Talk about biting the hand that feeds them! As Russel Crowe lambasts the ‘absolutely rubbish’ Gladiator script, the OTHER stars who have spoken out to SLAM the movies they’ve starred in
- George Clooney said Batman & Robin (1997) ‘wasn’t a good movie’
- Katherine Heigl was blacklisted from Hollywood after she called Knocked Up (2007) ‘a little bit sexist’
- Robert Pattinson ‘hated’ his Twilight (2008) character and working on the franchise
Just like in any profession, actors have fessed up to not enjoying certain projects they’ve worked on.
The most recent actor to slam one of his movies is Russell Crowe.
When reflecting on his 2000 film Gladiator Crowe called the Gladiator script ‘absolute rubbish’ even though it was an Oscar-winning box office hit.
‘At the core of what we were doing was a great concept, but the script was absolute rubbish. It had all sorts of strange sequences,’ he told Vanity Fair.
‘The audience are gonna go, “What the f**k is this?”. The energy around what we were doing was very fractured.’
Gladiator star Russel Crowe (seen in the movie), 59, told Vanity Fair he thought the movie’s script had confusing scenes that didn’t make sense and was worried it would confuse viewers
The actor (seen in 2022) went on to blast the movie’s script as ‘absolute rubbish’
Crowe certainly isn’t the first actor to roast his films whether its over the script, direction or their character.
Over the years, a number of actors have claimed they don’t like their own films whether starred in comic book series like George Clooney and Halle Berry or movie musicals like Christopher Plummer and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Here is our list of actors who have disliked their own films so much that they have spoken publicly about it.
George Clooney – Batman & Robin (1997)
‘I wasn’t good in it and it wasn’t a good film,’ Clooney said of the 1997 film Batman & Robin
Clooney has had an extremely successful career but even A-Listers have regrets.
The 61-year-old actor felt that he was ‘terrible’ in the film Batman & Robin (1997) and starring in it taught him that ‘you can’t make a good film out of a bad script.’
Talk around Clooney’s casting started early since Val Kilmer had starred in the previous Batman film.
Kilmer turned down the role because he felt the restrictive costume was ‘isolating’ and claimed playing Batman wasn’t the dream that he’d thought it’d be.
‘Whatever boyhood excitement I had was crushed by the reality of the Batsuit,’ he said on his Amazon Prime documentary, Val.
‘Yes, every boy wants to be Batman. They actually want to be him … not necessarily play him in a movie.’
It seems Kilmer may have knew what he was doing because Batman & Robin flopped massively and was panned by critics.
‘I just thought the last one had been successful so I thought I was just going to be in a big successful franchise movie,’ he told Total Film Magazine.
The Gravity actor didn’t blame one particular element for the film’s failure but instead blamed every aspect – claiming it was ‘terrible’
Clooney even joked that he keeps a photo of himself as the Dark Knight displayed on his office wall ‘a cautionary reminder of what can happen when you make movies solely for commercial reasons.’
He then slammed both the film and his own ability.
‘It was a difficult film to be good in. With hindsight it’s easy to look back at this and go “Woah, that was really s*** and I was really bad in it,”‘ he continued.
Regardless, Clooney considered it learning moment.
‘After Batman & Robin came out, and it was a big bomb — you learn from your failures; you don’t learn from successes,’ Clooney shared in an Actors on Actors Variety interview with Michelle Pfeiffer.
He also learned to make his decisions on roles based on the quality of the scripts.
‘You can’t make a good film out of a bad script, it’s impossible. You can make a bad film out of a good script,’ he told Deadline.
Clooney even joked that he keeps a photo of himself as the Dark Knight displayed on his office wall ‘a cautionary reminder of what can happen when you make movies solely for commercial reasons.’
The Gravity actor didn’t blame one particular element for the film’s failure but instead blamed every aspect – claiming it ‘wasn’t a good film.’
‘I wasn’t good in it and it wasn’t a good film,’ he told THR in 2019.
He added: ‘The truth of the matter is, I was bad in it. Akiva Goldsman – who’s won the Oscar for writing since then – he wrote the screenplay.
‘And it’s a terrible screenplay, he’ll tell you. I’m terrible in it, I’ll tell you.
‘Joel Schumacher, who just passed away, directed it, and he’d say, “Yeah, it didn’t work.” We all whiffed on that one.’
Michelle Pfeiffer – Grease 2 (1982)
Michelle Pfeiffer played a starring role in the sequel Grease 2 but came to ‘hate the film with a vengeance’
If you asked Pfeiffer about her favorite film, Grease 2 would not be ‘the one that I want.’
In fact, she went as far as to say that she hated the movie musical sequel.
