Jupiter Ascending led to one star's reputation descending.
How did these actors win both Hollywood's highest and lowest honors?
Al Pacino could've justifiably won an Oscar for any number of his memorable performances.
He's been nominated nine times, for the likes of The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon, and Glengarry
Glen Ross. But it was his performance as a blind and depressed former Army colonel in 1992's Scent
of a Woman that netted him his win. It may not be remembered as the classic that some of his
other films are, but it did give us a killer tango scene and an unforgettable catchphrase.
"Hoo-ah!"
Pacino has a knack for playing likable bad guys, crooked good guys,
and big personalities, including the Devil himself. He's also dipped a toe into self-parody,
especially later in his career. He does, after all, have a very specific persona.
But he may have taken things just a little too far with 2011's Jack and Jill. The critically
reviled Adam Sandler comedy stars the SNL alum as the titular twin brother and sister,
and Pacino as the man who is inexplicably smitten with Jill. Jack and Jill became the
first movie ever to sweep the Razzies, which included Al Pacino as Worst Supporting Actor.
"It's not Al anymore. It's Dunk!"
"Dunkaccino?"
"Don't mind if I do!"
At the height of her fame, Kim Basinger was one of Hollywood's go-to icy blondes.
It was exactly that stereotype that she deconstructed with her performance as Lynn
Bracken in 1997's L.A. Confidential, for which she won a well-deserved Supporting Actress Oscar.
Lynn is a high-end call girl in 1950s Los Angeles who has gone under the knife and
dyed her hair in order to resemble real-life movie star Veronica Lake.
After Basinger's Oscar win, she continued to work, but mostly in movies that didn't match
her full talents. By 2017, she was playing second fiddle to Dakota Johnson in Fifty Shades Darker,
the second installment in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. She played Elena Lincoln, a powerful
businesswoman who grooms a teenage Christian Grey and turns him on to BDSM. Inexplicably, they're
still on good terms years later. The role didn't exactly return Basinger to her former glory,
as she ended up with a Razzie and reviews that compared her to a waxwork animatronic.
1997's Good Will Hunting wasn't Ben Affleck's first movie, but it was the one that cemented
his status as a major talent both in front of and behind the camera.
He won the Oscar for Original Screenplay along with his buddy Matt Damon at the tender age of 25.
"How you like me now?!"
Affleck went on to win another Oscar, this time for Best Picture as one of
the producers of 2012's Argo. He's never been nominated for his acting,
though, despite turning in plenty of praiseworthy performances over the years.
But Affleck doesn't exactly have a perfect track record. 2003's Gigli was basically one
big punchline when it was released at the peak of his and Jennifer Lopez's original tabloid
superstardom. Though the crime comedy about a hitman and his hot babysitter starred two
of the most famous people in the world, it bombed hard with audiences and critics. Affleck ended up
with a couple of Razzies, for Worst Actor and as one half of Worst Screen Couple alongside Lopez.
There haven't been too many actors who have won Oscars for foreign language films. In 1998,
Italian filmmaker Roberto Benigni became one of them when he nabbed the Lead Actor statue over
Ian McKellen, Tom Hanks, Edward Norton, and Nick Nolte for Life is Beautiful.
With its high concept narrative and mannered performance style,
Life Is Beautiful isn't for everybody. But if it is to your taste, then Benigni
is undeniably the film's heart and soul. A few years later, he tried to apply that
same sense of dark whimsy to the classic story of Pinocchio, to disastrous results.
Pinocchio was nominated for six Razzies in total, and a 50-year-old Benigni was
named Worst Actor for his portrayal of the little-boy puppet. Bizarrely enough, he would
go on to appear in another Pinocchio movie in 2019; although this time, he played Geppetto.
Halle Berry began her career as a pageant queen and model with the kind of otherworldly
beauty that can be a double-edged sword. It surely helped Berry break into showbiz,
but it also meant she had to fight harder to be considered a serious thespian.
