Controversial Acting Performances That Movie Fans Will Never Forgive
To get this out of the way up front, there are no bad actors on this list. In fact, several of them are Oscar winners — some multiple times over. But that's what makes these performative missteps that much worse: The knowledge that everyone here can do better and has demonstrated such on other projects. It also needs to be said that most of these wouldn't rank anywhere close to the worst performances in movie history. However, they all rubbed cinema fans the wrong way in some egregious fashion, for a variety of reasons.
It's not always entirely an actor's fault when they give a performance that misses the mark. In many cases, they did exactly as the script or the director asked them to do. But that doesn't completely take the onus off of them for agreeing to do the role to begin with, or for being willing to embrace a director's bad instructions. That being said, a few of these are the fault of nobody but the actor, and they can't pass the buck to anyone else for how audiences received the performance. Unfortunately, a couple of these were simply done in poor taste in terms of an insensitive depiction of a race, culture, or type of person — and by actors who certainly should've known better, even at the time.
Tom Hanks — Cloud Atlas
One might have opted to include Tom Hanks's performance of Colonel Tom Parker in the 2022 biopic "Elvis" on this list. But he seemed to be intentionally playing it as an over-the-top caricature — it is a Baz Luhrmann movie, after all. Actors who are deliberately chewing the scenery and are having a blast in the process aren't really what this list is all about. Rather, the idea is that an actor completely missed the mark on a performance that they were taking seriously and there wasn't a hint of self-awareness to be found. And for that, the distinction belongs to the work Hanks did a decade earlier for the Wachowskis' sci-fi spectacle "Cloud Atlas."
There is a lot to criticize about the actors in "Cloud Atlas" and the characters they play, particularly because it's all over the map in terms of people playing different races and ethnicities than their own — and, in several cases, wearing embarrassing and offensive make-up and prosthetics to do so. All that aside, a discussion has to be had about Dermot Hoggins, one of several characters played by Hanks. Not only did it result in an Irish accent called one of the worst in movie history by Irish pop culture site Goss.ie, but Hanks tries to play Hoggins as an intimidating, tough-talking thug type and — well, it's Tom Hanks. The whole thing feels more like a "Saturday Night Live" skit than the shocking scene it's meant to be.
Vince Vaughn — Psycho
If you're going to remake a movie, the idea is usually that you're doing something different with it. Otherwise, it's the cinematic equivalent of just tracing an existing drawing — and a tracing is never going to look as sharp as the original. This is all especially true for a movie that is already perfect the way it is, such as Alfred Hitchcock's trailblazing 1960 masterpiece "Psycho."
And yet, director Gus Van Sant decided to do that very thing in 1998 when he did a shot-for-shot remake of "Psycho" — so much so that he even used the original screenplay rather than commissioning a new one. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of critics declared the entire exercise to be utterly pointless, doing nothing to elevate the original or even really distinguish itself from it. But perhaps worst of all was Vince Vaughn's portrayal of Norman Bates, the character played so flawlessly by actor Anthony Perkins in the original and its three direct sequels. Dramatic acting has never been Vaughn's strong suit, and it's almost impossible not to assume he's trying to be funny as he tries (and fails) to play the unsettling and slowly unraveling innkeeper.
By the time Vaughn is revealed in his blonde wig and bathrobe, it has all completely fallen apart, and the only people who weren't laughing were the producers who were duped into bankrolling this train wreck.
Russell Crowe — Les Misérables
Look, you have to at least give Russell Crowe props for being extremely brave here. The 2012 film adaptation of the legendary stage musical "Les Misérables" proudly touted that all of the singing was done live by the actors, rather than lip-synched to a polished studio recording, which is more often the standard for movie musicals. For the most part, the results were stunning, and showcased the stellar pipes of Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway in particular. For Crowe to even be willing to give it a shot when surrounded by mostly seasoned musical performers took a lot of guts. But guts don't always equal glory.
Simply put, Crowe isn't a strong singer. It's one thing to fall short in this regard in a lighter movie — see Pierce Brosnan in "Mamma Mia." But while having to sing powerful lines during heartrending scenes about class warfare, poverty, disease, and death in 19th-century France, it's a whole other thing to not be up to the task. Crowe's flat notes and strained delivery prove distracting any time he's on screen, and the otherwise incredible work of live theater veteran Jackman — Crowe's most frequent scene partner — also ends up suffering as a result.
As the Austin Chronicle said in its review of the movie, "When 'Les Misérables' is good, it is very, very good, and when it is bad, it's usually because Russell Crowe has opened his mouth."
