‘I’m still embarrassed’: guess what actors said about major movie flops

Dakota Johnson in Madame Web. Photograph: Jessica Kourkounis

1. “The disheartening part was: I didn’t direct it, I didn’t produce it, nor did I write it. I was just the actress in it. But for all these years, I have carried the weight of that film. And whatever success it had or didn’t have somehow seemed like it was all my fault. But it really wasn’t my fault. But I’ve been carrying it."

   1. Jennifer Lopez on Gigli

   2. Sharon Stone on Basic Instinct 2

   3. Halle Berry on Catwoman

   4. Linda Blair on Exorcist II: The Heretic

2. “It was really painful at the time. I was a very young woman ... I don’t think that a lot of what went on then would be allowed now.”

   1. Elizabeth Berkley on Showgirls

   2. Helen Mirren on Caligula

   3. Demi Moore on Striptease

   4. Dominique Swain on Lolita

3. "It was a fuckin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare ... Fuckin' nightmare. Fuckin' idiots."

   1. Dustin Hoffman on Ishtar

   2. Jeremy Irons on Dungeons and Dragons

   3. Bob Hoskins on Super Mario Bros

   4. Jamie Lee Curtis on Virus

4. "It could have had a better, more obvious outcome. The thing I know is that I never had to stand taller for a movie when most were going the other way. The movie with all its imperfections was a joy for me ... a joy to look back upon and to have participated in."

   1. Kevin Costner on Waterworld

   2. Ryan Reynolds on Green Lantern

   3. Julia Roberts on Mary Reilly

   4. Laurence Olivier on Inchon

5. "The fact that that movie has been so lambasted means there's an inner trembling and power to that movie. It has become an electromagnetic movie! And so I love it."

   1. John Travolta on Battlefield Earth

   2. Tommy Wiseau on The Room

   3. Madonna on Swept Away

   4. Nicolas Cage on The Wicker Man

6. "You know what? I think [the criticism] was a bit overwhelming. It's unfortunate that it was misunderstood. I think later down the line, people will see it differently. But it is something I am still very proud of and grateful to have been a part of."

   1. Jennifer Hudson on Cats

   2. Judi Dench on Cats

   3. Idris Elba on Cats

   4. Taylor Swift on Cats

7. “I have one [that] no one came around to and I’m still embarrassed I was in... I’ve been very vocal about it. Makes no sense …That’s one I wished I hadn’t done and no fans came around that I know of.”

   1. Matthew Broderick on Godzilla

   2. Channing Tatum on Jupiter Ascending

   3. Jake Gyllenhaal on Prince of Persia

   4. Sandra Bullock on Speed 2

8. “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 shit and I was really bad in it’... it’s a terrible screenplay, he’ll tell you. I’m terrible in it, I’ll tell you."

   1. George Clooney on Batman & Robin

   2. Nicole Kidman on Australia

   3. Gwyneth Paltrow on A View From the Top

   4. Robert De Niro on The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle

9. “We were doomed from the beginning, unfortunately. When the film came out, there was no money to promote it, so it was guaranteed that it wasn’t going to be successful.”

   1. Sylvester Stallone on Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot

   2. Josh Brolin on Jonah Hex

   3. Michelle Pfeiffer on Grease 2

   4. Geena Davis on Cutthroat Island

10. “The main reason I took it — so that I could come home at the weekends. It wasn’t because of the script, trust me. Do I feel I let myself down? No. Was it a bad job? Yes, it was. But, you know, I had a nice time and I got paid.'”

    1. Matthew McConaughey on Fools Gold

    2. Diane Keaton on Because I Said So

    3. Matthew Goode on Leap Year

    4. Kate Hudson on A Little Bit of Heaven

11. “Again, all you haters are going to be ‘your movie sucks’ but it doesn’t. It legitimately doesn’t. If any of you saw the movie, you’d recognise it doesn’t suck. It’s a really entertaining, really fun movie.”

    1. Zachary Levi on Shazam 2

    2. Dwayne Johnson on Black Adam

    3. Ezra Miller on The Flash

    4. Jared Leto on Morbius

12. "You know, lookin’ at how it kind of became this cult film, and what people come up and say to me on the street about it is, they dig the fact that it was making fun of itself, that it was satire, and I don’t think anybody got that when it came out, they didn’t know what to make of it."

    1. Tom Hanks on The Bonfire of the Vanities

    2. Bruce Willis on Hudson Hawk

    3. Megan Fox on Jennifer's Body

    4. Luke Wilson on Idiocracy

Solutions

1:C - "Everybody around me said, 'Girl, don't do it. It's going to be the death of you. It's going to end your career.' But guess what I did? I followed my intuition and I did a movie called Catwoman and it bombed miserably. While it failed to most people, it wasn't a failure for me because I met so many interesting people that I wouldn't have met otherwise, I learned two forms of martial arts and I learned what not to do.", 2:A - "Of course it was disappointing that it didn't do well, but there was so much cruelty around it. I was bullied. And I didn't understand why I was being blamed. The job as an actor is to fulfill the vision of the director. And I did everything I was supposed to do." , 3:C - "I didn't even know it was a game. It was my kids who told me.", 4:A - "I'm not sure you know how beloved the movie is around the world. Being hard [on a film] is really easy if you don't know the underbelly of what [went into it].", 5:D - "I know people had fun with that even if they thought the comedy was not intentional. I'm going on record right now: That is not a fact. Neil [LaBute] and I both knew how funny it was. , 6:A - "Yeah, I got to be Grizabella the Glamour Cat!", 7:D - "Makes no sense. Slow boat. Slowly going towards an island.", 8:A - "I did one superhero movie and I fucked it up so bad they won't let me near the set.", 9:D - "I love that movie. My character might be my favorite role — it’s a close call between Thelma and that one. Anyway, that movie came out great and got some good reception, but it didn’t soar to heights, let’s say, perhaps as we wanted it to. I don’t know how much that impacted my career", 10:C - "I was told it was going to be like The Quiet Man with a Vaughan Williams soundtrack, but in the end it turned out to have pop music all over it. A bit like Chasing Liberty again.", 11:A - “The audience score is still quite good, but the critics’ score was very oddly and perplexingly low, and people were insanely unkind.”, 12:B - "People were mad about it or something, they were mad that we were trying to make them laugh."

Scores

1. 9 and above.

   Top of the flops

2. 5 and above.

   In the middle of your flop era

3. 0 and above.

   Bottom of the flops