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Not all movies are created equally. While some movies christen stars and directors as the next best thing, and sometimes overnight, some movies can ruin careers just as fast. Hollywood is an industry entirely cultivated on image, which can make the decision to act in or direct certain movies feel precarious and calculated like a game of chess. And like chess, one poor decision can lead to ruin. But which are the greatest movies that have actually derailed careers?
Whether some movies are actually so bad that the actors can't ever escape their stank or misunderstood masterpieces that needed time and perspective to be positively reevaluated, these 32 movies heavily derailed the careers of their stars or directors. Everyone loves a good comeback story, but for many in Hollywood, they're still waiting to overcome what these movies did to their reputations.
32. Wind (1992) and Jennifer Grey
America had the time of its life with Jennifer Grey after the now iconic 1987 film Dirty Dancing. But while filming the 1992 yachting movie Wind, a passing remark from the movie's cinematographer led Grey to get plastic surgery for her nose. The result rendered her unrecognizable to all of Hollywood, even to her own Wind co-stars. Not only that, but Wind's totally unremarkable reception took the, ahem, wind out of Grey's sails. Suddenly, a once-promising rising career was airless. In her 2022 memoir, Grey wrote: "Overnight I [lost] my identity and career … I spent so much energy trying to figure out what I did wrong, why I was banished from the kingdom. That's a lie. I banished myself."
31. The Love Guru (2008) and Mike Myers
The painfully unfunny and casually offensive flop The Love Guru was the nail in the coffin for Mike Myers' stardom throughout the 2000s. After rising through Saturday Night Live and launching hit film series like Wayne's World, Austin Powers, and Shrek, Myers started taking hits to the face with the unpopular live-action adaptation of Dr. Seuss' seminal childrens' book The Cat in the Hat. In 2008, Myers wrote, directed, and starred in The Love Guru, a bizarre rom-com in which Myers appears as a celebrity guru tasked with spiritually reorienting the star player of the Toronto Maple Leafs. The movie bombed hard with both audiences and critics, and Myers' career never fully recovered afterward.
30. Superman Returns (2006) and Brandon Routh
Superman may be bulletproof, but Brandon Routh was not invincible to the highs and lows of Hollywood. In 2006, Routh rose from obscurity to play the iconic Man of Steel in Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, a continuation of the original film franchise that starred the late Christopher Reeve. While Superman Returns was no disaster, its melancholic qualities and baffling script (where Superman himself hardly speaks) didn't align with the zeitgeist. Ultimately its biggest casualty was its leading man Routh, whose movie work afterward hardly took him back to the skies. Routh enjoyed something of a redemption arc however, playing the DC Comics hero Ray Palmer (aka The Atom) in the DC TV shows Arrow and spin-off Legends of Tomorrow. In 2019, a crossover special saw Routh reprise his Superman in an acclaimed performance.
29. Vice Versa (1988) and Judge Reinhold
After leading the teen movie classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High and co-starring with Eddie Murphy on Beverly Hills Cop, Judge Reinhold was on a rocket ship to Hollywood stardom. But the actor quickly burned out before the '80s even ended with the box office disaster Vice Versa, a strange family comedy where Reinhold plays a father who switches bodies with his own son via a magical relic. In a 1992 L.A. Times interview, Reinhold observed: "[Vice Versa] was really the end of my highfalutin Hollywood career … That's when the phone stopped ringing."
28. Glitter (2001) and Mariah Carey
At the dawn of the 21st century, Mariah Carey was a titan in the pop music world when she released her dream project: Glitter, a showbiz drama (starring Carey) with an accompanying album of the same name. With a standard-issue story recycled from A Star Is Born and a polarizing disco-inspired soundtrack, Glitter didn't shine with either critics or audiences and wound up one of the biggest (artistic) disasters of 2001. While time has been very kind to Glitter (the album) to be reassessed as ahead of its time, no viral hashtags could undo the damage Glitter (the movie) did to Carey's acting career. Aside from some praise for her work in the 2009 film Precious, Carey's filmography remains dwarfed by her discography.
