It can actually be pretty tough to get actors to share their true feelings about their films,
especially if they're the films they'd rather not talk about.
Fortunately, a handful of stars have opened up over the years, and taken aim at the worst
movies of their career.
In 2002, Halle Berry delivered a tearful, impassioned speech on the Oscars stage, clutching
the Best Actress statuette she'd just earned for her performance in Monster's Ball.
Three years later, she brought that same statuette with her to accept her Razzie Award for Worst
Actress in the super-zero flop Catwoman.
Berry delighted the audience with her snide speech, in which she thanked studio Warner
Brothers for putting her in what she called a "god-awful movie."
Berry went on to say:
"It was just what my career needed.
You know, I was at the top, and then Catwoman has plummeted me to the bottom."
Although her Catwoman speech has since gone down in Hollywood legend, Berry's attitude
towards the movie has mellowed in recent years.
In a 2018 acceptance speech, this time for the Matrix Award for New York Women in Communication,
Berry said of her Razzie-winning role:
"While it failed to most people, it wasn't a failure for me because I met so many interesting
people that I wouldn't have met otherwise, I learned two forms of martial arts, and I
learned not what to do."
It also helped, she added, that the film made her a life-changing amount of money.
Dev Patel found stardom early in his career with the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire.
So naturally, everyone was pretty curious about his next film: 2010's Avatar: The Last
Airbender.
It was a huge studio movie with huge expectations and an even bigger budget.
Of course, once it hit theaters, the movie became hated by pretty much everyone on Earth,
and for a while, Patel didn't really want to talk about it.
Back in 2014, the most he said on the matter was:
"Yeah, that wasn't the best move, was it?"
Patel opened up a little further in a 2016 roundtable interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
"I completely felt overwhelmed by the experience I felt like I wasn't being heard."
Still, Patel pointed out that making the movie had been a learning experience for him.
"That's really when I learned the power of no.
The idea of saying no, because I was like 18 and was just like, 'okay.'"
Harry Potter may have made Daniel Radcliffe a household name, but that still doesn't mean
he's fond of every film in the series.
In 2014, Radcliffe told the Daily Mail that his favorite of the franchise is Order of
the Phoenix, and that the sixth movie, The Half-Blood Prince, was his least favorite
of the bunch.
In 2015, Playboy asked Radcliffe to expand on this, and he explained:
"In every movie up to the sixth one, you can see a big step forward in my acting.
And then it stopped, or went backward maybe, in the sixth film.
[...] On the sixth, I remember watching it and thinking, 'Wow, there's been no growth.
You're watching a mistake you made every day for 11 months.'
That's the way I saw it."
It probably didn't help that Radcliffe had started drinking heavily when he turned 18,
the age at which he filmed The Half-Blood Prince.
Radcliffe didn't explicitly mention this when discussing his least favorite of the films,
but the actor had previously spoken about his alcohol abuse in 2012.
He said that while he never drank on set, he would still be drunk from the night before,
and that watching the movies now:
"I can point to many scenes where I'm just gone.
Dead behind the eyes."
Luckily, Radcliffe became a teetotaler in 2010.
In 2012, when a 3D version of Titanic docked in theaters for the film's 15th anniversary,
Kate Winslet told CNN:
"Every single scene, I'm like 'Really, really?
You did it like that?
Oh my God.'
[...] I have a hard time watching any of my performances, but watching Titanic I was just
like, 'Oh God, I want to do that again.'"
It might be surprising to hear that Winslet wants to give her performance as Rose a second
go, given what she went through the first time around.
Director James Cameron was notoriously aggressive on set, , Winslet told the LA Times:
"There were times when I was genuinely frightened of him."
On top of that, Winslet nearly drowned while shooting one scene, and Cameron made her do
it again right after and has since dismissed her claim that she was in real danger.
She also chipped a bone, came out with various bruises and scrapes, and was regularly made
to perform in cold water.
For close-ups, she was even submerged 12 feet underwater and weighted down so she wouldn't
move.
No wonder she doesn't like watching it.
In recent years, actors as prestigious as Robert Redford and Anthony Hopkins have taken
major roles in superhero films.
But there's one two-time Oscar winner who seriously regrets joining the world of comic
book movies.
As it turns out, Sally Field though her part as Aunt May in the Amazing Spider-Man movies
was an absolute bore.
In an appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Field talked in depth about Sony's failed
attempt at a trilogy.
"Spider-Man!
You didn’t like that movie?
“Ah not, not especially, it’s not my kind of movie."
She also added that she did it for her friend, Amazing Spider-Man producer Laura Ziskin,
who died a year before the film was released.
But Field also admitted that she didn't put a great deal of thought into the character.
"You work it as much as you can, you know, but you can’t put 10 pounds of s--- in a
five pound bag.
Still, Field managed to find a bright side in all the mess according to the actress,
working with Andrew Garfield was at least a lot of fun.
