The five most blatantly obvious paycheque performances in cinema history
Acting is a job like any other. You get some people who really love it and put all of their efforts into doing good work, while sometimes, people are only interested in the paycheque that comes with it. They’ve got families to feed, bills to pay, and private jets to fuel, and they don’t care how they do it.
Hollywood history is littered with examples of big names taking jobs ‘for the money’, which has led to numerous debates among film fans. Is it acceptable for a famous actor to phone it in? Everybody’s allowed to have their off days, but these people are being paid millions of dollars to entertain us, and if they can’t be bothered to do so, should they really be let off the hook?
Whatever you think of this practice, it happens, and some instances are more obvious than others. The following five performances all stand out for the wrong reasons, as you can basically see the dollar signs on the eyeballs of the actors involved.
We’ve all got to make a living, so next time you worry about slacking off at work, remember that these literal millionaires did the same thing on camera and got away with it. You won’t feel so guilty.
Five obvious paycheque performances:
5. Robert De Niro in Little Fockers (Paul Weitz, 2010)
Books could be written on the career trajectory of Robert De Niro and they probably have been. From Taxi Driver and The Godfather to Dirty Grandpa, few actors have ridden the rollercoaster of public affection quite as often as Bob. When it comes to the worst days out for the double Oscar winner, the words Little Fockers appear regularly and with good reason.
De Niro received decent reviews for his role as an overprotective father in Meet the Parents, but things took a sharp downturn with its sequel, Meet the Fockers—which could have easily made this list as well. By the time the third film, Little Fockers, rolled around, De Niro seemed visibly bored with both the material and Ben Stiller’s company, merely fulfilling his obligations as a cast member and producer.
Even surrounded by a star-studded ensemble featuring Dustin Hoffman, Owen Wilson, Jessica Alba, and Barbra Streisand, De Niro stands out like an apathetic thumb, draining the energy from every scene he’s in. A clear low point in his otherwise stellar career, the Fockers films might have lined his pockets, but they certainly didn’t do his reputation any favours.
4. Jamie Lee Curtis in Borderlands (Eli Roth, 2024)
Adapted from the insanely popular video game series of the same name, 2024’s Borderlands had a lot of promise and failed to deliver on all of it. A totally nonsensical endeavour that failed to capture any of the games’ zany essence, the movie was a complete disaster, earning some of the worst reviews of the year and tarnishing the good names of Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and more. The absolute worst of the worst though is Jamie Lee Curtis, whose ‘performance’ as inventor Patricia Tannis was utterly confounding.
Curtis, who won an Oscar just a year earlier for Everything Everywhere All at Once, looks thoroughly confused throughout the entire thing. Her character is meant to be a bit harebrained, but this version of Tannis looks like she’s wandered in off the streets and can’t find her way out again. She’s slow, doddery, and talks like she’s never even seen a film before, let alone been in several. Whether she didn’t fully grasp the source material or thought a video game movie was beneath her, Curtis stands out as one of the worst things about one of the worst movies of the entire year.
3. Marlon Brando in Superman (Richard Donner, 1978)
Few actors have the range of Marlon Brando; range of quality in his performances, that is. From winning Oscars for On the Waterfront and The Godfather to whatever the hell The Island of Dr Moreau is, Brando ran the full gamut of acting greatness during his volatile career, leaving behind just as many burnt bridges as he did wonderful memories. One of his most high-profile appearances was in the original Christopher Reeve Superman movie, where he played Kal-El’s father, Jor-El. Sadly, this is also one of his flattest portrayals ever.
The story goes that Brando refused to learn any of his lines for the character, so read them all off cards. This goes a long way in explaining his rigid delivery and lack of enthusiasm for the part, which severely impacts the overall state of the film. Brando received a whopping $3.7million for appearing in the film, which he planned to use to fund a miniseries about the history of Native Americans. When he was denied a share of the film’s box office cut, he sued the production for another $50m. This scuppered plans to use footage of him in the movie’s sequel.
2. Bruce Willis in Cop Out (Kevin Smith, 2010)
Poor Bruce Willis. The legendary action hero’s more recent career has been tarred by a string of bad decisions, some of which were clearly the effect of the actor’s aphasia and frontotemporal dementia. However, years before health problems forced him into an early retirement, Willis was appearing in some utterly awful stuff and made no effort to hide his disdain. Case in point, Cop Out, a Kevin Smith-directed police comedy that paired him up with Saturday Night Live’s Tracy Morgan.
The film, which stars Willis and Morgan as two detectives chasing down a stolen baseball card, was marred by a frosty relationship between its director and the Die Hard star. Willis and Smith did not get on at all, with numerous conflicting reports into who was in the wrong and who started their beef. As a result, John McClane gives one of his most tepid performances ever, gently retching up jokes and not so much running after criminals as lightly jogging behind them. He has zero chemistry with his partner, which is a big problem in a buddy movie, and he drags down what was already a pretty dodgy project.
1. Michael Douglas in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania (Peyton Reed, 2023)
When Michael Douglas first appeared as Hank Pym in the original Ant-Man, he was 71 years old and the MCU was in a very strong place. By the time the third film in the series rolled around, Douglas was nearly 80, the MCU was in steep decline, and he very obviously didn’t care anymore. The Basic Instinct star barely gets out of bed for his third appearance as the revolutionary scientist, as he, Paul Rudd’s titular superhero, and the rest of the gang get shrunk down to subatomic size and do battle with Kang the Conqueror.
He admitted in several interviews that he didn’t have any idea what was going on in the movie and even asked for the studio to kill his character off. When they didn’t oblige, Douglas took his revenge by giving a half-assed, confused performance that was far from his slick best. It didn’t help that the rest of the film was pretty pants, from its confusing storyline to the utter nightmare fuel that is M.O.D.O.K and his horrible CGI head. Maybe they should have killed him off after all.