27. From Justin to Kelly (2003) and Kelly Clarkson
It was one of the weirdest contractual stipulations for winning American Idol: Starring in a maddeningly safe rom-com for teens. After Kelly Clarkson won the first season of the hit singing competition, she was forced to appear with runner-up Justin Guarini in a vapid movie musical about college kids who meet and fall in love over spring break, or something. In multiple interviews, like with Time in 2006 and UsWeekly in 2018, Clarkson has gone on record saying she never wanted to make the movie. "I knew when I read the script it was going to be real, real bad, but when I won, I signed that piece of paper, and I could not get out of it," she told Time. While Clarkson allowed her movie career to tank, she hasn't stayed out of the limelight with a successful music career and a secondary career as the host of The Kelly Clarkson Show.
26. Mallrats (1995) and Shannon Doherty
Fans of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Charmed would never dare call Shannen Doherty a failed actress. But after becoming a teen idol on TV, Doherty sought silver screen stardom and appeared as the female lead in the dude comedy Mallrats, written and directed by Kevin Smith. While Mallrats is considered a cult classic, it was a commercial failure at the box office, which Doherty was unfairly given the blame due to how she was the most prominent of the cast. (Ben Affleck was in it too, but this was before Good Will Hunting.) While Doherty rebounded with a leading role in the series Charmed, she never became a proper movie star. Doherty died of breast cancer in 2024.
25. Steel (1997) and Shaquille O'Neal
After making his acting debut in the 1994 film Blue Chips, NBA superstar Shaquille O'Neal appeared to have found a second calling as an actor, his Razzie nomination for "Worst New Star" notwithstanding. Following his starring role as a rapping genie in 1996's Kazaam - another critically panned performance - O'Neal suited up the DC Comics superhero Steel in yet another unpopular movie. This was pretty much the final straw for "Shaq" in Hollywood, as O'Neal did little more than cameo as himself in R-rated comedies afterward. (He remained dominant on the court, however, and retired in 2011 as one of the greatest basketball players of all time.)
24. Fantastic Four (2015) and Josh Trank
When Marvel Studios was riding the high of its interconnected Avengers franchise, the then-rival studio 20th Century Fox aimed to assert its movie rights to Marvel's Fantastic Four with a dark and gritty reboot project. The result was, um, Fantastic Four (or Fant4stic Four, if you take the poster literally). Panned by critics as drab and dull and ignored by audiences because it wasn't The Avengers, Fantastic Four suffered at least one major casualty: director Josh Trank. Amid the movie's release and box office failure, Trank publicly sparred with the studio in the press for impeding his vision. The fallout damaged Trank's reputation, landing him in the proverbial "director's jail" for years.
23. Norbit (2007) and Eddie Murphy
After cultivating his stardom in the 1980s and cementing it in the 1990s, Eddie Murphy began to falter in the 2000s with duds like The Adventures of Pluto Nash. While the 2006 drama Dreamgirls allowed Murphy to show a more serious side to his craft - in a role that critics highlighted as one of his all-time best performances - the baffling, painfully unfunny Norbit from 2007 turbo-charged Murphy's downward trajectory. Murphy never stopped acting, but a straight decade of slop made his starring role in 2019's Dolemite Is My Name feel like a comeback. Murphy hadn't left; he just wasn't doing anything that was worth paying any attention.
22. The Master of Disguise (2002) and Dana Carvey
In fairness to Dana Carvey, his stated reason for stepping away from movies was to spend time with his kids. Still, it's not a leap to think that the infamously terrible The Master of Disguise and its catastrophic reception in 2002 didn't have something to do with the SNL alum's withdrawal into his shell. After The Master of Disguise fooled no one, Carvey didn't act for nearly 10 years, and even then in only cameo capacities or voiceover work for The Secret Life of Pets series. Despite the foul stench of his last major cinematic effort, his short-lived sketch show The Dana Carvey Show in 1996 is often regarded as one of the most influential comedy shows ever.