In 2010, Jessica Alba told Elle magazine that shooting Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver
Surfer nearly made her quit acting, as director Tim Story apparently made Alba doubt her abilities
and her career choice.
Evidently, Story didn't like the way she was crying in a scene because it looked "too real."
According to Alba, the director then asked her to "cry pretty."
As Alba put it:
"And then it all got me thinking: Am I not good enough?
Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough?
Do people hate them so much that they don't want me to be a person?
[…] And so I just said, 'F--- it.
I don't care about this business anymore.'"
Alba was as good as her word.
In 2012, she traded Hollywood for business, setting up The Honest Company, which focuses
on selling natural baby products.
According to Forbes, that first year, her company made $10 million in revenue.
Alba then expanded to beauty products in 2015, and she raised $200 million in funding in
2018.
And although Alba is still acting today, the fact that Forbes estimates her company to
be worth $200 million gives her an out if she ever changes her mind.
Since the rise and demise of his relationship with Angelina Jolie, you could make the case
that Brad Pitt has become more famous for his personal life than for his movie career.
But back in the '90s, Brad Pitt was a bona fide movie star although he still occasionally
had some pretty blunt comments to make about the movies that made him a household name.
For example, in 1997, Pitt called out The Devil's Own, in which he starred as an undercover
IRA terrorist opposite Harrison Ford.
Pitt told Newsweek:
"We had no script.
Well, we had a great script, but it got tossed for various reasons."
According to Pitt, the cast and crew were forced "to make something up" as they went
along, a move that Pitt called the most irresponsible bit of filmmaking that he had ever seen.
He also called out then-head of Columbia studios, Mark Canton, for forcing production to continue.
Pitt apparently regretted his comments shortly afterwards, however, adding in a follow-up
interview:
"Everyone was working hard.
We weren't trying to just throw out a crap film.
You know, we were doing our best."
The Indiana Jones series is nearly a perfect franchise with the exception of Kingdom of
the Crystal Skull, that is.
Although to be fair, Crystal Skull actually did pretty well when it came out in 2008,
at least box office-wise.
But in the years since, it's come under severe scrutiny for its supposed betrayal of the
classic Indiana Jones spirit.
In fact, Shia LaBeouf, who played a motorcycle punk named Mutt, said that both he and director
Steven Spielberg had "dropped the ball" on the movie.
In 2018, he went back on the attack again, this time taking aim at the oft-mocked, Michael
Bay-directed Transformers franchise that made him a star.
LeBeouf told Esquire:
"My hang-up with those films was that they felt irrelevant.
[...] You come up on these stories about Easy Rider and Raging Bull and De Niro and Scorsese
and Hopper, and you find value in what they do.
Meanwhile, you're chasing energon crystals."
After getting his fill of blockbusters, LaBeouf moved toward performance art but many still
remember him as a guy who bit the hand that fed him.
Long before he took the role of the Caped Crusader, Robert Pattinson launched his career
with a batty role of another kind.
Quite notoriously, Pattinson got his big break playing a vampire in the Twilight series although
Edward Cullen was more sparkly than sinister.
Based on a series of YA novels, the Twilight franchise was loved and loathed with almost
equal passion… and Pattinson found himself firmly on the latter side of the equation.
In interviews during the saga's many press tours, his comments tended to range from anywhere
between bewildered...
"A lot of stuff in the Twilight world that doesn’t make any sense."
...to frustrated...
"I hardly get to do any vampire stuff.
I mean, I really don’t get to kill anyone.
really wanna kill some people."
...to outright belligerent.
"The story's just so serious or so melodramatic…
I mean it’s literally like life or death all the time."
Since the final installment came out in 2012, Pattinson has mostly stuck to more artistic
movies.
However, he's managed to find a few positive things about Twilight since then, admitting
that since the intensity around the films has died down, he has learned to appreciate
fans' enjoyment of it far more.
He even found one part of the film that he enjoyed, telling USA Today:
"[New Moon] genuinely does have an incredible good soundtrack.
I completely forgot, but the soundtracks were quite ahead of their time."
Jamie Lee Curtis impressed fans and critics alike when she returned to Haddonfield in
2018's Halloween.
But even though Curtis has also starred in classics like A Fish Called Wanda and True
Lies, her Hollywood record isn't exactly spotless.
According to Curtis, the worst movie she ever made was Virus, a movie about a tugboat crew
that stumbles upon an almost abandoned ship before things get all kinds of crazy.
While the premise might sound awesome, critics hated the film, and Curtis clearly wasn't
happy with it, either.
In 2012, she told IGN that when she and her movie star friends compare bad movies, Virus
is her trump card.
She explained:
"That's the only good reason to be in bad movies.
Then when your friends have [bad] movies you can say 'Ahhhh, I've got the best one.'
I'm bringing Virus."
When you've got a career as long and varied as Michelle Pfeiffer's, you're bound to have
starred in a dud every now and again.
Luckily, Pfeiffer's low point came at the very start of her career and it probably would've
been forgotten if it hadn't also happened to be a sequel to one of the most beloved
movies of all time.