Quentin Tarantino — Pulp Fiction
Quentin Tarantino's cameos in his own films tend to be distracting. Perhaps the most egregious example is his bizarre slave transporter in "Django Unchained," but he at least had the decency to write a gruesomely satisfying death for that character. So maybe he made the character obnoxious on purpose so that we'd all cheer when he exploded. As for Jimmie Dimmick, the housecoat-wearing homeowner who finds himself having to deal with a dead body in his garage, Tarantino gives us no such catharsis after several painful minutes with the character.
Tarantino might have gifted himself a scene-stealing monologue in the opening of "Reservoir Dogs," but he quickly killed his character off and let real actors carry the bulk of the movie. Plus, it being Tarantino's feature directorial debut, it was easier to forgive him for writing a part for himself. But when "Pulp Fiction" came along and he still went ahead and gave himself an entire scene's worth of material, audiences were less forgiving of his subpar acting and the distraction that it was among a movie full of incredible performances by veteran actors — some doing career-best work.
There's also the matter of his using the n-word — with the hardest R you've ever heard — four times in the scene. Tarantino seems to make only wrong choices as an actor here, right in the middle of a movie where he only makes the right choices as a filmmaker.
Elizabeth Berkley — Showgirls
What happened to Elizabeth Berkley's career after "Showgirls" wasn't entirely fair to her. Making one misguided career choice shouldn't completely tank one's entire acting career just as it's getting started. And the fact that co-star Kyle MacLachlan survived his appearance in the movie relatively unscathed and people barely even associate it with him anymore proves that men get a lot more room to make missteps than women. "Showgirls" is just a harmless erotic cheese-fest that should've been a footnote in Berkley's film career rather than completely ruining it.
Still, Berkley had to know she was taking a risk by starring in such a movie, especially one that was going to get a big theatrical push and not just be released direct to video or sent straight to HBO to be quickly forgotten. So while she shouldn't have been made into a pariah over her role as aspiring Vegas showgirl Nomi Malone, she isn't entirely blameless in the resulting career fallout.
Perhaps if it had come across like Berkley was in on the joke — as MacLachlan seemed to be — people wouldn't have judged her so harshly for wanting to just be in a fun, sexy B-movie. But Berkley seemed like she was all in as Nomi and took it way more seriously than the material warranted, which isn't on anyone but her.
Johnny Depp — The Lone Ranger
When a television series that debuted in 1949 has more progressive casting than a major studio film released in 2013, that's a serious problem. In "The Lone Ranger" TV series that ran from 1949 to 1957, they at least got an Indigenous Canadian named Jay Silverheels who descended from the Mohawk people to play the titular character's Native American sidekick Tonto. It was a surprisingly inclusive decision during an era where white actors still frequently played characters of color and nobody batted an eye about it.
Fast forward to Disney's 2013 film adaptation of the property, where Tonto was played by ... Johnny Depp. As if the white Depp playing a Native American character at a time when everyone involved should've known better wasn't bad enough, this version of Tonto was even more of an ethnic caricature than the 1950s version: face paint, a dead bird for a headdress, and Depp using a very cliched manner of speaking. Had they at least taken the opportunity to present a more modernized version of Tonto, it might not have been so bad. That they cast a white actor to play him and then doubled down on the outdated stereotypes was as baffling as it was unforgivable.
Given that Depp is known for having a high degree of creative control over his characters, plus the fact that he was Disney's golden boy during that era, it's hard not to assume that all of these choices were his and his alone.
George Clooney — Batman & Robin
It isn't necessarily George Clooney's fault that he got stuck with what many call the worst Batman movie for his debut outing as the iconic character. Even Daniel Day-Lewis would've struggled to convincingly perform a scene where he has to pull out a Batman credit card and deliver the line, "Never leave the cave without it," and not look like a total fool. That said, Clooney can't completely blame the overall quality of "Batman & Robin" for why his Batman portrayal is one of the worst ever put on celluloid.
Even those who weren't particularly big fans of "Batman Forever" or the various Zack Snyder efforts tend to at least give props to Val Kilmer and Ben Affleck, respectively, for their performances of Batman. It is possible to still be a good Batman in a disappointing Batman movie. But Clooney just couldn't seem to rise above the material here. Despite the formidable acting chops Clooney would eventually display in multiple best actor-nominated efforts, his performance in "Batman & Robin" saw him even struggle to be convincingly charming as Bruce Wayne — an aspect of the character that should've been a slam dunk for Clooney.