She reached the pinnacle of her career with her Lead Actress Oscar win for 2001's Monster's Ball,
making her the first Black actress ever to win in that category. Her performance
as a woman whose husband is on death row is tortured, raw, and totally free of vanity.
"Black man in America, you can't be like that! I'm tryna-"
When Berry was cast as the ferocious antihero in 2004's Catwoman, it was clearly an effort to
capitalize on her Oscar win as well as her sex appeal. Alas, the embarrassing final product
was met with hisses and failed to recoup its big budget. Catwoman led the pack of bad movies that
year with seven Razzie nominations and four wins. Though critics were generally kinder to Berry than
they were to the movie itself, she still took home the Razzie for Worst Actress. Always a good sport,
she showed up in person to claim her trophy and even gave a good-natured speech.
Marlon Brando was an icon of the silver screen who brought method acting into the mainstream.
For his efforts, he was rewarded with two Oscars. The first came in the heyday of his
stardom when he won Lead Actor for 1954's On the Waterfront, in which he plays a once-promising
boxer turned dockworker who gets involved in the criminal dealings of a corrupt union boss.
18 years later, he delivered his best-remembered performance as mob
boss Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, and he was rewarded with another Lead Actor trophy.
Brando was Oscar-nominated six other times throughout his career,
but his filmography is more checkered than you might realize.
A particular low point came when he won the Worst Supporting Actor Razzie for the 1996
remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau. He plays the title character in a film that was resoundingly
rejected by audiences and critics. The project was a disaster from the start,
with Brando experiencing a number of personal setbacks, including the death of his daughter.
He was reportedly so checked out that he ended up having his lines fed to him through an earpiece.
Sandra Bullock is one of the most popular and versatile actresses in the industry.
She projects confidence as well as humility as she effortlessly
transitions from drama to comedy to action. In fact, she has so much range that she managed to
win the most high-profile awards for both best AND worst actress in the same year.
In 2009, she starred in both The Blind Side and All About Steve. The former is
a based-on-a-true-story sports drama in which she plays Leigh Anne Tuohy,
the woman who adopts Michael Oher, a foster kid who goes on to play professional football.
It was a huge box office hit, and Oscar voters awarded it with a
Best Picture nomination and a Lead Actress win for Bullock.
However, the day before the Oscars, Bullock attended that year's Razzies to accept her award
for Worst Actress for All About Steve. As a gag, she gave out DVD copies of that movie,
in which she plays Mary, a woman whose entire personality basically consists of a bunch
of twee quirks thrown into a blender. She's a crossword puzzle writer with a pet hamster and
shiny red boots who becomes obsessed with a man she meets on a blind date and decides to stalk him
after he tries to let her down easy. So, not exactly the most charming part she's ever played.
After years as a leading man, Kevin Costner decided to try directing. His debut effort,
1990's Dances with Wolves, was received extremely well. It impressed critics,
made hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, revitalized the Western genre,
and earned a whopping 12 Oscar nominations, including three for Costner as producer,
director, and lead actor. He won for Picture and Director, as Dances legitimized him as an
artist behind the camera and earned him a blank check to make his next movie.
That next movie was 1997's The Postman, which initially didn't seem too far removed from
Dances with Wolves. It's a sweeping neo-Western directed by and starring Costner, but this time,
the drama takes place in an alternate, post-apocalyptic 2013 after a plague has wiped
out much of the human population. Costner plays the title character, who's not a mail deliverer,
but a migrant who stumbled upon an old uniform and is endeavoring to restore civilization through
the re-establishment of a postal service. Critics and audiences returned it to sender,
and Costner took home the "prizes" for Worst Picture, Worst Director,
and Worst Actor. Those aren't his only career Razzies either, as he'd previously won Worst
Remake or Sequel for Wyatt Earp and Worst Actor for both Earp and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Leonardo DiCaprio was a child star who seamlessly transitioned to one of the biggest names in the
industry as an adult. Over the years, he's starred in more than his fair share of Oscar-nominated and
Oscar-winning movies. Some of them even won Best Picture, but it took a while before he took home
a trophy himself for one of his performances. That finally happened when he won Lead Actor
for 2015's The Revenant, in which he plays a frontiersman who's brutally mauled by a bear.
