Although the first installment in Michael Bay's Transformers franchise received favorable reviews in 2007, the film's 2009 sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, was a complete mess. Even typically enthusiastic Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers wrote, " Transformers 2 has a shot at the title Worst Movie of the Decade." And recently, the explosion-happy director lashed out at his film, confessing to Empire, "The real fault with [ Transformers 2] is that it ran into a mystical world. When I look back at it, that was crap."
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Though Oscar winner Charlize Theron appeared in bombs like Aeon Flux and Waking Up in Reno, the South African stunner is none too happy about one of her films in particular: Reindeer Games, a 2000 heist film co-starring Ben Affleck. "That was a bad, bad, bad movie," Theron confessed to Esquire. "But... I got to work with John Frankenheimer. I wasn't lying to myself—that's why I did it." Critics wish she had stayed away, with the New York Post saying, " Reindeer Games is about as appealing as leftover Christmas fruitcake."
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Just two years after becoming the first African-American woman to win the Oscar for Best Actress, Halle Berry released the 2004 critical and commercial disaster Catwoman. The superhero movie not only made esteemed film critic Roger Ebert's "Most Hated Films" list, but it also earned Berry the Worst Actress Razzie. Berry was a good sport and arrived in person to accept the award. Clenching her award in one hand and her Oscar in the other, Berry said, "Warner Bros… Thank you for putting me in a piece of shit, god-awful movie." Let's hope Oscar nominee and this year's co-host Anne Hathaway fares better as the leather-suited character in Christopher Nolan's upcoming Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises.
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M. Night Shyamalan's 2008 film The Happening was a truly bizarre film about a suicide trend that starts in New York City and spreads throughout the Northeast. Although its star Mark Wahlberg was praised for his portrayal of a high-school teacher as one of the only highlights in this disastrous movie, he couldn't resist bashing it to the Hollywood Reporter when it came up in a conversation about his recent co-star in The Fighter. "I was such a huge fan of Amy Adams. We'd actually had the luxury of having lunch before to talk about another movie, and it was a bad movie that I did. She dodged the bullet," he explained. "I don't want to tell you what movie… All right, The Happening. Fuck it. It is what it is. Fucking trees, man. The plants. Fuck it. You can't blame me for wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn't playing a cop or a crook," he quipped.
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Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Katherine Heigl starred opposite Seth Rogen in Judd Apatow's 2007 hit Knocked Up, which went on to earn more than $200 million worldwide and was dubbed "an instant classic" by The New York Times. Despite the film's warm reception, which boosted Heigl to a heightened Hollywood status, the former Grey's Anatomy star trashed the film. "It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys," Heigl complained to Vanity Fair. "It exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, on some days. I'm playing such a bitch; why is she being such a killjoy? Why is this how you're portraying women? Ninety-eight percent of the time it was an amazing experience, but it was hard for me to love the movie." Her co-star Seth Rogen took offense and fired back, telling the New York Daily News, "I hear there's a scene [in The Ugly Truth] where she's wearing… underwear… with a vibrator in it, so I'd have to see if that was uplifting for women."
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To be fair, Captain von Trapp probably wouldn't have liked this 1965 classic movie musical about his family either. Star Christopher Plummer, who famously referred to The Sound of Music as "The Sound of Mucus," said he only signed on for the film because he was " very arrogant" at the time and wanted to use the film as an audition for a stage musical production of Cyrano de Bergerac. The Sound of Music filmmakers were also unhappy with Plummer—they famously dubbed over his songs (a common practice at the time), despite his objections. The actor said the success of The Sound of Music, which made him a household name and bona fide star, also made him "very angry for some time."
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James Cameron wrote and directed the two highest-grossing movies in history— Avatar and Titanic. But Cameron has tried to sweep his very first movie, 1981's Piranha Part II: The Spawning, under the rug. "Technically, I have a credit as the director on that film," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1991. "However, I was replaced after two-and-a-half weeks by the Italian producer. But when I saw what they were cutting together, it was horrible. And then the producer wouldn't take my name off the picture because [contractually] they couldn't deliver it with an Italian name." Cameron instead considers 1984's Terminator to be his directorial debut.
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Bob Hoskins has more than 100 movie credits to his name, including the lead role in 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit? But he admitted to duds in his career in a 2007 interview with The Guardian and said 1993's Super Mario Brothers, based on the Nintendo videogame, was his worst. Hoskins said making the film was a "fuckin' nightmare." And it wasn't just the movie, but the whole on-set experience. "It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent," Hoskins said. "After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin' nightmare. Fuckin' idiots."
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Following her Golden Globe-nominated performance in 1996's Evita, Madonna went for somewhat lighter fare, starring in 2000's The Next Best Thing. She plays a yoga instructor who decides to raise a baby with her gay best friend and Roger Ebert called The Next Best Thing "a garage sale of gay issues." He also said the script is so "evenhanded it has no likable characters," including Alias star Michael Vartan, who plays the man Madonna's character leaves for her gay best friend. Vartan later told Entertainment Weekly, "It's one of the most embarrassing things I've ever done. I don't know what movie tickets cost at the time, but… I owe you all a refund.'"
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Director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford returned for a fourth installment in the Indiana Jones franchise with this high-priced dud, complete with Shia LaBeouf as Jones' rebellious son. And even LaBeouf, who also starred in Bay's blasted sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, has his regrets. "I feel like I dropped the ball on the legacy that people loved and cherished… You get to monkey-swinging and things like that and you can blame it on the writer and you can blame it on Steven [Spielberg]," said LaBeouf. "But the actor's job is to make it come alive and make it work, and I couldn't do it. So that's my fault. Simple… There was a reason it wasn't universally accepted." Despite the critical backlash, the film was a financial success—so much so that they're planning a fifth Indiana Jones film.
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Many times, actors are forgiven for doing a bad movie or two early in their careers; but Paul Newman took his role in the 1954's The Silver Chalice very seriously. One of his first roles, The Silver Chalice cost the then-expensive sum of $5 million to make and was universally panned by critics, with reviews from everything to "deadly dull" to "tedious." But hardest hit was the young Newman, who The New York Times called "hardly outstanding." Newman took the criticism so seriously that he later took an ad out in Variety, begging people not to watch this Biblical movie once it was acquired by television.
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