21. After Earth (2013) and Jaden Smith
Way before the term "nepo baby" was officially coined, Will Smith and son Jaden Smith brazenly gambled on themselves with the unpopular and mighty expensive M. Night Shyamalan sci-fi After Earth. The plot is nothing to write home about; the Smiths play a father and son (try not to act surprised) who survive on a dangerous, post-apocalyptic future Earth. But the biggest receiver of After Earth's critical beatings was Jaden Smith, whose performance was widely panned. (Wrote The Atlantic: "[Jaden Smith] is entirely lacking in the big-screen charisma that made his father one of Hollywood's major stars.") In the aftermath, Jaden Smith publicly refocused his efforts to music more than movies, though he still worked as an actor on shows like The Get Down and his own produced anime Neo Yokio. In father Will Smith's memoir, the elder Smith wrote that After Earth led his son to feel betrayed by him, which led to his seeking emancipation at age 15.
20. Grease 2 (1982) and Maxwell Caufield
Unlike most movie stars who endure setbacks later in their careers, Maxwell Caufield was seemingly just starting when the maligned Grease 2 did anything but gas him up. Though Caufield was firmly positioned to follow the footsteps of predecessor John Travolta, the lesser sequel to Grease bombed in theaters and permanently hindered Caufield's film career, though the actor found stable work on television. In 2022, Caufield told TooFab that Grease 2 had an immediate chilling effect for him. "I didn't work for practically two years," Caufield said. He described a three-picture deal with Paramount that died with Grease 2. "I was stone cold dead in Hollywood."
19. Howard the Duck (1986) and Lea Thompson
Before comic book movies could make bank from off-beat titles like Guardians of the Galaxy, the bizarre 1986 film Howard the Duck waddled into the unsavory canon of "so bad it's good" movies. Based on the satirical Marvel Comics character, Howard the Duck is a sci-fi comedy about a talking, cigar-smoking alien duck who falls in love with a rock singer. The singer is played by Lea Thompson, who one year earlier was riding high from her leading female role in the all-time classic Back to the Future. Though Thompson still had Back to the Future sequels to keep her busy and later starred in TV shows like Caroline in the City and Switched at Birth, Howard the Duck largely held back Thompson from flying as high as a DeLorean.
18. Gigli (2003) and Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez
To be clear: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are still big stars, each for their achievements in entertainment and their heavily publicized on-again, off-again romance. But before Ben Affleck won Oscars and dressed up as Batman, he and J.Lo suffered the embarrassment of Gigli, a hackneyed rom-com about low-level mobsters. Gigli was a mega disaster that shaped the future of both its stars. Lopez renewed focus on her music, while Affleck had just a few more movies to get out the door - the John Woo snooze Paycheck and Kevin Smith's saccharine Jersey Girl - before stepping out from public view. With 2007's Gone Baby Gone, Affleck began a career resurgence as an acclaimed director, and by 2016 he was the new Batman for DC Comics' first wave of shared universe tentpoles.
17. Kiss of Death (1995) and Jade (1995) and David Caruso
You can't deliver a killer pun and put on aviators without thinking of David Caruso. But while the now-retired actor held it down on CSI: Miami for 10 seasons, his film career was a different cold case. After spending most of the 1980s and 1990s as a supporting player and a leading role in the successful procedural NYPD Blue, Caruso was ready to break out in 1995 with starring roles in the movies Kiss of Death and Jade. Unfortunately for Caruso, both pictures fumbled badly. (He was even nominated for the Razzie for "Worst New Star" twice, that same year.) Caruso made his last movie in 2001 before returning to TV with CSI: Miami. When the show ended in 2012, so did Caruso's life as an actor when he willingly retired.
