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"I Never Thought They Were Going to Kill and Rape": 12 Instances of Actors Admitting Their Biggest Career Mistakes

By Josh Kurp | Lists | September 20, 2012 |

By Josh Kurp | Lists | September 20, 2012 |


Last week, when speaking to New York magazine, Homeland star Mandy Patinkin was asked about CBS’ “Criminal Minds,” which he abruptly left after two seasons. His reason: “The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do ‘Criminal Minds’ in the first place,” he says. “I thought it was something very different. I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to my soul and my personality. After that, I didn’t think I would get to work in television again.” Well, you did, and now you’re on one of the best shows on TV. Good job, Mandy! His candidness got me thinking about other actors and actresses who have publicly denounced their work. Here are 12 such examples.

Bob Hoskins and Super Mario Bros.

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What is the worst job you’ve done? “Super Mario Brothers.”

What has been your biggest disappointment? “Super Mario Brothers.”

If you could edit your past, what would you change? “I wouldn’t do Super Mario Brothers.” (Via)

George Clooney and Batman & Robin

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Batman & Robin was a disaster, rife with homoeroticism, camp, and those infamous Bat-nipples. Clooney once joked that he helped to kill the franchise. “Joel Schumacher told me we never made another Batman film because Batman was gay.” The actor also called the movie “a waste of money.” (Via)

Mark Wahlberg and The Happening

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“I was such a huge fan of [Amy Adams]. We’d actually had the luxury of having lunch before to talk about another movie, and it was a bad movie that I did. She dodged the bullet. I don’t want to tell you what movie…alright, The Happening with M. Night Shyamalan. It is was it is. F*cking trees, man, the plants. F*ck it. You can’t blame me for wanting to try to play a science teacher, you know? I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook.” (Via)

Shia LaBeouf and Transformers 2

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On the second movie, “we got lost. We tried to get bigger. It’s what happens to sequels. It’s like, how do you top the first one? You’ve got to go bigger,” LaBeouf said. “Mike [Bay] went so big that it became too big, and I think you lost the anchor of the movie. You lost a bit of the relationships. Unless you have those relationships, then the movie doesn’t matter. Then it’s just a bunch of robots fighting each other.” (Via)

Orson Welles and Transformers: the Movie

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Welles hated working on Transformers: The Movie, where he voiced Unicron. When asked about the film, he not only couldn’t remember the name of his character, but he described the film as “I play a big toy who attacks a bunch of smaller toys.” (Via)

Alec Guinness and Star Wars

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In his autobiography, Guinness mentions a small child coming up to him and saying that he’d seen Star Wars 100 times. Guinness replied that he’d give the kid an autograph if he promised to never watch the movie again and the boy burst into tears. He called the movies “banal” and “mumbo-jumbo,” and would throw out Star Wars-related fan mail unopened. Guinness also claimed that it was his idea to get Obi-Wan killed off because he wanted a smaller part. (Via)

Sylvester Stallone and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot

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The worst film I’ve ever made by far…maybe one of the worst films in the entire solar system, including alien productions we’ve never seen…a flatworm could write a better script then STOP! OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT. In some countries - China, I believe - running STOP! OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT once a week on government television has lowered the birth rate to zero. If they ran it twice a week, I believe in twenty years China would be extinct. (Via)

Gwyneth Paltrow and View from the Top

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In an interview with the U.K.’s The Guardian, Paltrow called this movie “terrible” and put it in a not-so-flattering category with another film she’d like to erase from her resume: Shallow Hal. (Via)

Chevy Chase and Caddyshack II

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At one point, Chase murmured to the film’s director Allan Arkush during post-production, “Call me when you’ve dubbed the laugh-track,” before walking away in disgust. (Via)

John Cusack and Better Off Dead

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[Director Steve] Holland received a shock when he screened Better Off Dead prior to the film’s release for the cast and crew of One Crazy Summer — also starring John Cusack — just before production was about to get under way on location in Cape Cod. Twenty minutes into the screening, Cusack walked out and never returned. “The next morning,” said Holland, “[Cusack] basically walked up to me and was like, ‘You know, you tricked me. Better Off Dead was the worst thing I have ever seen. I will never trust you as a director ever again, so don’t speak to me’…He was just really upset. And I said, ‘What happened?! What’s wrong?!’ And he just said that I sucked, and it was the worst thing he had ever seen, and that I had used him, and made a fool out of him, and all this other stuff…It was so out of left field that it just floored me.” Cusack finished One Crazy Summer since he was contractually obligated, but he never worked with Holland again. (Via)

Groucho Marx and The Cocoanuts

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Referring to directors Robert Florey and Joseph Santley, Groucho Marx remarked, “One of them didn’t understand English and the other didn’t understand Harpo.” When the Marx Brothers were shown the final cut of the film, they were so appalled they tried to buy the negative back and prevent its release. Paramount wisely resisted — the movie turned out to be a big hit and earned close to two million dollars. (Via)

Bill Cosby and Leonard Part 6

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Even Bill Cosby would agree with me on this one; when the film was released, he encouraged everyone in America not to see the film. In fact, so ashamed was Cosby by this theatrical misfire that he purchased the television rights to ensure that it would never appear on the small screen. (Via)