While being famous may seem like a blessing, it has a lot of drawbacks.
Constant public attention and media scrutiny is not an easy thing to deal with, and it
makes it almost impossible to have a normal life.
Even when they’re not working, actors are still on the clock.
With their careers constantly in flux, the slightest action could change everything.
The movies can be a surprisingly fickle business.
In an industry where things are so fluid, a performer can go from zero to hero overnight,
but unfortunately, the opposite is also true.
So wether it’s because of their careers, sketchy personal lives, or simply falling
victim to the Hollywood machine, here are 10 Actors Who Have Aged In Shocking Ways.
Macaulay Culkin One of the cutest kids to ever appear on screen,
Macaulay Culkin’s most iconic work is enjoyable to this day.
When the holidays come around, people order themselves an extra cheese pizza, make an
ice cream sundae, and turn on 1990’s Home Alone.
Watching Kevin McCallister defend his homestead against two idiot burglars is a timeless experience.
One made even better by 9 year-old Culkin’s performance.
After the movie’s success, his star began to rise.
And quickly the actor was making millions of dollars per movie.
Dollars which were handled by his parents.
Familial turmoil proved overwhelming, and the young performer ended up leaving the business
until things were sorted out.
After a legal battle where both parents felt entitled to their child’s money, Culkin
separated himself (and his money) completely.
He’s since returned to acting, and plays in a band called The Pizza Underground.
Wesley Snipes Wesley Snipes has a bad attitude toward authority,
and for years that’s part of what’s made him successful.
When he shows up on screen, odds are, he’s there to kick multiple asses.
In fact, he’s so good at kicking asses that he was chosen to play the big-screen adaptation
of Blade, a character who only exists to kick asses.
But, fans did experience an interruption in an otherwise consistent stream of ass kicking.
When the actor’s distain for authority landed him in some trouble with the IRS.
He spent three years in jail for tax evasion.
Ouch.
Mel Gibson If you took a time machine back to the early
nineties, you couldn’t find a more in-demand actor than Mel Gibson.
If you were to tell someone that in the future the actor would be abandoned by his agency,
they’d look at you like you were nuts.. but you wouldn’t be wrong.
He was a Hollywood powerhouse making moves on screen and off, and has the Academy Awards
from Braveheart to prove it.
But rumors about Gibson began to spread years later, and after a few voicemails found their
way to the internet, a lot of those rumors were proven.
Lots of activist groups had some choice words for the actor.
He offended a lot of people in a short timeframe.
And earned him a reputation as a racist, a misogynist, or all of the above.
Shia LaBeouf Shia LaBeouf was the best part of Even Stevens,
a show that ran for three seasons on the Disney channel in the early 2000’s.
And while the network continues to pump out superstars, it’s also a commonality in many
stories of wholesome young performers gone wild.
But that wouldn’t happen to Shia, right?
Wrong.
The actor enjoyed massive success after working hard in the years after Louis Stevens, and
became the face of Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise reboot.
But beginning with a DUI arrest in 2008, his public persona started to change in a big
way.
The actor was called out for plagiarizing work by writer Daniel Clowes, and then responded
to the backlash with a plagiarized apology.
He’s still acting, just mostly in memes.
Winona Ryder Winona Ryder has been working since the late
eighties, and has been part of legendary movies in the process.
From Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, to Reality Bites and Girl, Interrupted, the
actress proved that she could hop between genres with ease.
Longevity is not something a lot of actresses experience, and Hollywood is often accused
of being harder on women than they are on men.
So while she may have been untouchable as a performer, as a human she was fair game.
And when she was busted for shoplifting in 2001, the media ran with it.
Recently the actress acknowledged the incident and asserted that the whole thing was blown
out of proportion.
She never strayed too far from the big screen though, and recently teamed up with Netflix
for the enormously successful Stranger Things.
Chevy Chase As one of the original cast members of Saturday
Night Live, Chevy Chase has got some serious bragging rights.
And he’s one of the O.G’s of comedy.
So when Dan Harmon was looking for an older actor to play a community college curmudgeon
for his T.V.
show, Chase was the right choice.
The show had it’s highs and lows but gained a loyal fanbase thanks to it’s quirky style.
Everyone was having a blast on set, except for Chase.
He and Harmon clashed when it came to defining what is (and isn’t) funny.
After the actor left an angry voicemail for Harmon, it was leaked onto the internet.
That, coupled with reports of him using racial epithets on set, ultimately led to his character
Pierce being scaled way back in the series.
And the stigma has followed him since.
Amanda Bynes, Since the beginning of her career, Amanda
Bynes has proven that girls can be hilarious.
Starting out on Niclekodeon’s sketch comedy show All That, she climbed the ladder all
the way to feature films.
And even though the actress was unbelievable in She’s The Man, the majority of audiences
will recognize her from the 2007 film adaptation of Hairspray.
The starlet retired from acting in 2010, but stayed in the public eye because of some erratic
behavior, and a string of tweets.
In 2012, Bynes was arrested numerous times and charged with DUIs among other things.
Fans watched as the actress took her rants to Twitter, prompting a few professionals
to intervene.
She’s now enrolled in fashion school, and recently spoken about how she received the
help she needed.
Lindsay Lohan If you were around in the nineties, you probably
remember the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap.
Where two identically adorable kids conspire to reunite their parents.
And that’s when the world met little Lindsay Lohan, who played both of the movie’s freckled
twins.
Audiences were surprised that such a young kid could do double duty.
Especially when most singular kids roles actually require twins.
When strict on-set schooling guidelines clash with the pace of filmmaking, frankly it’s
easier to swap them out.
Lohan was quick to make her newfound Hollywood cred work for her, and landed a role that
catapulted her to stardom in 2004’s Mean Girls.
But as the years went on, her talent was overshadowed by some personal drama.
And while she’s continued to do some acting work since, her earlier success has never
been replicated.
Johnny Depp Viewers were introduced to Johnny Depp in
a little show called 21 Jump Street.
And after he asked to be fired, the actor took a hard left into a career that would
take him as far away from his wholesome image as possible.
The actor showed off his range in the years to come, and that earned him points will all
kinds of moviegoers.
From Edward Scissorhands to Benny & Joon to Donnie Brasco, Depp’s work was all over
the map.
And then in 2003, Pirates of the Caribbean happened.
Beginning with Captain Jack Sparrow, Depp’s opponents argue all his roles began to bleed
into one: a quirky guy with a quirkier hat.
And that the only thing on display now is his wasted talent.
Gwyneth Paltrow You wouldn’t know it by her reputation today,
but Gwyneth Paltrow used to be one of America’s sweethearts.
The actress has quite the range, too.
She was adorable as young Wendy in 1991’s Hook.
She even got to be the head in the box at the end of Se7en.
(“WHATS IN THE BOXXXXX”) But since her Oscar win for 1998’s Shakespeare In Love,
she slowly began to lose favor with audiences.
The actress is a vocal supporter of a very specific type of diet and lifestyle.
Which, for a lot of people, is far too pricey to commit to.
She also made moms everywhere shake with rage when she insisted that parenting was easy
for them, but hard for her, and never acknowledged the disparity in that statement.
It seems like the more public her personal life gets, the less audiences like her.
What do you think of our list?
Did we miss any actors whose careers aged horribly?
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