Mark Wahlberg wasn't a fan of The Funky Bunch or his Calvins, Blake Lively isn't saying
"XO XO" to Gossip Girl, and Robert Pattinson wasn't sad when the sun set on Twilight.
They're far from alone among A-Listers with regrets.
These are the actors who hate the reason they became famous.
Blake Lively has made efforts to distance herself from Gossip Girl, the series that
made her a household name.
As she put it to Allure in 2015,
"People loved it, but it always felt a little personally compromising - you want to be putting
a better message out there."
Lively also hinted that her personal past may have colored her vision of the series.
She dated her co-star and on-screen love interest Penn Badgley for a few years.
Thus, she was worried about how audiences may have confused the actress with the character
of Serena Van Der Woodsen.
With cast members dating in real life the same people that they were dating on the show,
the lines became a bit too blurred for comfort for Lively.
Before Mark Wahlberg was "Mark Wahlberg," he was "Marky Mark," Calvin Klein underwear
model and leader of hip-hop group The Funky Bunch.
He's almost as humiliated by his musical ambitions as he is by his past as a violent young man.
Years later, Justin Bieber strapped on some Calvins for a very similar campaign, and he
was so excited about it, he sent the pics to Wahlberg.
The Daddy's Home star was supportive of the Canadian crooner.
But he felt as warmly toward his own experience with the brand as he did about his singing
career, which he revealed during an interview on Conan.
"Man, I was the biggest punk in the world.
Yeah, he’s very nice, young, and polite compared to what I was.”
"You look like you’re just causing yourself pain by squeezing your...”
Shailene Woodley's first big break came on ABC Family's The Secret Life Of The American
Teenager, in which she starred as a high schooler who has an unplanned pregnancy.
But she later revealed that she didn't love the series because it didn't align with her
personal values.
As she told Flaunt Magazine in 2013,
"I'm extremely grateful for it; it was a fantastic five years of my life, but towards the end,
morally, the things that we were preaching on that show weren't really aligned with my
own integrity."
Woodley admitted that it was difficult to show up to work every day and be part of sending
out a message to millions of young adults that she really didn't want to be sending
out.
One might wonder why she didn't just quit the show, but it can be hard to straight up
leave when you're under contract, and she chose to honor the terms of her deal.
Zac Efron loves the fans and opportunities he got from starring as Troy Bolton in High
School Musical and its sequels.
But boy, does he hate those movies, in part because he feels like they made it hard for
him to be taken seriously as an adult actor.
In fact, Efron told Men's Fitness in 2016 that sometimes he steps back and looks at
himself and doesn't exactly like what he sees.
He can recognize that he's since done "some kind of cool things with some cool people,"
like 2014's Neighbors, but he also still sees himself as that "kid from High School Musical."
The fame that he gained from his Disney years doesn't feel like a real thing to him, as
it's not something that he can celebrate or share with friends.
Considering how Efron views his early career, his casting as serial killer Ted Bundy in
the upcoming Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile makes a lot more sense.
Kate Winslet is really sick of Titanic, not because she thinks it's a bad movie, but because
she hates her own performance in the epic drama.
When promoting the 3D re-release of the film in 2012, she lamented to the press how she
would like to do it all over again.
Her biggest beef was her attempt at an American accent.
While she admitted that "actors tend to be very self-critical," this sounds like an especially
harsh example.
She described her disappointment with herself by saying,
"Every single scene, I'm like 'Really, really?
You did it like that?
Oh my God.'"
"I'm not a foreman in one of your mills that you can command.
I'm your fiance."
Winslet also revealed to MTV News that she really, really hates Celine Dion's megahit
Titanic theme song "My Heart Will Go On."
Apparently she has a, quote, "massive internal eye roll" and wants to vomit every time she
hears it.
But that may have something to do with the fact that it's always played whenever she
walks into a bar or restaurant with a pianist.
Robert Pattinson hates the Twilight saga so much that there are actual supercuts of him
slamming the franchise that made him a star.
"There’s a lot of stuff in the Twilight world that doesn’t make any sense.
Why are they still going to high school, like up until last year?
They are 100 years old.”
"But I think I am a judgmental and cynical person who would just mindlessly hate it without
having ever seen anything.
I think I'm a bad person."
"When I read it, it seemed like a book that wasn't supposed to be published.”
But for as much as Pattinson doesn't look back fondly at these films, he still tried
to put forth his best effort when making them.
He even admitted to Howard Stern that he almost got fired because he brought too much intensity
to the role when everyone on set wanted him to have fun.
"I remember the producers giving me a copy of the book, and every single instance where
my character smiled and stuff, they’d highlighted everything."
Amazingly, however, Pattinson told Variety in 2018 that if he got the call for a Twilight
sequel, he would be "ready to play 17 at a moment's notice."