getting his fill of blockbusters, LaBeouf moved toward performance art, but many still remember him as the kind of guy who bites the hand that feeds him.

Jamie Lee Curtis impressed fans and critics alike when she returned to Haddonfield, Illinois, in 2018's Halloween. But even though Curtis has starred in classics like A Fish Called Wanda and True Lies, she hasn't totally escaped making bad movies. According to Curtis, the worst movie she ever made was Virus, a movie about a tugboat crew that stumbles upon an almost abandoned ship when things get crazy with robots and alien monsters. While the premise might sound awesome, critics hated the film, and Curtis clearly wasn't happy with it, either. When she went to ComicCon in 2018, she described the movie as a "piece of s***."

Curtis was even more direct in 2012, telling IGN that when she and her movie star friends compare bad movies, Virus is her trump card. "That's the only good reason to be in bad movies," she explained. "Then when your friends have [bad] movies you can say 'Ahhhh, I've got the best one.' I'm bringing Virus." Well, at least she found her silver lining.

With a career as long as Michelle Pfeiffer's, it's no wonder she's appeared in some duds. Luckily, her low point came at the very start of her career, and it probably would've been forgotten if it hadn't also happened to be a sequel to one of the most beloved movies of all time. Pfeiffer starred as Pink Lady Stephanie in Grease 2, four years after the original movie musical came out. 

After many misfires during production, the movie barely made back its budget, and it's still derided as a less-than-fitting follow-up. And it seems that Pfeiffer agrees. In 2007, she told MovieWeb, "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 any better. I hear it's a cult movie now." Thankfully, her next film was Scarface, but Pfeiffer admits she wouldn't mind going back to Rydell High. Talking with MovieWeb, Pfeiffer explained that if they ever made another Grease movie, "I would love to play the school principal. She is fun and has some great put-down lines."

Ben Affleck already had a list of dubious movies under his belt before he strapped on the utility belt to play Batman in Zack Snyder's much maligned Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. There was Armageddon and Gigli, but of all his awful films, Affleck hates Daredevil the most. The 2003 adaptation of the Marvel comic about a blind lawyer who fights crime in the courtrooms by day and the city streets at night, Daredevil is despised by every human being who's ever stepped inside a movie theater. But the man who loathes it the most is definitely its leading man.

Before the release of Batman v Superman, Affleck explained that part of the reason he wanted to play a superhero again was because he wanted a second chance at the genre. "Part of it was I wanted for once to get one of these movies and do it right — to do a good version. I hate Daredevil so much." Unfortunately, his attempt at the Batman franchise didn't deliver the redemption he'd wished for, as the movie was widely panned by critics, but hey, as bad as Zack Synder's film may be, at least it's no Daredevil.

While Arnold Schwarzenegger might've been the Terminator/Governator, that doesn't mean he's immune from picking poor movies. In 1985, he appeared in Red Sonja, which was supposed to be the story of a vengeful female warrior, even though Arnie got top billing. Confusingly, although the character of Red Sonja originally appeared as a sidekick for Conan the Barbarian in Marvel comics, and Schwarzenegger had already played Conan twice by this point, Red Sonja finds actor playing a totally different sword-wielding, muscle-bound warrior named Kalidor. 

Unfortunately, Schwarzenegger's performance was less than charming. The New York Times said his character, "might as well have been played by a maple tree," and Schwarzenegger seems to agree, saying, "It's the worst film I have ever made. Now when my kids get out of line, they're sent to their room and forced to watch Red Sonja ten times. I never have too much trouble with them." Please don't try this parenting hack at home. It's basically child abuse.

Having earned an Oscar, an Emmy, two Tonys, a Golden Globe, and more, you'd think Viola Davis would be able to move on from her less-than-stellar roles more easily than anyone else in Hollywood. But there's one role that still troubles Davis. In 2018, when The New York Times asked Davis if there was a job she wished she'd taken, Davis reworked the question to dish on a job she wished she'd turned down. And that was the role of Aibileen, a black maid working in 1960s Mississippi who joins the Civil Rights Movement in 2011's The Help.

Davis was quick to praise her co-stars and director Tate Taylor before getting to the reason behind her retroactive regret. As she put it, "I just felt that at the end of the day, that it wasn't the voices of the maids that were heard." According to Davis, the whole film was supposedly about black women working and raising children in 1963, but she feels the movie didn't really put their stories front and center. Davis was nominated for an Oscar for her role, but with her feelings towards the film, she's probably just fine with not winning that particular trophy.

Alec Baldwin is not known for holding back his opinions — or his temper — including when it comes to his own work. One of the films he's taken aim at is 2012's Rock of Ages, a movie based on a stage musical that features a loose plot constructed around covers of classic rock songs. The movie failed to rock critics' worlds, despite its A-list cast, which also included Tom Cruise, Mary J. Blige, Russell Brand, and Bryan Cranston. No one was less surprised than Baldwin — who admitted that those co-stars were why he'd signed up in the first place.

"It was a complete disaster," he told New Yorker editor David Remnick at an event in 2013. "A week in you go, 'Oh God, what have I done?'" Indeed, in 2011, before filming had even begun, Baldwin asked New Line to replace him. Supposedly it was because of an unnamed medical condition, but given that Baldwin thinks he made "a horrible movie," it could have been a premonition of the flop to come. This theory is especially appealing given that Baldwin claimed actors know when they have a dud on their hands: "The plane is buffeting," he explained. "The engine is on fire."

Millions of kids grew up wanting to be G.I. Joe, but when Channing Tatum got the chance, he was less than thrilled. In 2015, six years after G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra came out, Tatum told Howard Stern that when he received the script, it was so bad he refused to make the movie. He was also wary because he'd been one of those wide-eyed kids: "I didn't want to do something that I ... was a fan of since I was a kid and watched every morning growing up."

Unfortunately, in 2009, Tatum didn't have the star power to muscle his way out. He told Stern that after his first movie role in 2005's Coach Carter, he signed a three-picture deal with Paramount. They cashed in part of that deal with G.I. Joe, and informed Tatum that they would sue him if he refused to make the film. Tatum's career recovered — in 2015, he was the 13th highest-paid actor in the world. But G.I. Joe wasn't done with him after Cobra: he went on to appear in the aptly named 2013 sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation (but didn't disclose to Stern if that was part of the Paramount deal.)