‘I hated that film with a vengeance and could not believe how bad it was,’ Pfeiffer said to Hollywood.com of the sequel to Grease.’
While explaining why she accepted the role, she added: ‘At the time I was young and didn’t know any better.’
The film was a big flop and Preiffer confessed that both she and her co-star Max Caulfield couldn’t live up to the ‘hype’ built up around them.
‘Before it even came out the hype had started,’ Pfeiffer said to the LA Times.
‘Maxwell and I were being thrust down the public’s throat in huge full page advertisements. There was no way we could live up to any of that and we didn’t. So the crash was very loud.’
Not to mention, she also hated the hype on a personal level.
The film was a big flop and Preiffer confessed that both she and her co-star Max Caulfield couldn’t live up to the ‘hype’ built up around them
Caulfield struggled to take off after Grease 2 and even admitted to being resentful toward Pfeiffer because of it
‘I went crazy with that movie,’ she told Interview magazine. ‘I came to New York and the paparazzi were waiting at the hotel.’
‘I know the producers put them up to it. I am basically very private, and I’m really nervous about doing publicity.’
Even though Pfeiffer didn’t enjoy making the film or her performance in it, she went on to have a successful career. Caulfield struggled to take off after Grease 2 and even admitted to being resentful toward Pfeiffer because of it.
‘Michelle rose like a Phoenix, right? Did Scarface, and so that made it even, frankly, a little harder to swallow,’ he told Page Six.
‘But you know, listen, every actor has his and her own path,’ he continued.
‘She has gone on to multiple Oscar nominations and the rest of it. She delivers and she defines Hollywood beauty. You can’t begrudge them their success.
‘But as I said, simultaneously, it makes it that much tougher to see, that you’ve been benched. And it took a long wait time to come back.’
Christopher Plummer – The Sound of Music (1965)
Christopher Plummer starred in The Sound of Music (1965) which he called ‘awful’
Plummer did not enjoy the movie musical that marked his big screen premiere: The Sound of Music (1965).
In fact, he has even called the film ‘The Sound of Mucus’ and ‘S&M.’
During a 2010 interview with the Boston Globe, the actor admitted he was ‘a bit bored with the character’ of Captain von Trapp, who he played in the movie.
‘Although we worked hard enough to make him interesting, it was a bit like flogging a dead horse,’ he shared.
‘And the subject matter is not mine. I mean it can’t appeal to every person in the world. It’s not my cup of tea.’
He compared making his character interesting to ‘flogging a dead horse’
However, he seemingly had a change of heart when he watched the film after years of refusing to lay eyes on it in his 2012 memoir In Spite of Myself and said it was ‘absolutely timeless’
Similarly, when speaking of the film in 2011, Plummer told THR, ‘It was so awful and sentimental and gooey.’
He added: ‘You had to work terribly hard to try and infuse some minuscule bit of humor into it.’
However, he seemingly had a change of heart when he watched the film after years of refusing to lay eyes on it in his 2012 memoir In Spite of Myself.
He explained that he was guilted into watching the movie at an Easter gathering filled with children.
‘The more I watched, the more I realized what a terrific movie it is,’ he noted. ‘The very best of its genre — warm, touching, absolutely timeless.’
He was ‘totally seduced by the damn thing — and what’s more, I felt a sudden surge of pride that I’d been a part of it.’
Katherine Heigl – Knocked Up (2007)
Heigl got blacklisted from Hollywood for over a decade after venting about her 2007 film Knocked Up, claiming it was ‘a little bit sexist’
Heigl got blacklisted from Hollywood for over a decade after venting about her 2007 film Knocked Up, claiming it was ‘a little bit sexist.’
Even though the film she co-starred in with Seth Rogen and was directed by Judd Apatow was considered a box office hit, Heigl slammed her character during a 2008 interview with Vanity Fair.
The Firefly Lane actress told Vanity Fair that Knocked Up ‘paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys.’
‘I had a hard time with [the film], on some days,’ she added.
‘I’m playing such a b****; why is she being such a killjoy? Why is this how you’re portraying women?’ she asked, while adding it was hard for her to love the film.
After slamming Knocked Up and her character’s storyline in Grey’s Anatomy, she didn’t book any major roles until 10 years later on the TV series Suits.
Rogen was taken aback by Heigl’s criticism of the film – for which he also was an executive producer – and spoke out about feeling ‘betrayed’ by the actress during a 2016 interview with Howard Stern.
‘I had a hard time with [the film], on some days,’ she said of her role in the film. ‘I’m playing such a b****; why is she being such a killjoy?