16. In the Cut (2003) and Meg Ryan
After turning heads in a New York diner in When Harry Met Sally…, Meg Ryan became an unstoppable force with a string of hits across the 1990s. She collaborated with Tom Hanks not once but three times in some of the era's all-time best rom-coms, fell in love with an angelic Nicolas Cage in City of Angels, and showed she possessed a wide range with serious thrillers like Courage Under Fire. But in 2003, her leading role in Jane Campion's psychological thriller In the Cut, which garnered negative reviews, dispelled Ryan's image as "America's sweetheart" and her career slowed afterward. (In the Cut has since enjoyed reappraisal as a feminist thriller.) Ryan says she took the movie's dismal performance as an opportunity to focus on other parts of her life, including her family. "I took a giant break because I felt like there's just so many other parts of my experience as a human being I wanted to develop," she told People in 2023.
15. I Know Who Killed Me (2007) and Lindsay Lohan
As her career skyrocketed from hits like Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, Lindsay Lohan publicly struggled with the turbulence of Hollywood and became a tabloid fixture in the mid-2000s. 2007 was a rough one for Lohan personally - she underwent rehab for her varying addictions - as well as professionally, with underwhelming starring vehicles. Her year ended with the unpopular psychological thriller I Know Who Killed Me. Though it has undergone reassessment as a cult classic, it wasn't loved when it opened in July 2007 and was by all measures the movie that halted Lohan's momentum forever. Though Lohan tried to stage her comeback with Paul Schrader's 2013 thriller The Canyons (another movie that enjoys positive reappraisal), it took another decade or so before a clean, sober Lohan returned to starring in Netflix movies and sequels to films like Freaky Friday.
14. Heaven's Gate (1980) and Michael Cimino
An epic Western from the filmmaker behind the enduring classic The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate was notorious as a troublesome and costly production (leading it to bomb in theaters) which had a widespread effect on all of Hollywood at the time. The movie symbolically ended the New Hollywood movement, with power shifting away from directors back to studios to invest more in higher-concept, crowd-pleasing features with generally stricter budgets and productions. Among its casualties was Cimino, the Oscar-winning director who never regained his prestige. Though Cimino still made movies well into the '90s, by 1996 the director had retreated into public view; the 1996 crime movie The Sunchaser was his least theatrical film before he died in 2016. In 2012, Cimino oversaw a new edit of Heaven's Gate. Its screening at the Venice Film Festival that year was met with a standing ovation, with critics dubbing the film a misunderstood masterpiece.
13. Jumper (2008) and Hayden Christensen
Hayden Christensen had the role of a lifetime when he played Anakin Skywalker in George Lucas' Star Wars prequel series, albeit in a performance that was widely criticized as wooden and lifeless. When his time on Star Wars ended with 2005's Revenge of the Sith, Christensen took a leap of faith on himself to anchor Doug Liman's sci-fi tentpole Jumper in 2008. But Christensen didn't soar, as his performance was again deemed the culprit for Jumper's unremarkable presence. While Christensen kept acting, including returning to Star Wars for the shows Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ahsoka, Christensen never again held Hollywood in the same Force-chokehold he did before.
12. Head (1968) and The Monkees
It might be cruel and unfair to The Monkees and their fans, but the group has always been a manufactured clone of The Beatles without the same level of talent and magic. The Beatles found new dimensions to their success appearing in experimental features like A Hard Day's Night and Help!, so it stands to reason The Monkees attempted the same with the reflective musical movie Head, which The Monkees also released an accompanying album. But A Hard Day's Night it is not, and Head only contributed to The Monkees living in the shadow of their Liverpool inspirations. In a lot of ways, Head was an end to The Monkees, acting as both a finale for their NBC TV series and the end of their first wave of fame. It was only through the enduring devotion of their fans that The Monkees persevered with an occasional output of music, culminating with the acclaimed Good Times! in 2016 and their final album Christmas Party in 2018.
