The worst-reviewed actor in cinema history, according to science
When we were in school, we were plagued by the concept of popularity and hierarchy. Certain cliques were awarded more respectability than others, leaving certain unfortunate students to wear the shame of being less stylish, smart, or well-connected. This seems to be the way that Hollywood works, too.
While we’ve got the A-listers and the Oscar winners sitting firmly at the top, the industry also has its collection of considerably less successful actors who consistently star in less than impressive movies, seemingly unable to make good acting choices. As a result, there are certain actors who have quite an embarrassingly large number of negatively reviewed movies to their name, even if they’ve proved themselves in various genuinely good productions.
But who is the worst-reviewed actor of all time? Luckily, Stat Significant once collected evidence to discover just who this poor unfortunate star is, looking at actors who have appeared in more than five movies in leading roles that were made on a budget of more than $5million. While actors like Madonna, Steven Seagal, Heather Graham, and Mischa Barton all make the list, it is actually Stephen Dorff who sits in first place.
His movies only have an average rating of 4.66 online, despite the fact he has led quite a few projects as a leading man. The actor started his career in the 1980s, making his film debut with The Gate when he was a teenager – which was a moderate success at the box office – before starring in a handful of television shows.
Over the coming years, the actor appeared in a series of movies that featured acclaimed stars, like Judgment Night with Emilio Estevez and Reckless with Mia Farrow, as well as playing the Beatles’ original bassist, Stuart Sutcliffe, in Backbeat. His career has since been a mixed bag, with some genuinely underrated and unexpected gems to be found among his filmography, like John Waters’ Cecil B. Demented and Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, but also a lot of pure rubbish.
Dorff starred in Blade in 1998, which received rather mixed reviews from critics, but few of his films have fared as badly as Alone in the Dark, perhaps because it was directed by one of the worst filmmakers of all time, Uwe Boll. The movie is known as a pure cinematic crime, with every aspect of it receiving intense criticism. Based on the video game Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, audiences couldn’t find any redeeming qualities within the film, and Dorff seriously impacted his career with the terrible choice.
The actor also found limited success with the strange horror film FeardotCom. Released in 2002, the movie saw the actor play Detective Mike Reilly, who must investigate murders that are somehow linked to a mysterious website, but critics and audiences were not impressed. Made on a budget of $40m, it lost $21.1m at the box office, with few viewers finding anything positive to say about the cinematic mess.
That’s just scraping the surface of Dorff’s bad acting decisions, with movies like Tomorrow You’re Gone, Den of Lions, Innocent Lies, and Heatstroke all proving that perhaps the actor simply needs a new agent.