Leo's Razzie arrived nearly 20 years earlier. In 1998's The Man in the Iron Mask,
he plays two roles: France's King Louis XIV and his secret identical twin brother Philippe,
the titular Man in the Iron Mask. Though the film received mixed reviews,
audiences still bought tickets in part because of the Leo fever that was in full swing in the
wake of Titanic's mammoth success. Razzie voters weren't so enamored, though. Playing
both the hero and the vaillain sounds like fodder for awards' attention,
but the only trophy bestowed upon him was the Golden Raspberry for Worst Screen Couple.
"My twin. My blood. A fact which has kept him alive until now."
Faye Dunaway began her career on Broadway in the 1960s, and by the end of the decade,
she was playing one half of the outlaw duo in Bonnie and Clyde. She received her first
Oscar nomination for that role, and her second for 1974's mystery noir Chinatown. The third
time was ultimately the charm when she took home the trophy for 1976's Network, an iconic
satire about a TV channel's sagging ratings and a messiah-like figure who resurrects them. Dunaway
plays the network's head of programming who has few, if any, personal or professional scruples.
Just five years later, Dunaway starred in a film that generated significant controversy,
as she played screen legend Joan Crawford in the 1981 biopic Mommie Dearest. The movie focuses on
Crawford's adoption and subsequent abuse of her daughter Christina. Dunaway's performance was
so over-the-top that Mommie Dearest was eventually embraced as a camp classic.
But that ironic appreciation didn't prevent it from collecting five Razzies,
including Dunaway's for Worst Actress.
"No wire hangers!"
To win his pair of Oscars, Mel Gibson followed a similar path to Kevin Costner,
as he directed and starred in a rousing historical epic. 1995's Braveheart ended
up winning Best Picture, and Gibson was named Best Director in a bit of a surprise.
Braveheart earned praise for its battle scenes but was dinged for its historical accuracy,
and audiences were split over its use of graphic violence.
After a bit of an involuntary break due to some racist and anti-Semitic remarks,
Gibson began to appear in movies again semi-regularly in the 2010s. However,
he never quite regained his heavyweight status. In 2017's Daddy's Home 2, he plays father
to Mark Wahlberg as a fighter pilot and astronaut whose regressive masculinity and
neglect made his son into a problematic man. Alas, casting Gibson as an outdated archetype
ultimately came across as more cringe-worthy than self-aware. Unlike his Oscars for Braveheart,
his Worst Supporting Actor Razzie for Daddy's Home 2 wasn't exactly a surprise.
Over Charlton Heston's 84 years, he went from being a vocal supporter of the civil rights
movement to a conservative NRA activist. At the same time, he also went from a stoic leading man
in action epics to someone who mostly did ironic cameos and voiceover work in kids' movies.
Heston starred in a number of iconic movies over the course of his career,
and he won his Oscar for one of them. That was as the title character in the
1959 religious epic Ben-Hur, even though his performance was somewhat overshadowed
by the film's breathtaking and then-cutting edge chariot race.
Nearly half a century later, Heston won Worst Supporting Actor at the 2002 Golden
Raspberries for his appearances in three separate movies. Those roles were an English Mastiff in
Cats & Dogs, a heavily-made up Zaius in Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes remake,
and a parody of own his gun-toting persona in the romantic comedy Town & Country.
Jared Leto became a household name in 1994 as the swoon-worthy Jordan Catalano on the
canceled-too-soon teen drama My So-Called Life. He soon made the transition to the big screen,
and he eventually got some Academy love when he won Best Supporting Actor for his role in 2013's
Dallas Buyers Club as an HIV-positive trans woman struggling with addiction.