Pfeiffer starred as Pink Lady Stephanie in Grease 2, four years after the original movie
musical came out.
After many misfires during production, the movie barely made back its budget.
In 2007, she told MovieWeb:
"I hated that film with a vengeance and could not believe how bad it was.
At the time, I was young and didn't know any better.
I hear it's a cult movie now."
Thankfully, her next film was Scarface which did a little better but Pfeiffer admits she
wouldn't mind going back to Rydell High.
Discussing the prospect of another Grease movie, she explained to MovieWeb:
"I would love to play the school principal.
She is fun and has some great put-down lines."
Ben Affleck already had a long list of dubious movies under his belt before he strapped on
the utility belt to play Batman in Zack Snyder's much maligned Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
But of all his awful films, Affleck hates Daredevil the most.
This 2003 adaptation of the Marvel comic is despised by every human being who's ever stepped
inside a movie theater but the man who loathes it the most is definitely its leading man.
Before the release of Batman v Superman, Affleck explained that part of the reason he wanted
to play a superhero again was because he wanted a second chance at the genre.
During his appearance at TimeTalks, he explained:
"Part of it was I wanted for once to get one of these movies and do it right to do a good
version.
I hate Daredevil so much."
Unfortunately, his shot at the Batman franchise didn't quite deliver the redemption he'd wished
for, as the movie was widely panned by critics — but hey, it could have been worse.
"I missed."
In 2018, when The New York Times asked Davis if there was a job she wished she'd taken,
Viola Davis reworked the question to dish on a job she wished she'd turned down and
that was the role of Aibileen, a black maid working in 1960s Mississippi who joins the
Civil Rights Movement in 2011's The Help.
Davis was quick to praise her co-stars and director Tate Taylor before getting to the
reason behind her regret.
As she put it:
"I just felt that at the end of the day, that it wasn't the voices of the maids that were
heard."
According to Davis, the film, which was supposed to be about black women working and raising
children in 1963, didn't really put their stories front and center.
Davis was actually nominated for an Oscar for the role, but there's a good chance she'd
rather just forget it ever happened.
Alec Baldwin isn't exactly known for holding back his opinions, and that goes just the
same when it comes to his own work.
One of the films he's taken aim at is 2012's Rock of Ages, a movie based on a stage musical
that features a loose plot constructed around covers of classic rock songs.
The movie failed to rock critics' worlds, and no one was less surprised than Baldwin
who admitted that those co-stars were why he'd signed up in the first place.
In 2013, Baldwin told New Yorker editor David Remnick:
"It was a complete disaster.
A week in you go, 'Oh God, what have I done?'"
Indeed, in 2011, before filming had even begun, Baldwin asked New Line to replace him.
Supposedly this was due to an unspecified medical condition, but given that Baldwin
thinks he made what he called "a horrible movie," it could well have been a premonition
of the flop to come.
This theory seems especially valid, given that Baldwin also claimed actors know full
well when they have a dud on their hands.
He explained:
"The plane is buffeting.
The engine is on fire."
Millions of kids may have grown up wanting to be G.I.
Joe, but when Channing Tatum got the chance, he was actually less than thrilled.
In 2015, six years after G.I.
Joe: The Rise of Cobra came out, Tatum told Howard Stern that, after receiving the script,
he found himself a little less than thrilled at the idea of taking the role.
"But do you have no option to no option, or do they say you’re doing this or we're gonna
sue you."
He also admitted to being wary of the role in the first place, because he'd been such
a fan of the show during his youth.
"I don't wanna do something that one I’m a fan of, like I watched it every morning
growing up."
He explained to Stern that, after his first movie role in 2005's Coach Carter, he signed
a three-picture deal with Paramount.
They cashed in part of that deal with G.I.
Joe, and informed Tatum that they would sue him if he refused to make the film.
Luckily, Tatum's career recovered and in 2015, he was the 13th highest-paid actor in the
world.
But G.I.
Joe wasn't done with him after Cobra: perhaps unfortunately for Tatum, he also went on to
appear in the 2013 sequel G.I.
Joe: Retaliation.
While he may have found superstardom with roles in classic movies like The Terminator
and Predator, Arnold Schwazenegger still starred in a few duds in his time.
In 1985, Arnie appeared in Red Sonja, which was supposed to be the story of a vengeful
female warrior even though Arnie got top billing.
Confusingly, although the character of Red Sonja originally appeared as a sidekick for
Conan the Barbarian in Marvel comics, and Schwarzenegger had already played Conan twice
by this point, Red Sonja finds actor playing a totally different sword-wielding, muscle-bound
warrior named Kalidor.
Unfortunately, Schwarzenegger's performance was less than charming.
The New York Times pointed out that his character, quote, "might as well have been played by
a maple tree", and Schwarzenegger seems to agree.
He once said of the flick:
"It's the worst film I have ever made.
Now when my kids get out of line, they're sent to their room and forced to watch Red
Sonja ten times.
I never have too much trouble with them."
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