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“What are your biggest regrets?” This might be one of the more obvious questions a journalist can ask an actor, but the answer can often be hugely revealing.
For instance, many actors have spoken negatively about their time spent as a superhero (Ben Affleck, Jessica Alba, Halle Berry), portraying a teenage heartthrob (Robert Pattinson , Zac Efron ) or continuing with a long-running franchise (Matt Damon, Daniel Radcliffe).
Others have said they took a job solely on a director’s filmography only to be let down by the final results of their collaboration (Charlize Theron).
Most surprising are those actors who appear in iconic roles, yet look back with disdain (Christopher Plummer, Idris Elba).
Below, The Independent looks at 34 actors who regret some of their biggest roles, from Viola Davis in The Help to Colin Farrell in Miami Vice .
Click through below to see who made the list
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34 actors who regret big roles
Viola Davis – The Help
Viola Davis was nominated for an Oscar for The Help. Yet, the actor deeply regretted playing the maid Aibileen Clark, saying her character’s voice is not heard enough in the final film. “Have I ever done roles that I’ve regretted? I have, and The Help is on that list,” she told The New York Times. “I want to know what it feels like to work for white people and to bring up children in 1963, I want to hear how you really feel about it. I never heard that in the course of the movie.”
Disney
34 actors who regret big roles
Megan Fox – Transformers
The Transformers franchise may have grossed billions of dollars at the box-office, but critics have never looked kindly upon the films. Neither has Megan Fox, who told Entertainment Weekly that “people are well aware that this is not a movie about acting”. She also previously took aim at director Michael Bay, saying: “He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is, so he’s a nightmare to work for.” Fox later retracted the comment, calling it “righteous anger” that should have not been made public.
Paramount
34 actors who regret big roles
Katherine Heigl – Knocked Up
Knocked Up remains one of Katherine Heigl’s best-known roles, despite the actor having said she found the whole thing “a little sexist”. “It paints the women as shrews, as humourless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys,” she told Vanity Fair. “It exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, on some days.”
Universal Pictures
34 actors who regret big roles
Idris Elba – The Wire
Few people knew who Idris Elba was before The Wire. Despite the acclaim that came from playing Stringer Bell on the hugely popular crime show, Elba has some regrets. “We’re all idolising Stringer Bell, but who are we really idolising?” he asked David Lammy while appearing on James O’Brien’s podcast. “Are we idolising a smart drug dealer or a dumb narcotics dealer? What are we saying here? Is it OK to pump a community full of heroin but because you’re smart at it, that makes you cool? That was a problem for me.”
HBO
34 actors who regret big roles
Harrison Ford – Blade Runner
There are famously seven cuts of Blade Runner. One of those features Harrison Ford’s character, Rick Deckard, narrating scenes. Another – the one director Ridley Scott approves of – is bleaker and does not have Deckard explaining events. Ford does not care for either version. “I didn’t like the movie one way or the other, with or without,” he said in 2017, before the release of Blade Runner 2049. “I played a detective who did not have any detecting to do. In terms of how I related to the material, I found it very difficult. There was stuff that was going on that was really nuts.”
Warner Bros
34 actors who regret big roles
Daniel Craig – James Bond
For a time, many people were not sure whether Daniel Craig would return as James Bond for the 25th film in the series. “I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists,” he told Time Out of returning to the role. “No, not at the moment. Not at all. That’s fine. I’m over it at the moment. We’re done. All I want to do is move on.” Apparently a big enough pay cheque got him back in the tuxedo.
Columbia
34 actors who regret big roles
Channing Tatum – GI Joe
“I’ll be honest, I f**king hate that movie,” Channing Tatum said of GI Joe. “I was pushed into doing it. The script wasn’t any good. And I didn’t want to do something that I – that I was a fan of since I was a kid and watched every morning growing up – and didn’t want to do something that was, one, bad. And two, I just didn’t know if I wanted to be GI Joe.”