Rogen was taken aback by Heigl’s criticism of the film – for which he also was an executive producer – and spoke out about feeling ‘betrayed’ by the actress
‘People seemed to like it. We were funny together,’ he said on the show.
He added: ‘I was having a really good time, and then when I heard afterward that she didn’t like it, that she seemed to not like the process, and she did not like the end product either, I think when that happens — also your trust feels somewhat betrayed.’
He even added that he thought ‘she hated us … and it seemed like she didn’t have good experience making [Knocked Up].’
‘She didn’t feel the product was as she thought she should be portrayed,” Rogen told Stern.
‘When that happens, as someone who is an egomaniac, I just get hurt by that. She must f—ing hate me.
“I respect the fact that perhaps she realizes that it has hurt her career, and I don’t want that to have happened to her at all because I’ve said a thousand stupid things and I really like her.
‘The only people who in this situation should in any way take anything from it is me and Judd because we’re the ones she was talking about.
‘For other people to not work with her because she didn’t like her experience with us is — I think is crazy.’
Heigl commented on his response, stating that she felt he handled it ‘beautifully.’
‘I think he’s handled it so beautifully,” she told ET.
“I feel nothing but love and respect. It was so long ago, and I just wish him so much goodness. I felt that from him, too.’
However, Heigl had a much edgier approach when it came to those who claimed her thoughts on Knocked Up made her ‘ungrateful’ and ‘difficult.’
‘I may have said a couple of things you didn’t like, but then that escalated to “she’s ungrateful,”‘ she said to Washington Post in 2021.
‘Then that escalated to “she’s difficult” and that escalated to “she’s unprofessional”… What is your definition of difficult?
‘Somebody with an opinion that you don’t like? Now I’m 42, that… [annoys] me,’ she said.
Robert Pattinson – Twilight (2008)
Robert Pattinson didn’t like any aspect of Twilight including the book the films were based on, his character or really anything about the franchise
Robert Pattinson not only became known for his film Twilight but also for how frequently he bashed it.
The Batman actor didn’t like the book the films were based on, his character or really anything about the franchise.
His bad taste for the franchise started when he read the books and slammed the author Stephanie Meyer – going as far as to call her ‘completely mad.’
He told E! News: ‘When I read it, I was convinced Stephenie was convinced she was Bella and it was like it was a book that wasn’t supposed to be published.
‘It was like reading her sexual fantasy, especially when she said it was based on a dream.
‘Like some things about Edward are so specific, I was just convinced, like, ‘This woman is mad.
‘She’s completely mad and she’s in love with her own fictional creation.’ And sometimes you would feel uncomfortable reading this thing.’
His opinion only got more critical when he read the adaption’s screenplay.
In an October 2008 interview for Empire magazine, Pattinson said he ‘hated’ his vampiric character Edward Cullen as he read the script.
His bad taste for the franchise started when he read the books and slammed the author Stephanie Meyer – going as far as to call her ‘completely mad.’
‘The more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that’s how I played him, as a manic-depressive who hates himself, he told the outlet.
‘Plus, he’s a 108-year-old virgin so he’s obviously got some issues there.’
He went as far as to compare Edward to an ‘axe murderer’ while speaking with OK.
‘You always get weirdos like Edward who seem to attract women for some reason,’ he shared.
‘If Edward wasn’t a fictional character and you met him in reality he is like one of those guys who would probably be an axe murderer or something.’
The issues didn’t stop once filming started. In fact, he found himself butting heads with the creative team over how ’emo’ the character should be played.
‘I wanted to make it as arty as possible,’ Pattinson told GQ.
‘We had this strange tension where the studio was scared to make things a little bit too emo and stuff.
‘I thought that was the only way to play it. I spent so much time [on set] infuriated… I can’t believe the way I was acting half the time.’
Once the film was released, Pattinson struggled to promote it and couldn’t understand how many fans were invested in the franchise.
‘It’s weird kind of representing something you don’t particularly like,’ he told Vanity Fair in 2011.
‘I can’t really understand it even now. It does have an angle which is attached to something quite primal in girls.
‘I guess people want it to define them, like, “I’m a Twilight fan.” That’s crazy to me. I think people really just like being part of a crowd.’
Once the film was released, Pattinson struggled to promote it and couldn’t understand how many fans were invested in the franchise
However, his hatred for the film seems to finally have simmered down a bit. When asked about Twilight during an interview with People in 2022, he responded, ‘It’s not even cool to be a hater anymore.’
He couldn’t be happier after his fourth and final Twilight film – Breaking Dawn, Part 2 – had wrapped.
During an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, he had a comical response about being done with the series once and for all.
