There’s a common saying in the movie industry, “That’s Hollywood,” and it can be used in many instances, but in most cases, it’s when an actor’s five minutes of fame has run out. It’s very rarely unprovoked, and the events are usually set into motion fairly quickly after an actor’s big movie nosedives at the box office or is critically scathed.

  • When it comes to movie careers, it has been proven more than once that one bad role could end an actor’s career for good. When looking at the biggest movie flops of 2022, the biggest failure seems to be the Sony Marvel movie Morbius, which not only received the lowest critical grades for a Marvel movie in years but also failed to make a dent at the box office. However, despite the movie’s failure, as well as his previous misstep as Joker in the DCEU, it seems Jared Leto will once again escape without it damaging his career. He should count his luck, as many actors didn’t find the same forgiveness from studios or movie fans.

More often than not, it happens in a flash, and it’s almost as if they fall off the face of the Earth. Though it may not always be fair, it’s unavoidable, and Redditors have their opinions on the most brutal examples.

Elizabeth Berkley (Showgirls)

Before Showgirls, Elizabeth Berkley was one of the popular members of the Head of the Class cast. While no one from that show went on to become a massive star, Berkley tried and took a role in a big Paul Verhoeven movie. It mostly ruined her career, which became famous just for the nudity and its NC-17 rating without many people catching the satire Verhoeven added.

A good example of how people looked at the movie and dismissed Berkley after it, came in a Reddit discussion. BitterAnimal9310 didn’t catch the satire, writing “I finally just watched that movie and its hard to believe that they didn’t intend it as satire. Not a single character ever did anything that made any sense.”

Emily Browning (Sucker Punch)

Zack Snyder impressed a lot of fans with his early movies, Dawn of the Dead and Watchmen, but before he got started in the DCEU, he made a movie called Sucker Punch, which was less successful.

On Reddit, ardaearthsong said the movie stalled out the careers for both Abbie Cornish and Emily Browning. “And then they both did Sucker Punch, and their careers never recovered. I think that whole experience really soured them to big studio productions.”

Brandon Routh (Superman)

While he only had the role for one movie, Brandon Routh took on the role of Superman in the movie Superman Returns. Much like Christopher Reeve, DC wanted someone lesser known to play the role. Sadly, Routh only got one movie and then didn’t do anything big until he joined the cast of Legends of Tomorrow.

When talking about Superman ruining his career, NoSalamander2697 wrote, “it didn’t pan out. he fell to the way side and had to start from scratch again basically.”

Rachel Leigh Cook (Josie And The Pussycats)

In 2001, Josie and the Pussycats hit theaters and the cast consisted of three women - Rachel Leigh Cook, Tara Reid, and Rosario Dawson. The movie was a massive flop, only making $14.3 million worldwide at the box office. While Dawson went on to have a nice supporting actor career and Reid was slightly protected with American Pie, some fans felt Cook took the fall for the movie’s failure.

“Rachael Leigh Cook has talked about how the box office failure of Josie and the Pussycats really affected her chances to work for many years,” EraseRewindPlay wrote on Reddit.

Taylor Lautner (Abduction)

When The Twilight Saga ended, there were questions about whether the three main stars could move on to have further success outside the young adult franchise. It worked for Kristen Stewart, who went on to star in several independent movies before picking up some Oscar consideration. Robert Pattinson did even better when he hooked up with David Cronenberg and proved his mettle as an actor before finally becoming Batman.

However, Taylor Lautner made a misstep. He tried to stay in the same lane and took the role in the action movie Abduction, which flopped at the box office and harmed his career as a leading man in movies. Deuchars wrote on Reddit that the movie killed his career outright, “from the flabbergastingly enormous paydays he got for having not led a single non-Twilight movie yet to the studios abandoning him like rats on a sinking ship the second Abduction flopped.”

Taylor Kitsch (John Carter)

Taylor Kitsch appeared out of nowhere and became one of the most talked-about stars of the early 2010s, but any hype surrounding him was quickly squashed by two box office bombs. The actor starred in both Battleship and John Carter, and as Redditor mickeyflinn puts it, the “two back to back massive flops stopped Taylor Kitsch from making summer tent pole movies.”

The movies didn’t even give Kitsch a chance to show his abilities as an actor. He proved that he was a great performer with the second season of True Detective, but once again, even in the TV realm, it was a case of making the wrong decision by starring in a show that wasn’t well received. Even though the first season of True Detective was incredible, the follow-up season was critically scathed, but not because of Kitsch.

Alicia Silverstone (Batman & Robin)

Alicia Silverstone was a rising star in the 1990s with supporting roles in movies like Clueless, but her tenure as a major star was unfortunately cut short by Batman & Robin. Reddit user skonen_blades puts it bluntly by explaining that Silverstone’s career “got pretty soundly torpedoed” after starring in the disappointing 1997 movie. However, the whole Bat-family is one of the ways Batman & Robin is actually underrated, and it hasn’t been done in a movie since, but studio execs clearly didn’t see it that way.

