Desperation can make people do some strange things, and actors, even the very best of
them, are no different.
Without the luxuries of time, opportunity and money, stars can often be forced into
roles they don’t exactly covet.
Some set aside their beliefs and personal philosophies for their work, while others
swallow their pride to take parts that are far beneath them.
It’s not pretty, but it happens.
Here are a few of those roles.
The Mummy’s curse
Brendan Fraser was never much of a critical darling, but that’s not to say he never
had an impact on the film industry: in fact, back in the early '90s, it seemed like he
was in pretty much everything.
Only a decade later, however, his career appeared to be over.
Movies like Monkeybone, Looney Tunes: Back in Action and Inkheart bombed at the box office,
and the goodwill he’d enjoyed thanks to The Mummy series had long run out.
“Oh my God.”
According to Fraser himself, his career decline began shortly after he filed a harassment
complaint against Philip Berk, former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
He told GQ:
"The phone does stop ringing in your career, and you start asking yourself why.
There's many reasons, but was this one of them?
I think it was."
Fraser’s work withered, forcing him into a near-endless parade of terrible roles.
2010’s Furry Vengeance was hated by critics, whilst other straight-to-DVD movies such as
HairBrained fared little better.
Bacon’s fall
After the 1984 smash hit Footloose, Kevin Bacon began what he described in an interview
with The Telegraph as "a long, slow, steady decline”.
In the years following, Bacon was the star of several major box office flops, including
Quicksilver, She's Having a Baby and Criminal Law.
By the time he had taken a role in the 1990 monster movie Tremors, he had pretty much
hit rock bottom.
One afternoon, he broke down and cried to his wife:
"I can't believe I'm doing a movie about underground worms!"
Tremors, however, turned out to be Bacon’s lifeline.
Although the movie only saw modest success in theaters, its humor and shlock appeal helped
spur it on to become a major cult classic.
A painful regeneration
Doctor Who fans are well aware of the drama behind behind Christopher Eccleston's departure
from the series after its first season in 2005.
According to an interview with The Guardian, Eccleston claims that the BBC tried to damage
his career after he quit the role.
"I gave them a hit show and I left with dignity and then they put me on a blacklist.
I was carrying my own insecurities as it was something I had never done before and then
I was abandoned, vilified in the tabloid press and blacklisted."
On his agent’s advice, Eccleston began looking for roles in America.
He ended up landing roles in blockbusters such as G.I.
Joe: Rise of the Cobra and Thor: Dark World, parts many actors would jump at the chance
to take, but which Eccleston knew just weren’t for him.
He told The Guardian:
"Working on something like G.I.
Joe was horrendous.
I just wanted to cut every day.
And Thor?
Just a gun in your mouth."
Playing the system
In the early '90s, Jean-Claude Van Damme was one of the biggest action stars on the planet.
In the long-term, however, the star's quick rise to superstardom appears to have done
more harm than good.
In 1994, right at the peak of Van Damme's career, Universal called and offered him an
enormous $12 million three-picture deal.
Rather than accept, Van Damme came back with a hardball demand of $20 million.
He told The Guardian years later,
"I was tired.
Everything I was touching was making money.
Jim Carrey was being paid a fortune.
And I wanted to play with the system.
Like an idiot.
Ridiculous."
“Oh this guy’s funny."
It didn’t work.
The studio hung up the phone, and stuck him on a blacklist.
Van Damme’s career plummeted and he was forced into starring in a slew of critically-panned
straight-to-DVD movies which pretty much no one has ever heard of.
But at least he probably still has one thing going for him.
"I can do the splits, no problem."
Catching a virus
Despite a promising turn in True Lies, Jamie Lee Curtis suffered a number of commercial
and critical failures throughout the late ‘90s.
House Arrest ended up on Siskel and Ebert’s list of the worst movies of 1996.
Fierce Creatures was described by her co-star John Cleese as one of his life’s greatest
regrets.
Even the relative success of Halloween H2O wasn’t enough to save her career.
Naturally, studios became hesitant to offer her major roles.
She finally bottomed out by taking a part in the 1999 movie Virus.
"I'm still your captain Foster.
You must treat me with respect."
In an interview with WENN, Curtis described her experience with the movie, saying,
"It was maybe the only time I've known something was just bad and there was nothing I could
do about it."