Paramount
34 actors who regret big roles
Robert Pattinson – Twilight
Most actors who regret taking on roles would wait a few years until publicly bemoaning their experience on set. Not Robert Pattinson. Before the final Twilight film was in cinemas, the actor said of playing the vampire heartthrob Edward Cullen: “It’s weird kind of representing something you don’t particularly like.” A few weeks later, he added how he would have “mindlessly hated” the series had he not appeared in it.
Summit Entertainment
34 actors who regret big roles
Jessica Alba – Fantastic Four
While superhero movies may now be Oscar Best Picture contenders (Black Panther), there was a time when playing a spandex-wearing vigilante was anything but prestigious. Jessica Alba was one of the first people to jump on the superhero boom of the mid-Noughties, playing Invisible Woman in Fantastic Four. The experience, though, left her wanting to quit acting altogether. “I hated it. I really hated,” she told Elle. “I remember when I was dying in Silver Surfer. The director was like, ‘It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica’.”
Fox
34 actors who regret big roles
Ryan Reynolds – Green Lantern
Ryan Reynolds has never watched Green Lantern all the way through. That has not stopped the actor being highly critical of the superhero role, going as far as having Deadpool – who he later played – shoot a fictional version of himself in the head for taking on the role. Ouch.
Warner Bros
34 actors who regret big roles
Kate Winslet – Titanic
Kate Winslet does not mind Titanic as a film. Her performance as Rose is a completely different matter. “Every single scene, I’m like ‘really, really? You did it like that? Oh my God’. Even my American accent, I can’t listen to it. It’s awful,” she told the Telegraph. “Hopefully it’s so much better now. It sounds terribly self-indulgent but actors do tend to be very self-critical. 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.'”
20th Century Fox
34 actors who regret big roles
Michelle Pheiffer – Grease II
“I hated that film with a vengeance and could not believe how bad it was,” Michelle Pfeiffer said of the sequel to Grease. “At the time I was young and didn’t know any better.” Thankfully, Pfeiffer’s nose for a good script improved rapidly, with her next film being Brian De Palma’s cult classic Scarface.
Paramount Pictures
34 actors who regret big roles
Halle Berry – Catwoman
Halle Berry remains one of the few actors to accept her Golden Raspberry award in person. “Thank you so much. I never in my life thought I would be up here,” she told the audience, before spoofing her own Oscar acceptance speech and thanking her manager. “He loves me so much that he convinces me to do projects even when he knows that it is shit.” Meeeeeow.
Warner Bros
34 actors who regret big roles
Christopher Plummer – The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music remains one of the most beloved films of all time. Christopher Plummer, though, hated playing Captain von Trapp. “I think the part in The Sound of Music was the toughest,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “Because it was so awful and sentimental and gooey. You had to work terribly hard to try and infuse some miniscule bit of humour into it.”
20th Century-Fox
34 actors who regret big roles
Ben Affleck – Daredevil
Another big-name actor who regrets taking on a mid-Noughties superhero role. Ben Affleck has remained an ardent Daredveil detractor. “Daredevil didn’t work at all”, the actor told Entertainment Weekly in 2007. “If I wanted to go viral, I would be less polite. That was before people realised you could make these movies and make them well. There was a cynical sense of ‘put a red leather outfit on a guy, have him run around, hunt some bad guys, and cash the cheque’.”
20th Century Fox
34 actors who regret big roles
Sylvester Stallone – Stop, or Mom Will Shoot
One of Hollywood’s many iconic actors, Sylvester Stallone will always be remembered for both the Rocky and Rambo films. Less so Stop, or Mom Will Shoot, the 1992 buddy-cop comedy that teamed Stallone up with Estelle Getty. Speaking about the film in 2006, he called it “maybe one of the worst films in the entire solar system, including alien productions we’ve never seen.”