The Redditor doesn’t stop at Silverstone, as they also bring up Chris O’Donnell as Robin, who didn’t star in any major movie after the blockbuster either. Though he has been the star of the TV show NCIS: Los Angeles for 280 episodes.

Mike Myers (The Love Guru)

Between Wayne in Wayne’s World and Austin Powers, Mike Myers created some of the most memorable and iconic comedy characters in movie history. But there’s one that isn’t held in such high regard, and that’s The Love Guru. Moon_Machine24 claims that the movie was “so bad it literally killed Mike Myers’s career.”

Though Myers did have a couple of box office failures before the movie, such as The Cat In The Hat, The Love Guru was perhaps the final nail in the coffin. However, a couple of bad days in the office can’t end the career of an icon with such a great legacy, and Myers does still appear in films from time to time, but they’re rarely anything more than cameos.

Hayden Christensen (Star Wars)

Redditor AB_Coogan believes the role of Anakin Skywalker killed Hayden Christensen’s career. The actor portrayed one of the most famous movie villains of all time in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, and the Redditor notes that he “was dragged through the mud undeservedly after Star Wars.” What the user is hinting at is that it could be more a case of being directed badly than being a bad actor.

There is behind-the-scenes footage available on YouTube that sees George Lucas wandering around the set and seemingly not being sure what direction to give Christensen. However, next year, the balance will be restored, as Christensen will be returning as Anakin Skywalker in the upcoming Star Wars Disney+ series, Obi-Wan Kenobi. And luckily, people couldn’t be more excited about his return.

Adrian Brody (King Kong)

Adrian Brody was a hot commodity in the early 2000s. The actor even had an Academy Award to his name for his role in The Pianist, and he was the youngest actor to ever win the award for Best Actor at the time. Brody had such a bright future, but Onelittleworld argues that King Kong stopped that future from happening. They claim that the actor was a “rocket-hot rising star until they tried to make him into a studly leading-man-action-adventure-hero type.”

While the 2005 remake of the monster movie is one of the best movies over three hours, Brody hasn’t been in any noteworthy major Hollywood movie since. If it wasn’t for celebrated director Wes Anderson, who casts Brody in most of his movies, audiences might have heard even less from him.

Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool)

This Reddit user argues that the role of Deadpool hasn’t hurt Ryan Reynolds’s career professionally, but that it has taken somewhat of a critical hit. This choice is a hot take, as TheRedHood20000 claims that “every time he gets another gig, he’s just playing Deadpool minus the costume.”

However, while it’s fair to argue that Ryan Reynolds tends to play himself in most of his roles, he’s been doing that long before Deadpool. Reynolds had his distinct good-natured joshing charm in National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, and he was even throwing out off-the-cuff one-liners in 1998’s TV show Two Guys and a Girl.

Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story)

When it comes to prequels, there has never been one more controversial than Solo: A Star Wars Story. According to Vulture, there was so much drama that surrounded Solo, including Alden Ehrenreich locking horns with the original directors and the original directors subsequently getting fired. But the worst of it is that, as nayapapaya notes, “Solo completely stalled his career.”

The lack of Ehrenreich’s presence in Hollywood since the release of the 2018 movie is disappointing, as he is such a talented actor. In the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar, the actor proved himself to be an all-around terrific performer, as he sang, danced, and managed to be equally hilarious and dramatic.

Sofia Coppola (The Godfather Part III)

Though The Godfather Coda fixes her role, one of the biggest criticisms of The Godfather Part III is Sofia Coppola’s portrayal of Mary Corleone. Redditor No-End7975 notes that the bad acting not only hurt her career, but it ruined Star Wars too. They state that “when she appeared in The Phantom Menace as a handmaiden, all I could see was Mary Corleone.”

However, it’s unclear how much of an actor Sofia Coppola wanted to be in the first place, as, according to Insider, she took the role last minute when Winona Ryder had to back out. On top of that, she has followed in her father’s footsteps and has become a celebrated director in her own right, having made films such as Lost In Translation and The Bling Ring.

Sean Connery (The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen)

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is generally considered one of the worst comic book movies of all time, even if some Redditors do think it’s one of the best movies rated under 6.0 on IMDb.

The movie stars Sean Connery as the leader of the superhero gang, Allan Quatermain, and as Choco320 points out, the former James Bond “quit acting because of how s*it The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was.” Though Sean Connery was Hollywood royalty and he surely would have been able to bounce back from any box office bomb, following its release, he never wanted to act again in his life.

F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus)

Unlike any other role that hurt an actor’s career, F. Murray Abraham’s role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus is actually great. After winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as the real-life Italian classical composer, Abraham was mysteriously offered few other major roles.

Redditor Cturemane jokingly notes that the movie “screwed his future as badly as if he’d spent a decade doing porn, or was the lead on a popular sci-fi TV series.” Movies hurting actors’ careers so badly that it results in them all but disappearing off the face of the Earth was even once called “the F. Murray Abraham Syndrome.”