11. Showgirls (1995) and Elizabeth Berkley
Looking to break free from her squeaky image cultivated on the teen sitcom Saved By the Bell, Elizabeth Berkley bared it all for Paul Verhoeven's dark erotic drama Showgirls - one of the few mainstream films rated NC-17. While the movie is now celebrated as a transgressive neo-noir classic that grills the dishonesty of the American dream, it was widely panned at first and deemed an exploitative disaster. Berkley shouldered the brunt of its beatdowns, and as a consequence never recovered career-wise. For director Verhoeven, it was unfair. In a 2018 interview with New York Daily News, Verhoeven said: "Hollywood was pissed off with her because she went further than any actress has gone or will go and I think they have never forgiven her. Her performance pushed the limits and that worried them."
10. Battlefield Earth (2000) and John Travolta
Few stars in Hollywood have had rollercoaster careers like John Travolta. His is a career marked by frequent highs and discouraging lows. But the baffling 2000 sci-fi movie Battlefield Earth, with discomforting origins in Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, permanently diminished Travolta's star power for good. The movie was widely mocked for its poor execution and a dreadlocked Travolta in horrific Star Trek cosplay, rendering what could have been Travolta's ticket into the realm of blockbusters anything but a worthwhile adventure. Travolta never stopped acting, but a bizarre appearance at the Oscars with "Adele Dizeem" has eclipsed everything else he's done on camera since.
9. Abduction (2011) and Taylor Lautner
As the breakout hunk from Twilight, Taylor Lautner seemed primed to be the next big action hero of the 2010s. His legitimate mastery of martial arts would have suited him well in an era of nonstop superhero franchises. But the 2011 vehicle Abduction, a rudimentary action-thriller in the spirit of the Jason Bourne series, did anything but make a hero out of Lautner. Critically panned and underperforming at the box office, Abduction severely impacted Lautner's post-Twilight career and the actor never lived up to his promising start. Lautner even tried a second time with 2015's Tracers - a movie that looks exactly like Abduction even on the poster.
8. Cutthroat Island (1995) and Geena Davis
Before Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean struck gold to revitalize the swashbuckler genre, there was Cutthroat Island, a movie that struck out A League of Their Own's Geena Davis. Davis initially enjoyed stardom between the '80s and '90s, with a role in The Accidental Tourist that earned her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. After the hit movies Beetlejuice and A League of Their Own, Davis' momentum was hot until she appeared in the swashbuckler bomb Cutthroat Island, helmed by her then-husband Renny Harlin. Production on Cutthroat Island was chaos on the high seas, being wildly expensive, difficult to shoot, and one of the year's biggest duds. The movie condemned Davis' career on the big screen, though she enjoyed relevance on TV with a Golden Globe-winning role in Commander in Chief and Grey's Anatomy.
7. Batman & Robin (1997) and Alicia Silverstone
From Aerosmith music videos to the seminal '90s teen comedy Clueless, Alicia Silverstone was once the new Hollywood "it" girl of the '90s. But when the actress suited up as Batgirl for Joel Schumacher's maligned superhero sequel Batman & Robin, Silverstone was never the same. The movie, which also starred George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Uma Thurman, was heavily disliked by critics and comic fans alike; the movie's poor reception led Warner Bros. to put the franchise on ice until it successfully rebooted under Christopher Nolan. Though Silverstone kept acting well into the 2020s, her post-Batman & Robin work fell short of expectations. In April 2020, Silverstone told The Guardian that she "stopped loving acting" after Batman & Robin, adding that the movie "definitely wasn't my favorite film-making experience."
6. Freddy Got Fingered (2001) and Tom Green
While Freddy Got Fingered is now loved as a misunderstood cult classic, the gross-out comedy starring Tom Green got the finger from critics in 2001 to permanently damage Green's prospects on the screen. Smack dab in an era of R-rated comedies like American Pie, Road Trip, and Van Wilder, Freddy Got Fingered struggled to stick out and found itself considered one of the worst movies of all time. (Critics now believe the movie was ahead of its time, some arguing it might have done better in a culture familiar with humor shaped by Adult Swim and I Think You Should Leave.) Tom Green's previous success on MTV did nothing to help him bounce back, and Green was relegated to comedy sketch shows and cameos in foreign films ever since.