Universal Pictures
34 actors who regret big roles
Sarah Jessica Parker – Sex and the City 2
Although Sarah Jessica Parker will forever be best known for playing Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City, that does not mean she’s not open to criticising the second film. “I can see where we fell short,” she told an audience at Vulture festival. “I understand, I actually get it. I will say, I also understand how much frickin’ money it made. I feel like that is forgotten in the discussion.”
Warner Bros
34 actors who regret big roles
Paul Newman – The Silver Chalice
Paul Newman had high standards. So much so that, before the release of The Silver Chalice, the Oscar-winning actor took out adverts in the trade press urging people to not watch the television broadcast of the film. He later called it “the worst motion picture produced during the 1950s”.
Everett Collection
34 actors who regret big roles
Colin Farrell – Miami Vice
Few actors are quite as straight talking as Colin Farrell, who said of the 2006 blockbuster Miami Vice: “Miami Vice? I didn’t like it so much. I thought it was style over substance and I accept a good bit of the responsibility.”
Universal Picture
34 actors who regret big roles
Brad Pitt – The Devil’s Own
There are many films Brad Pitt could arguably regret making (the awful 1992 flick Cool World comes to mind), but speaking to Newsweek in 1997, the actor decided to criticise The Devil’s Own. He called the film a “disaster” and “the most irresponsible bit of filmmaking, if you can even call it that, that I’ve ever seen”.
Columbia Pictures
34 actors who regret big roles
Jim Carrey – Kick-Ass 2
Following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, Jim Carrey distanced himself from the violent Kick Ass sequel. “I did Kick Ass a month before Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence,” he wrote on Twitter. “My apologies”.
Universal Pictures
34 actors who regret big roles
Zac Efron – High School Musical
Most people know Zac Efron as Troy Bolton from High School Musical. Zac Efron, though, wishes you knew him for something else. “I step back and look at myself and I still want to kick that guy’s ass sometimes,” he told Men’s Fitness. “He’s done some kind of cool things with some cool people – he did that one thing that was funny – but, I mean, he’s still just that f***ing kid from High School Musical.”
Disney
34 actors who regret big roles
Shia LaBeouf – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Indiana Jones fans had high expectations for the fourth film. Many were left feeling disappointed by the science-fiction adventure. “I feel like I dropped the ball on the legacy that people loved and cherished,” LaBeouf later told the LA Times. “You get to monkey-swinging and things like that and you can blame it on the writer and you can blame it on Steven [Spielberg]. But the actor’s job is to make it come alive and make it work, and I couldn’t do it. So that’s my fault. Simple.”
Paramount Pictures
34 actors who regret big roles
Charlize Theron – Reindeer Games
Charlize Theron may be one of the most acclaimed actors working today, but that does not mean she has not worked on bad films. One of those was Reindeer Games, co-starring Ben Affleck. “Reindeer Games. That was a bad, bad, bad movie,” she told Esquire in 2007. “But even though the movie might suck, I got to work with John Frankenheimer. I wasn’t lying to myself – that’s why I did it.”
Miramax
34 actors who regret big roles
Sally Field – The Amazing Spider-Man
The Amazing Spider-Man series, starring Andrew Garfield as the eponymous web-slinger, was supposed to launch a cinematic universe to match the Avengers. There were even rumours of an Aunt May film entering production. Not that the actor who played Aunt May, Sally Field, would have been thrilled by that. “It’s really hard to find a three-dimensional character in it,” she told Howard Stern of playing the character, “and you work it as much as you can, but you can’t put 10 pounds of s**t in a five-pound bag.”
Sony
34 actors who regret big roles
George Clooney – Batman & Robin
Michael Keaton, Christian Bale, Adam West – some of Hollywood’s best actors have played the Caped Crusader on screen. However, only one wore a suit with Batnipples: George Clooney. “Let me just say that I’d actually thought I’d destroyed the franchise until somebody else brought it back years later and changed it,” he said of the role. “I thought at the time that this was going to be a very good career move. It wasn’t.”