Fallon asked: ‘Millions of Twilight fans, they can’t wait to see this, it’s almost heartbreaking because they don’t want it to be over. It’s a little bittersweet, isn’t it?’
Instead of agreeing, Pattinson laughed and quipped: ‘For them!’
Even over a decade after the film’s release, he couldn’t seem to get past Twilight’s story.
‘It’s a weird story, Twilight. It’s not just like – it’s strange how people responded a lot to it,’ he told Variety in 2020.
‘I guess the books are very romantic, but at the same time, it’s not like The Notebook romantic.
‘The Notebook is very sweet and heartbreaking, but Twilight is about this guy, and he finds the one girl he wants to be with, and he also wants to eat her… I mean, not eat her, but like drink her blood or whatever.
‘It’s not that other people are telling them they can’t be together, it’s his own body telling him that.’
However, his hatred for the film seems to finally have simmered down a bit.
When asked about Twilight during an interview with People in 2022, he responded, ‘It’s not even cool to be a hater anymore.’
‘That’s so 2010,’ he continued.
Halle Berry – Catwoman (2004)
The Catwoman actress has revealed that she would ‘love’ the opportunity to direct the film and redo it the way she would want it to be done
Halle Berry’s 2004 rendition of Catwoman was so notoriously bad that it received an infamous Razzie Award – a parody award show that recognizes the worst films and performances of the year.
While many actors don’t normally attend the ceremony, Berry actually made a point to accept her award in person just to slam the film.
‘I want to thank Warner Bros. for casting me in this piece-of-s***, god-awful movie,’ Berry said.
‘It was just what my career needed — I was at the top, now I’m at the bottom.’
Halle Berry’s 2004 rendition of Catwoman was so notoriously bad that it received an infamous Razzie Award
While many actors don’t normally attend the ceremony, Berry actually made a point to accept her award in person just to slam the film, calling it ‘god awful’
The actress went on to describe a few ways the film could’ve been better.
‘It was what it was but I know if we had a chance to do it again, I know we’d make it better,’ she said.
‘We’ll make a better story and have a better villain. I always thought we should’ve had a better villain than a woman whose face cracked off, but that’s the past.
‘I’m over it. But I would do it, I loved being Catwoman,’ she concluded.
Fast forward to 2021, Berry explained why she felt that attending the Razzies made her a ‘good loser.’
‘If I can show up to collect an Oscar when you’re honoring me, I can certainly show up to collect a Razzie when you say, good try, but do better,’ she told Vanity Fair.
‘I always learned that if you can’t be a good loser, then you don’t deserve to be a good winner.’
She revealed that she even set the award aflame.
‘So I went there and made fun of myself. I had a great time and then I set that thing on fire. That’s what I did!’ She added.
The actress has also revealed that she would ‘love’ the opportunity to direct the film and redo it the way she would want it to be done.
‘I would love to direct Catwoman,’ Berry said told Total Film that same year.
‘I wish I could go back and reimagine Catwoman and redo that. Have a redo on that, now knowing what I know [about directing].’
Channing Tatum – GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)
Channing Tatum ‘hated’ G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra movie (2009) from the start but had to go through with filming it as a part of his contact with Paramount to avoid being sued
While G. I. Joe may have been a top-grossing film, it doesn’t mean it was hit to the movie’s title actor.
Channing Tatum ‘hated’ the movie from the start but had to go through with filming it as a part of his contact with Paramount to avoid being sued.
‘I’ll be honest, I f***ing hate that movie. I was pushed into doing it.’ Tatum told Howard Stern of his experience with GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
He added: ‘From Coach Carter, they signed me to a three-picture deal … They give you the contract and they go, “Three-picture deal, here you go.” And as a young [actor], you’re like, “Oh my god, that sounds amazing, I’m doing that!”‘
However, he was less than thrilled when they approached him to do the film, claiming ‘the script wasn’t any good.’
Then, it came time for G.I. Joe: Retaliation. Tatum knew he couldn’t get out of it – after he had tried to get out of the previous one seven times. So he found a clever way to minimalize his involvement by asking to be killed in the first ten minutes
‘And I love G.I. Joe: “Can I play Snake Eyes?” And they’re like, “No, you’re not playing Snake Eyes, you’re playing G.I. Joe,”‘ he said of his experience to the radio show host. ‘The script wasn’t any good.’
He added: ‘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.”
When he asked if he could back out of the film the studio told him ‘no option’ and that ‘you’re doing this or we’re gonna sue you.’
Then, it came time for G.I. Joe: Retaliation. Tatum knew he couldn’t get out of it – after he had tried to get out of the previous one seven times. So he found a clever way to minimalize his involvement as much as possible.