His performance was widely praised, although many felt
that a trans actor should've been given the opportunity to play the part instead.
In the years since, Leto has taken on bigger and bolder roles. This trend reached its apex with
2021's House of Gucci, in which he plays the fashion family's black sheep Paolo underneath
pounds of prosthetics and makeup. Such flamboyant choices came with great risk: his efforts were so
divisive that he seemed to have as much a shot at being nominated for another Oscar as he did a
Razzie. He actually landed a nomination from the Screen Actors Guild and several critics groups,
though the Academy passed him by, and the Golden Raspberries declared him Worst Supporting Actor.
"The tiny little mouse is a character. Who knew?"
Younger audiences probably know Liza Minnelli best for her hilarious guest appearances as
Lucille 2 on Arrested Development. As the daughter of Judy Garland,
Minnelli managed to carve out an impressive career for herself
outside of her mother's shadow. That includes an Academy Award-winning performance as Sally
Bowles in 1972's Cabaret , the classic musical about pre-World War II Germany.
After the 1981 rom-com Arthur, Minnelli had a harder time securing the kinds of juicy,
triple-threat roles in which she so easily shined. In 1988, she appeared in two poorly
reviewed films that together earned her a Razzie for Worst Actress. In Arthur 2: On the Rocks,
she reprises her role as Linda, Arthur's now-wife who wants to adopt a child with her supposedly
charming alcoholic husband. But it was probably her role as a sex worker with a heart of gold
in the Burt Reynolds-starring Rent-a-Cop that really earned her the Golden Raspberry. The film
received abysmal reviews from critics and the few members of the public who saw it. It made a measly
$300,000 dollars at the box office, which didn't come anywhere close to its $16 million budget.
After getting his start on the London stage and filling small roles in period piece films,
Eddie Redmayne quickly became a leading man and a critical darling. He won an Oscar for
his portrayal of famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking in 2014's The Theory of Everything.
In becoming Hawking, Redmayne had to avoid making it seem as though he was poking fun
at the late scientist's disabilities. By most critics' and voters' assessments, he succeeded.
Just one year later, Redmayne attempted something completely different. In the Wachowski sibling's
2015 trippy space opera Jupiter Ascending, he plays the villain, Balem Abrasax, an alien rich
kid capitalist. It's sometimes said that acting is about making choices, and boy does Redmayne
make some choices here. Chief among them is the voice that he puts on. As he explained to GQ,
"My character had had his larynx ripped out by this wolf man,
and so I made the slightly bold choice, which I thought was right, of talking like this."
"I loved my mother."
Unfortunately, winning the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor that year
convinced Redmayne that his performance in Jupiter Ascending wasn't very good. However,
fans of his have reclaimed his bold acting as a brilliant stroke of artistic expression.
Sir Laurence Olivier's name is synonymous with the craft of acting.
Even those who are only passingly familiar with him could easily guess that he won an Oscar,
though they might not be able to guess for what film. The master thespian was nominated for 11
acting Oscars over the course of his career. He won a couple of honorary Academy Awards,
as well as a competitive trophy for Lead Actor in 1948's Hamlet.
Like all famous actors, Olivier had to carefully ponder what projects to sign on to.
Shockingly enough, this luminary of the cinema chose unwisely twice in a row.
He received his first Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor thanks to an ill-advised remake
of The Jazz Singer that also starred Neil Diamond.
As for Olivier's second Razzie, war movies often do well at the box office
and on the awards circuit. They come with a built-in gravitas, after all,
thanks to their subject matter and high stakes. But that didn't prevent Olivier
from being named Worst Actor for Inchon!, a Korean War epic that has a zero percent
Rotten Tomatoes score and is sometimes cited as the worst war movie ever made.