Warner Bros
34 actors who regret big roles
Daniel Radcliffe – Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Daniel Radcliffe was only 11 years old when he was cast as Harry Potter. That has not prevented the actor from looking back at those films with a critical eye. “I’m just not very good in [The Half Blood Prince],” he told Playboy in 2012. “I hate it. My acting is very one-note and I can see I got complacent and what I was trying to do just didn’t come across. My best film is the fifth one [Order of the Phoenix] because I can see a progression.”
Warner Bros
34 actors who regret big roles
Josh Brolin – Jonah Hex
Before playing Thanos in Avengers, Josh Brolin portrayed another comic-book character on screen: Jonah Hex. Unlike the Avengers, Hex was not well received by critics – or Brolin himself. “I think it deserved that bashing for reasons that those critics will never know,” he told Total Film in 2014. “We were almost ready to drop [the film] when this kid [director Jimmy Hayward] came up. He was an interesting young guy full of energy and he was obsessed with Jonah Hex. I thought, ‘This is either a really bad decision or a brilliant decision.’ [It was] really bad… If I’m ever really rich, I’ll do that movie again. Seriously.”
Warner Bros
34 actors who regret big roles
James Franco – Your Highness
Director David Gordon Green, Danny McBride and James Franco struck gold with their stoner-comedy Pineapple Express. Unfortunately, their attempt to make another laugh-out-loud film, Your Highness, was a mess. “Your Highness? That movie sucks,” Franco told GQ. “You can’t get around that.”
Universal Pictures
34 actors who regret big roles
Matt Damon – The Bourne Ultimatum
Matt Damon’s original Bourne trilogy won plaudits from critics around the world, with the second instalment featuring on The Independent’s “Films to watch before you die” list. The actor, though, has spoken unkindly about the third film, The Bourne Ultimatum, saying the original script, written by director Tony Gilroy, was awful. “It’s really the studio’s fault for putting themselves in that position,” Damon told GQ. “I don’t blame Tony for taking a boatload of money and handing in what he handed in. It’s just that it was unreadable. This is a career-ender. I mean, I could put this thing up on eBay and it would be game over for that dude. It’s terrible. It’s really embarrassing. He was having a go, basically, and he took his money and left.”
Universal Pictures
34 actors who regret big roles
Arnold Schwarzenegger – Red Sonja
“It’s the worst film I have ever made,” the former Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, said of the fantasy film Red Sonja. “When my kids get out of line, they’re sent to their rooms and forced to watch Red Sonja 10 times. I never had too much trouble with them.”
MGM/UA Entertainment Company
34 actors who regret big roles
Alec Baldwin – Rock of Ages
There are some actors who know they’re making a disaster midway through production. “It was a complete disaster,” Alec Baldwin told The Wrap when asked about Rock of Ages. “A week in you go, ‘Oh God, what have I done?’”
34 actors who regret big roles
Bill Murray – Garfield
Bill Murray only voiced the beloved cat Garfield because of a misunderstanding: he thought Joel Coen, of the Coen brothers fame, had written the script. In fact, Joel Cohen, whose filmography includes Cheaper by the Dozen, Toy Story, and Monster Mash: The Movie, had. “I was exhausted, soaked with sweat, and the lines got worse and worse. And I said, ‘Okay, you better show me the whole rest of the movie, so we can see what we’re dealing with,'” he told GQ. “So I sat down and watched the whole thing, and I kept saying, ‘Who the hell cut this thing? Who did this? What the f*** was Coen thinking?’ And then they explained it to me: it wasn’t written by that Joel Coen.”
20th Century Fox
34 actors who regret big roles
Bob Hoskins – Super Mario Bros
Even for video-game adaptations, Super Mario Bros, released in 1993, was a particularly strange film. Asked by The Guardian, “What is the worst job you’ve done?” “What has been your biggest disappointment?” and “If you could edit your past, what would you change?” the actor had only one answer: “Super Mario Brothers.”
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
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