5. The Next Best Thing (2000) and Rupert Everett and Madonna
The misfire that is The Next Best Thing killed not one but two movie careers in one swoop. A mainstream rom-com in which Madonna tries to raise a baby with her gay best friend - played by Rupert Everett, one of the few out gay men in Hollywood at the time - The Next Best Thing fared poorly at the box office and was widely hated by critics. Everett's career floundered, though he kept working and even took up directing with the well-reviewed 2018 drama The Happy Prince. The same can't be said for Madonna, whose next movie Swept Away was just as bad (maybe worse) and basically ended Madonna's work as an actress. She's still Madonna though, and is still doing better than any of us can say.
4. John Carter (2012) and Taylor Kitsch
The hit NBC series Friday Night Lights launched Taylor Kitsch to mainstream recognition, positioning him to step up into a higher plane of fame. With a leading role in the 2012 sci-fi summer tentpole John Carter, Kitsch was practically groomed for blockbuster stardom for the next decade. But while Andrew Stanton's lavish film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic novels is beloved now, it simply didn't hit it big enough in 2012 to recoup its eye-watering production costs. John Carter was a historic disaster for Disney on proportions never seen before, compelling Disney to lean heavier into brand acquisitions like Marvel and Star Wars, the latter of which it acquired from absorbing Lucasfilm only a few months after John Carter's underwhelming release. As for Kitsch, his appeal as a movie star was never again luminous, with only a handful of interchangeable gritty thrillers and a return to TV with shows like Waco, The Defeated, The Terminal List, and the second season of the HBO anthology series True Detective.
3. Josie and the Pussycats (2001) and Rachel Leigh Cook
The 2001 movie Josie and the Pussycats is embraced today as a cult classic. But when it first opened all those years ago, its lukewarm reception and box office failure cut the mic off for at least one of its main stars: Rachel Leigh Cook. Though Cook found overnight fame with the 1999 teen comedy She's All That, Cook mysteriously saw her career stall after Josie and the Pussycats didn't make noise. (At least at first.) Her co-stars saw different outcomes. Rosario Dawson continued enjoying success, including landing a major role in the Star Wars franchise as Ahsoka Tano, while Tara Reid enjoyed roles in American Pie 2 and Van Wilder (opposite Ryan Reynolds) before her own career floundered. Though we can hardly call being a fixture in the Sharknado series "floundering."
2. Catwoman (2004) and Halle Berry
Only a year before Batman found new life on the big screen, his archenemy and love interest Catwoman had her standalone spin-off in the 2004 disaster Catwoman. A bonafide Hollywood starlet at the turn of the century, not to mention a historic recipient of the Best Actress Oscar - being the first Black woman and person of color in Academy Awards history to do so - it made every sense for Halle Berry to whip out her claws for a juicy superhero movie. (Berry was already playing Storm in the ensemble X-Men franchise, but Catwoman was letting Berry stand on her own.) But Catwoman didn't purr for critics nor audiences, with the movie having the dubious reputation as being one of the year's worst. The movie scratched Berry's once-sterling career, and while she's kept working even in high-profile movies - like a John Wick sequel in 2019 - nothing has fully enabled her anticipated comeback.
1. The Godfather Part III (1990) and Sofia Coppola
The final chapter in the Corleone family crime saga was capped off with The Godfather Part III, released in 1990. Francis Ford Coppola's daughter, Sofia Coppola, appeared as the movie's female lead - as the daughter of Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino - in a role that was widely criticized to the point it eclipsed the movie itself, which was also panned as the weakest entry in the whole Godfather trilogy. But while the movie ended Sofia Coppola's acting career like a hit job, her career as a director has only flourished. With movies like The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost in Translation (2003), The Beguiled (2017), and Priscilla (2023), Coppola enjoys recognition as one of the finest directors with a pronounced female perspective in her artistry. She might not be remembered as an actress anymore, but being a beloved director? That's an offer no one can refuse.