‘The first film, I passed on seven times.’ he told Vanity Fair.
He added: ‘When it came to the second one, I obviously just didn’t want to do that either, so yes, I asked to be killed off in the first ten minutes of the movie.’
Charlize Theron – Reindeer Games (2000)
In 2000, she starred in Reindeer Games alongside Ben Affleck. Since then, she has called it a ‘bad, bad, bad’ movie and admitted that she only signed onto the film for one reason
Charlize Theron has one an Oscar but she has starred in one film that she thinks certainly isn’t worthy of any awards.
In 2000, she starred in Reindeer Games alongside Ben Affleck. Since then, she has called it a ‘bad, bad, bad’ movie and admitted that she only signed onto the film for one reason.
‘That was a bad, bad, bad movie,’ she told Esquire in 2008.
‘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.’
Frankenheimer directed the film and his repretpoire includes The Manchurian Candidate, which Theron credited as ‘the movie of all movies.’
The film was also panned by critics and has a low audience score of 27% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Bill Murray – Garfield (2004)
Bill Murray agreed to be in Garfield over a mistake. He thought it was written by Joel Coen but it turned out to be penned by Joel Cohen
Bill Murray may have fallen from grace himself but even he has spoken badly about his animated film Garfield.
Murray signed onto the film under the impression he’d be working with Joel Coen – who had written Burn After Reading and Fargo – but he was mistaken.
‘I had a hilarious experience with Garfield,’ he said on a Reddit chat.
‘I only read a few pages of it, and I kind of wanted to do a cartoon movie, because I had looked at the screenplay and it said Joel Cohen on it.
‘And I wasn’t thinking clearly, but it was spelled Cohen, not Coen. I love the Coen brothers movies. I think that Joel Coen is a wonderful comedic mind.
‘So I didn’t really bother to finish the script, I thought he’s great, I’ll do it.’
While filming, he would change some of the dialogue which only made animating around the pre-filmed live action footage harder.
‘So I start working with this script and I’m supposed to start re-recording and thinking “I can do a funnier line than that” so I would start changing the dialogue that was written for the cat,’ he explained, adding that it took eight hours to go through ten minutes of footage.
He went through with finishing up the film, a process which he described as ‘sort of like Fantastic Mr Fox without the joy or the fun’
By the second day, Murray beame exasperated with the process.
‘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 continued.
‘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.’
He went through with finishing up the film, a process which he described as ‘sort of like Fantastic Mr Fox without the joy or the fun.’
‘We managed to fix it, sort of. It was a big financial success,’ he explained so when talks of a sequel came around, he was hesitant to accept. Eventually, he agreed that he would do a sequel under one condition.
‘I said, “Just promise me, you’ll never do that again.” That you’ll never shoot the footage without telling me,’ he explained.
He continued: ‘And they proceeded to do it again. And the next time, they had been shooting for 5 weeks. And I cursed again. I said “I just asked for one little thing, letting me know.” and that one was EVEN HARDER.’
‘The second one was beyond rescue, there were too many crazy people involved with it,’ he added.
Jamie Lee Curtis – Virus (1999)
When filming Virus (1999), Jamie Lee Curtis had to do ‘the best I can’ even though she claimed it was ‘the only time I’ve known something was just bad and there was nothing I could do about it’
Jamie Lee Curtis just won an Oscar for her performance in Everything, Everywhere All At Once. However, there is one movie that she starred in that she’d rather forget.
‘Virus is the worst movie I’ve ever been in,’ the actress told Australia’s Female magazine.
She continued: ‘And it wasn’t that I thought a lot about it except that is was a piece of shit as I was making it and I kept on asking myself: How could I get out of it, how long was it going to be and how bad was it going to be? It was just dreadful.”
Unfortunately for Curtis, she wasn’t able to find a way out of it. She just had to do ‘the best I can’ even though she claimed it was ‘the only time I’ve known something was just bad and there was nothing I could do about it.’
‘That’s a piece of s*** movie. It was maybe the only time I’ve known something was just bad and there was nothing I could do about it,’ she said of Virus to WENN.
I just do the best I can and there have been bad movies that have been wildly successful and great movies that have tanked, so you never know.’
She shared that there was one specific part of the movie that seemed especially ridiculous to her.
‘There’s a scene where I’m running away from this alien and I actually hide under the stairs,’ she explained.
She continued: ‘I come down some stairs and then duck up underneath them and I’m quivering and this big thing comes down the stairs and I’m freaking hiding under the stairs! This is something that can open walls of steel and I’m hiding under stairs!’
However, she did find a positive to having a bad film. When friends have bad movie nights, she’ll always have one to share.
‘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,’ she told IGN.
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