In Clooney's defense, he's spent the better part of three decades apologizing for the movie and his performance in it. But that still doesn't completely forgive the role he played in tanking the live-action Batman film franchise so hard that it had to take eight years off before returning.
Mike Myers — The Love Guru
As famous as Mike Myers is, the actor has actually starred in a relatively small number of movies as the main lead. This is due in no small part to Myers's commitment to and talent for creating original characters, and the results speak for themselves. Wayne Campbell, Austin Powers, Dr. Evil, and Shrek are some of the most iconic movie characters of the 1990s and 2000s, and few other comedic performers can claim that many genre-defining figures.
It's not entirely fair to hold his performance of the titular character in 2003's dreadful "The Cat in the Hat" against Myers, as he was forced to take on the project to make amends for a contractual dispute over his pulling out of a planned movie based on his "SNL" character Dieter. But "The Love Guru" was his and his alone, a character he came up with that was turned into a script he co-wrote. It would've already been disappointing enough for an actor with a less impressive track record of original characters to churn out something like Guru Maurice Pitka, but that it came from Myers is all the more dumbfounding. Beyond being an offensive Indian caricature, there's nothing particularly funny about anything Pitka says or does to remotely redeem the character's racist foundations. It's impossible not to spend the entire runtime of "The Love Guru" wondering what Myers was thinking and how he could've possibly thought any of this was going to land.
Benedict Cumberbatch — Zoolander 2
Speaking of people who should've known better, there's Benedict Cumberbatch in "Zoolander 2." Now, it needs to be made clear that director and co-writer Ben Stiller deserves the lion's share of the blame for how disappointingly bad this sequel to the cult classic original turned out to be. But nobody forced Cumberbatch to take on the role of a nonbinary model named All — handled about as tastefully as you'd expect.
Cumberbatch's casting was the source of backlash and calls for a boycott before "Zoolander 2" was even released — not only because a cisgender man was playing a nonbinary character, but because a joke in the trailer where All is asked if they have a hot dog or a bun suggested that All was going to be used as an excuse to poke fun at nonbinary people. Reflecting on the controversy years later, Cumberbatch agreed that a nonbinary person should've played the role instead of him. He also claimed that he saw All's place in the movie as being used to point out how out of touch the other characters were, and that they were supposed to be the ones being laughed at rather than All.
While it's great that he's willing to have an honest conversation about the whole thing rather than dismissing it as people being overly sensitive, it still doesn't change the fact that he did play the role, and he couldn't have possibly been oblivious to how it was going to be received.
Jared Leto — Suicide Squad
Two of the actors who have played the Joker on the big screen — Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix — won Academy Awards for their portrayal. Jack Nicholson didn't get an Oscar nomination, but that's likely only because comic book movies still struggled to be recognized as legitimate cinema in 1989. Nevertheless, he was nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA. As for the other person who has tried to bring Gotham City's Clown Prince of Crime to the movies in live-action, nobody objected when award nominations didn't come rolling in for Jared Leto's take.
Sure, 2016's "Suicide Squad" in and of itself barely deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as any of the other movies containing Jokers, and that's part of the issue here. But that's not the only reason Leto's performance as the character proved so disappointing. He's got the talent to play just about any type of role, and everyone was excited to see what he could do with the iconic antagonist. But rather than make it one of the best performances of his career as the other three Joker actors did, Leto instead played the character way too broad, not to mention giving him a blinged-out urban crime lord vibe that fell completely flat. To have a completely different actor (Phoenix) play the character just three years later is a lightning-fast turnaround that speaks for itself.
Mickey Rooney — Breakfast at Tiffany's
It's easy to look at a character like Mr. Yunioshi in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" — where white actor Mickey Rooney dons ridiculous buck teeth and makeup that narrows his eyes to play a Japanese man — and dismiss it as a product of its time. After all, Laurence Olivier played the title character in a film adaptation of "Othello" just four years later in full blackface, and earned a best actor Academy Award nomination in the process.
However, it is both surprising and refreshing to note that Rooney's portrayal was met with criticism even at the time. In its original review, The Hollywood Reporter rightfully pointed out that "the role is a caricature and will be offensive to many." Again, this was a review written at a time when white actors were still receiving critical acclaim for darkening their skin to play characters of color. Needless to say, the backlash against the character has only worsened since, putting an ever-widening stain on what is otherwise considered an all-time classic film.
As for Rooney himself, he stated in a 2008 interview that people being offended by Mr. Yunioshi was news to him. He even went as far as to claim that Asian people would come up to him and praise him for the role, and admitted that he still proudly showed clips of it during the various traveling stage shows he was still occasionally doing at the time.