The reasons and paradoxes of acting shame: 6 Hollywood stars who would like to erase their roles from the history of cinema (13 photos)

There are films that viewers watch and re-watch if not in complete delight, then with great pleasure.





Meanwhile, the actors who played in them ended up dissatisfied and even ashamed of the result. Which of the stars is especially categorical about their early work, and why do they feel ashamed for embodying this or that character?

1. George Clooney (Batman & Robin)



George Clooney played Bruce Wayne/Batman in Joel Schumacher's 1997 film Batman & Robin. Clooney replaced Val Kilmer, who played the Dark Knight in Schumacher's previous film Batman Forever. The Clooney film is considered the worst Batman film of all time.

The actor's wife, human rights activist Amal Clooney, admitted in an interview with Variety that her husband "doesn't let her watch" the film.

"There are some movies that make me think, 'I wish my wife respected me a little bit,'" George Clooney said.





The actor has never been shy about expressing his dissatisfaction with Batman & Robin and has repeatedly emphasized that he realizes that the film turned out to be perhaps the worst superhero action movie. In 2013, he told Deadline that he keeps a photo of himself as Batman "in a prominent place in his office — as a cautionary reminder of what happens when you make a movie solely for the sake of money."

The film's failure became an important lesson for him for the rest of his career:

When I got the role in "Batman and Robin", I was just an actor who was given a job, and I was happy that I would play Batman, but after that I realized that I would be responsible not only for my performance, but for the whole film as a whole. So I realized that you need to choose good scripts - this is the most important thing. You can't make a good movie from a bad script, it's impossible. But a bad movie with a good script is quite possible.

The film became a turning point in Clooney's career, after which he began to approach the selection of projects more carefully.

2. Whoopi Goldberg ("Theodore Rex")



Whoopi Goldberg tried to avoid filming Theodore Rex by any means possible. So much so that she was even sued for refusing to work. In the end, she asked for a huge fee. The producers agreed, but Whoopi spent the entire film with a dissatisfied face.

"There is one movie that, to me, is complete nonsense. But people like it. It's a movie about a talking dinosaur cop," Whoopi Goldberg answers a question about the movie for which she shame.



That film turned out to be Theodore Rex, where Goldberg plays Kathy Coltrane, a top-notch detective who is paired with a bumbling T-Rex. Together, they investigate dinosaur murders, which eventually leads them to a mad scientist plotting the apocalypse. The film, released in 1995, earned Goldberg a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for her performance. It became a cult flop, and Goldberg later called it "the weirdest job" of her career.

3. Elizabeth Taylor ("Butterfield 8")



Elizabeth Taylor hated filming Butterfield 8. She was still grieving over the death of her husband Mike Todd, but she was forced to film because of her contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The premiere coincided with the scandal surrounding her relationship with Eddie Fisher, which only made things worse.

Even winning the Oscar did not change her mind. Taylor believed that she was given the award only because she almost died of pneumonia on the set. In a rage, she threw the statuette in the trash.

She only agreed to the role to fulfill her contractual obligations before MGM and moved to 20th Century Fox to star in Cleopatra.



The documentary Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (2024) contains revelations about the film:

I hated it so much! I thought, "Fuck them!" - they made me do it. I didn't want to. I did it with a gun to my head. There were such devilish lines. It was pure nonsense. And it pissed me off. But it was the anger that motivated me... Everything was soaked in anger.

The film was a commercial failure, but later acquired cult status due to the scandalous context.

4. Dakota Johnson ("Madame Web")



Dakota Johnson was misled when she agreed to star in Madame Web. She thought the film was part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), and only later realized it was part of Sony's failed Spider-Man villain universe (Morbius, Kraven, and Venom from there), which had nothing to do with the MCU or even Tom Holland's Spider-Man. But it was too late.

Her monotone performance and lack of emotion suddenly made the film absurdly funny, turning Madame Web into a so-bad-it's-good trash hit. Dakota Johnson literally forces herself to act, not hiding her attitude towards the project.



The actress herself said that she is done with superhero movies:

You can't create art based only on numbers and algorithms. I realized long ago that viewers are extremely smart, and studio bosses believed that viewers are stupid. Viewers always recognize crap. Even if films are made using artificial intelligence, people won't want to watch it.

I have never acted in superhero movies before and I probably will never act in them again because I don't fit into that world. And I understand that now. But sometimes in this industry, you join a project that's one thing, and then as you go along it turns into something else. And you're like, "Wait, what?" I learned a lot from that experience. And of course, it's not very nice to be a part of something that the public has torn to pieces, but I can't say I don't understand it.

5. Rooney Mara (A Nightmare on Elm Street)



After the release of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, actress Rooney Mara gave an interview to Entertainment Weekly magazine, where she spoke frankly about filming A Nightmare on Elm Street:

You have to learn how to overcome yourself when you are forced to do a job that you are not interested in. Sometimes you just don’t want to, but you understand that this is a great opportunity for your career. This is what happened with A Nightmare on Elm Street. I went to the audition, and after it I thought: "*****! I definitely got the part!"



This statement caused a negative reaction from journalists and critics. Earlier, several critical reviews of the film noted the unprofessionalism and obvious disinterest of the actress in the film, which was perceived as one of the reasons for the negative reaction of viewers to the film. Mara's statement was also harshly criticized by fans of the film.

6. Brad Pitt ("Interview with "(vampire")



Brad Pitt hated filming Interview with the Vampire so much that he asked to be removed from the film. However, this threatened him with a fine of several million dollars, so he had to grit his teeth and play to the end.

He also, according to rumors, could not stand Tom Cruise. It is believed that this is when a long-standing feud began between them, which continues to this day. Since then, they have never filmed together again and even avoided appearing together in public, until the recent promotional tour of Formula 1 (which was perhaps the best PR move in the career of Pitt).



Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt at the Formula 1 premiere

While it is not 100% confirmed, it is strange that the two superstars have never crossed paths in projects for more than 30 years, despite often attending the same events. It seems that they have deliberately kept their distance from each other.



Perhaps their cold war has finally is over, but Hollywood still remembers how two of the most charismatic actors pretended that each other didn't exist for 30 years.