10 actors who regret taking on major movie roles
Despite what the movies might try and tell you, Hollywood is not a land of unadulterated glitz and glamour, where the streets are lined with superstars ready to give you a leg-up into the industry.
Alas, the whole thing is a lot more similar to the David Lynch film Mulholland Drive, a web of mystery and lies where actors are in a constant dogfight with each other, vying for the very same lucrative roles.
Many such roles can lead to Oscar glory or box office success, but not every role destined for greatness has a God-given right to be great. Such has led to countless regrettable movies from the industry, which filmmakers and actors alike consider to be a mistake, whether this might be an immediate realisation or one that seeps into the subconscious decades after the release of a film.
Part of the problem lies in how unpredictable filmmaking can be. A script that reads brilliantly on the page can fall apart during production, whether through studio interference, miscasting or a lack of creative cohesion behind the scenes. By the time the final cut reaches audiences, the original promise of the project can feel like a distant memory.
For actors, that unpredictability is often compounded by the lack of control they have over the finished product. Even a strong performance can be overshadowed by poor editing or a misguided directorial vision. It’s a harsh reminder that success in Hollywood is rarely guaranteed, no matter how impressive the talent involved.
In this list, ten actors who massively regret particular movies in their filmographies will be explored. From films that merely didn’t reach the promise of their potential to ones that seem legitimately culturally offensive years after their releases, the list includes such names as Christian Bale, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt and many more.
Take a look at the actors who felt dejected by particular movie roles below.
10 actors who regret huge movie roles:
Christian Bale
While the English actor Christian Bale is better known for his role as Batman in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, there is another franchise that he helped to fuel in the 21st century. Hoping to give new life to the Terminator franchise, Bale starred in the 2009 sequel Terminator Salvation alongside Sam Worthington and the late Anton Yelchin, but things didn’t really go to plan.
“It’s a great thorn in my side,” the actor stated regarding the movie, “because I wish we could have reinvigorated [the franchise]. And unfortunately, during production, you could tell that wasn’t happening. It’s a great shame”.
George Clooney
For decades, the American actor George Clooney has enchanted audiences with his good looks and cheeky sense of humour, thriving in such movies as Michael Clayton, Up in the Air and From Dusk Till Dawn, yet not every movie of his has been so rosy. Back in the 1990s, when he was still a rising prospect, he took the rather obvious career decision to take the starring role in Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, something he would quickly come to regret.
Candidly speaking about the role, he stated, “I think since Batman that I’ve been disinvited from Comic-Con for 20 years… I just met Adam West there, and I apologised to him. Sorry about the nipples on the suit. Freeze, freeze, I apologise for that”.
Tom Cruise
A bastion of the cinematic experience, it seems as though, in today’s day and age, Tom Cruise can do little wrong, thriving in such movies as Top Gun: Maverick and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning. Yet, he isn’t blind to some of the poor movies he has taken part in over the years, namely the 1985 flick Legend, co-starring Tim Curry, Mia Sara and David Bennent.
“First of all, the press kind of took that and blew it out of proportion. It’s a movie-movie,” he prefaced when discussing the film, adding, “I’ll never want to do another picture like that again”.
Viola Davis
Undoubtedly one of the greatest working American actors, Viola Davis has gone from strength to strength in recent years, winning an Oscar in 2017 for her performance in Denzel Washington’s Fences. Yet, surprisingly, it was another one of her Oscar-nominated movies that she would come to regret, stating that by making The Help in 2011, “I betrayed myself and my people”.
Seeing the ‘Best Picture’ nominee as something of a white-saviour movie, Davis added: “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 [played by Octavia Spencer, who won a ‘Best Supporting Actress’ Oscar]. 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”.
Tom Hanks
Recognised as one of the most beloved actors of all time, Tom Hanks has played some of cinema’s most likeable characters, from the loyal cowboy Woody in Pixar’s Toy Story to the titular protagonist in Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump. Yet, even one of the industry’s biggest names has career regrets.
“When we were making it, that movie was huge,” Hanks stated regarding 1990’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, “We couldn’t make a move anywhere in New York City. Everybody was talking about it. Everybody was miscast, me particularly…You can’t take a book like Tom Wolfe’s that has changed the way people talk and think and change it into a palatable movie…Or alter the thrust of what the source material is talking about. It may not translate in a way that is going to work”.
Brad Pitt
In terms of the biggest actors of the 1990s, Brad Pitt rubbed shoulders with the very best and most popular, including Jim Carrey, Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder. Making a name for himself as the new Hollywood hunk, thanks to roles in Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise and David Fincher’s Fight Club, Pitt entered the new millennium as one of the industry’s most promising stars, but plenty of cinematic failures would await.
Speaking about the 2004 historical drama Troy, Pitt explained: “It wasn’t painful, but I realised that the way that movie was being told was not how I wanted it to be. I made my own mistakes in it. What am I trying to say about Troy? I could not get out of the middle of the frame. It was driving me crazy…I’d become spoiled working with David Fincher…Troy became a commercial kind of thing. Every shot was like, ‘Here’s the hero!’ There was no mystery”.
Ryan Reynolds
One of modern cinema’s great comedy actors, American star Ryan Reynolds has thrived in the industry, largely thanks to roles in the superhero genre, appearing as variations of the Deadpool character over three movies. But there was one superhero role that almost destroyed his career entirely, namely, the 2011 DC movie Green Lantern.
Calling the movie a “disaster”, Reynolds added: “With Green Lantern, I don’t think anyone ever figured out exactly what it was… It also fell victim to the process in Hollywood, which is like poster first, release date second, script last… It was crazy. It was an odd feeling. It was not a feeling I wanted to repeat. So I really spent the following years just owning as much as I could, it was the only way to kind of process it”.
Syvester Stallone
One of the undisputed kings of cinema in the 1970s and 1980s, Sylvester Stallone thrived in such movies as Rocky and First Blood, creating two icons of action cinema in the process. But, when he tried to bring another action hero to life in the form of Judge Dredd, he failed spectacularly, with the 1995 film named after the character being largely criticised, particularly after the 2012 remake.
Regretting his time working on the movie, he explained: “The biggest mistake I ever made was with the sloppy handling of Judge Dredd…It could have been a fantastic, nihilistic, interesting vision of the future – judge, jury and executioner. That [film] really bothered me a great deal… With all the pop culture, that really bothered me a great deal. I thought it was a fantastic concept, but somebody has to take the fall when things don’t work – and because I was the most recognisable, highest profile”.
Meryl Streep
Seen, for good reason, as one of the greatest actors of all time, Meryl Streep has earned 21 Oscar nominations for herself over the course of her career, bringing home three Academy Awards in total. Still, even the greatest actors of all time have regrets, with Streep being self-critical of her performance in the 1981 Karel Reisz movie The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
“I’m giving myself an out, but part of it was, the structure of it was sort of artificial because I was the actress playing The French Lieutenant’s Woman. At the same time, I was an American actress playing a British woman,” she once stated, “You always want to do something better after the fact”.
Kate Winslet
The final regretful actor to grace the list is the English superstar Kate Winslet, the star of James Cameron’s romantic blockbuster, Titanic. Whilst Winslet holds her collaboration with Cameron as one of her nearest and dearest movies, there are other close partnerships she massively regrets in hindsight, namely, the films where she worked closely with Woody Allen and Roman Polanski.
“It’s like, what the fuck was I doing working with Woody Allen and Roman Polanski?” she once stated, “I have to take responsibility for the fact that I worked with them both. I can’t turn back the clock. I’m grappling with those regrets, but what do we have if we aren’t able to just be fucking truthful about all of it?”.
