Bowing out on a bum note: five legendary actors who saved their worst movie for last
For the most part, actors aren’t in charge of their own destinies. Some are, but it takes equal amounts of hard work and success to reach that point.
If an actor wins a bucketload of awards, headlines countless box office hits, and becomes a brand unto themselves, they can dictate their own trajectories. Even at that, some of cinema’s most legendary names have said goodbye to their livelihoods by starring in the worst movies of their careers.
Spending decades flirting with greatness, appearing in stone-cold classics, and raking in a fortune in ticket sales is all well and good, but any actor who says they don’t mind if they bow out on a high note or not is probably lying. After all, the old adage posits that anyone is only as good as their last picture, which in this case means that their legendary status should be revoked.
All five of the following stars are inarguable Hollywood legends, who, between them, have won virtually every major honour in the business and are responsible for dozens of great films. Sadly, the one thing they have in common is that the last feature in their filmographies also happens to be the weakest by far.
Five actors whose final movie was their worst:
Gene Hackman
A stalwart of the ‘New Hollywood’ era and beyond, Gene Hackman was an actor who looked and performed like he was carved out of granite, bringing instant authority and gravitas to every part he played.
Finding his niche in the sweet spot between leading man and character actor, Hackman won two Oscars and boasts Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, The Poseidon Adventure, Superman, Mississippi Burning, The Conversation, Young Frankenstein, and many more classics that underlined him as a man for all seasons and every genre.
His penultimate film, 2003’s Runaway Jury, would have been the perfect swansong when it cast him alongside former roommate and longtime friend Dustin Hoffman for the first time, but the following year’s Welcome to Mooseport instead took the honour of being Hackman’s last stand. A wretched comedy that flopped at the box office, it was an embarrassing end for a legend.
Bette Davis
With two Oscars for ‘Best Actress’ to her name before turning 30, Bette Davis wasted little time in announcing herself as one of the most formidable talents of Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’.
An 11-time nominee in total, her work in Dangerous, Jezebel, Dark Victory, and All About Eve stands the test of time, making Davis one of the most iconic stars of an era that was positively overflowing with names who’ll forever be etched into the history books.
In her later years, her work became increasingly sporadic as she battled ill health, and 1989’s Wicked Stepmother was a terrible way to go out. She walked out of the film before the end of shooting and admitted she was ashamed of it, but the fact remains that Davis’ worst movie was the last one she ever starred in.
Peter Sellers
Arguably the most influential big-screen comic performer of all time, who inspired everyone from Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy to Mike Myers and Steve Martin, Peter Sellers was an unstoppable tour-de-force when he was on top form.
A three-time Oscar nominee who excelled at playing multiple characters and making them all equally unforgettable, 1979’s elegiac dramedy Being There – which won him a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actor – Musical or Comedy’ – would make a fitting epitaph for Sellers’ filmography.
Unfortunately, he made one more before passing in July 1980, which was awful. The last film he shot before his death and released two months after, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu was a woeful misfire. Torn to shreds by critics, a fractious production yielded dismal results and capped off Sellers’ career ignominiously.
Joan Crawford
The long-running feud between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis became the stuff of Hollywood legend, which makes it cruelly fitting that the two legendary stars signed off in a similar fashion by leaving the worst movie of their respective careers until the very end.
Intentionally mysterious, deliberately enigmatic, and notoriously difficult, Crawford endured plenty of ups and downs, but she never got any lower than her final feature. What was an Oscar winner doing in a low-budget British sci-fi horror flick about a troglodyte? It’s an excellent question, and the shoddy quality of the end product offered no justifiable answers.
Crawford never returned to the big screen again after the release of 1970’s Trog before passing away seven years later, leaving the C-tier creature feature as the unworthy final flourish on a distinguished and eminently successful back catalogue.
Sean Connery
In a two-for-one special, Sean Connery bid farewell to cinema by starring in two dreadful movies, one each in live-action and animation, separated by a decade.
His miserable experience on the comic book adaptation The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen saw the original James Bond decide he’d had enough of this acting lark, which was bad enough when the dire steampunk-inspired blockbuster was hardly befitting his reputation.
Nine years later, and somehow, worse was still to come. Voicing the title character and serving as an executive producer, 2012’s Sir Billi arrived to be instantly – and deservedly – greeted as one of the worst animated films ever made. Adding insult to injury, it barely scraped past £15,000 at the box office after spending years in development, and its only worthwhile contribution to cinema is as Connery’s last feature.
