Most movie stars can survive a flop or two. But then there are roles that completely upend an actor’s career, leaving them out of work or forever changed in the eye of the public.
It’s not really possible to talk about Faye Dunaway’s career without mentioning her notorious performance in Mommie Dearest, for instance. Or to google Brandon Routh in any other context than “what happened to Superman Returns star Brandon Routh?”
Often this is unfair – women historically tend to bear the brunt of career-shaking backlash, and there are typically many different reasons why movie stardom hits a wall. But whenever an actor does seem to drop off the radar, it’s usually a specific film that is to blame.
From Meg Ryan’s unfairly maligned erotic thriller to the body-swap comedy that prevented Judge Reinhold from becoming one of Hollywood’s biggest comedy stars, here are 17 films that derailed the fortunes of their stars single-handed.
Released in 1981, the Joan Crawford biopic Mommie Dearest – starring Faye Dunaway and adapted from a harrowing bestseller by Crawford’s daughter Christina – painted the star in a less than flattering light. Namely, as an unhinged tyrant prone to chewing up her daughter as well as the scenery of every room she was in. The latter, in fairness, was more Dunaway’s fault – and it promptly took a pick-axe to her leading-lady roles. She drew the worst reviews of her career, along with a Worst Actress Razzie, and Dunaway was so embarrassed by the film that she rarely spoke about it again. In a series of rare comments made in 2016, Dunaway said the film “turned my career in a direction where people would irretrievably have the wrong impression of me,” adding: “That’s an awful hard thing to beat. I should have known better, but sometimes you’re vulnerable and you don’t realise what you’re getting into.”
Expectations were high for the release of Showgirls in 1995. It marked a reunion between Basic Instinct’s director and screenwriter – Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas, respectively – while many assumed the film’s star, the former Saved by the Bell actor Elizabeth Berkley, would be shot into the Hollywood stratosphere much like Sharon Stone after Basic Instinct. Then people actually saw Showgirls. While the film’s reputation has (rightly!) turned around in the decades since – along with appreciation for Berkley’s broad and undeniably mesmerising performance – the film’s dismal initial response cratered Berkley’s fledgling movie career practically overnight. “There was so much cruelty around it,” she said in 2020. “I was bullied. And I didn’t understand why I was being blamed. The job as an actor is to fulfil the vision of the director. And I did everything I was supposed to do. No one associated with the film spoke up on my behalf to protect me. I was left out in the cold and I was a pariah in the industry I had worked so hard for.”
