14 Stars That Talked Bad About Their Movies

Just because someone agrees to star in a movie doesn’t mean they’ll praise it upon release. Actors agree to sign onto a movie because they’re enticed by the premise or, in some cases, convinced to do so by their agent. For whatever reason, something happens during the film’s production, leading to these stars trashing the movie after release.

Michelle Pfeiffer

1978’s Grease is a beloved musical starring Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta. Thanks to it being a smash hit, a sequel was a foregone conclusion. The two leading actors, however, didn’t appear in 1982’s Grease 2. Instead, it featured Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield. Pfeiffer wasn’t a fan, according to Hollywood.com.

“I hated that film with a vengeance and could not believe how bad it was. At the time, was young and didn’t know better.”

George Clooney

Batman fans knew this one was coming.

Following the success of the original Batman movies directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton, the franchise continued with 1995’s Batman Forever, directed by Joel Schumacher. Val Kilmer would play the role of Bruce Wayne. It was just okay. Two years later, Batman & Robin would release in theaters, starring Coolney in the lead role. It was an absolute disaster.

“I think we might have killed the franchise”, Clooney has since said interviews, also adding that the film was “a waste of money.” The Batman franchise was not killed; acclaimed director Christopher Nolan rebooted it with Batman Begins in 2005, starring Christian Bale. He would direct two sequels, both of which were also widely acclaimed.

Most recently, The Batman, directed by Matt Reeves and starring Robert Pattison, released in 2022. A sequel is currently in development.

Robert Pattison

Speaking of Pattison, long before he became the Caped Crusader, he starred in the adaptations of the Twilight saga. Despite making a boatload of cash at the box office, Pattison isn’t overly fond of these films.

Many have noted how often the actor has expresssed his disdain for the Twilight movies. He finds the story to be weird and notes that it’s “strange how people responded.”

Bill Murray

Sometimes, actors take roles without realizing what they’re getting themselves into. That’s what happened when Bill Murray signed on to star in Garfield. He saw that it was written by Joel Cohen, but didn’t realize that it wasn’t Joel Coen of The Coen Brothers.

“I thought it would be kind of fun, because doing a voice is challenging, and I’d never done that,” he told GQ. Plus, I looked at the script, and it said, “So-and-so and Joel Coen.” And I thought: Christ, well, I love those Coens! They’re funny. So I sorta read a few pages of it and thought, Yeah, I’d like to do that.”

Murray would reprise his role in a sequel, as well as make a joke about it in Zombieland.

Sylvester Stallone

Sly Stallone has enjoyed a successful movie career. He’s best known for his performances in the Rocky franchise, but he’s not immune to flops. The one he hate the most is 1992’s Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Stallone has said on several occasions that it’s the worst movie he’s ever starred in.

Sylvester Stallone has stated that Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot was the worst film he had ever starred in. During a Q&A on Ain’t It Cool News, he said the following:

“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. Does that put it in perspective?”

Dakota Johnson

The star of 50 Shades of Grey was not a fan of the movie. Despite being a hit at the box office, thanks to the legion of fans excited to see the film adaptation of the popular book series, the 50 Shades of Grey films were widely panned.

“I signed up to do a very different version of the film we ended up making,” Johnson told Vanity Fair. Johnson explains that the biggest issue was fitting the movie adaptation to meet what author E.L. James wanted from the film. “It was always a battle…There were a lot of different disagreements. I haven’t been able to talk about this truthfully ever, because you want to promote a movie the right way, and I’m proud of what we made ultimately, and everything turns out the way it’s supposed to, but it was tricky.”

Bob Hoskins

The late great Bob Hoskins stars in one of my all-time favorite movies: Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

He also stars in one of my favorite movies as a child: Super Mario Bros. I say movies as a child because, well, yeah…this movie stinks out loud. I’m not the only one who think so, either. Let’s hear it from Hoskins himself during an interview:

“The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers. It was a nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Idiots.”

Charlie Sheen

The movie in question here is in regards to Sheen’s 1990 film Men at Work, directed by and starring his brother Emilio Estevez.

He wouldn’t joke about it until 2001, on an episode of Saturday Night Live. During his opening monologue, a guest in the crowd brings the movie up. Sheen’s response is to pay the man back for spending money on a trip to the movies.

Shia LaBeouf

Instead of one movie, LaBeouf has a problem working with a person: acclaimed director Steven Spielberg. He had a lot to say regarding Spielberg in a conversation with Variety.

“I grew up with this idea, if you got to Spielberg, that’s where it is. I’m not talking about fame, and I’m not talking about money.”

“You get there, and you realize you’re not meeting the Spielberg you dream of. You’re meeting a different Spielberg, who is in a different stage in his career. He’s less a director than he is a fucking company. Spielberg’s sets are very different. Everything has been so meticulously planned. You got to get this line out in 37 seconds. You do that for five years, you start to feel like not knowing what you’re doing for a living.”

Michael Caine

When it comes to legendary actors, it doesn’t get more legendary than Michael Caine. Yet even an actor of his status isn’t immune from bad movies. Case in point, Jaws 4. It’s an awful movie by all accounts, but there is some good that came out of it.

“I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible,” he has said about the film. “However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”

Ryan Reynolds

Before finding superhero sucess with the Deadpool franchise, Reynolds starred in another comic book movie: 2011’s Green Lantern. The movie was panned by critics and audiences, with Reynolds saying after watching the film, “It was crazy. It was an odd feeling. It was not a feeling I wanted to repeat. So I really spent the following years just owning as much as I could, it was the only way to kind of process it.”

Reynolds would make a joke about the movie’s poor reception in 2016’s Deadpool. A third film in the franchise, Deadpool & Wolverine, is releasing July 2024.

Florence Pugh

The 2022 film Don’t Worry Darling, directed by Olivia Wilde and featuring an all-star cast, is best known for its turbulent press tour. While there’s nothing Pugh said specifically, many people noticed what Pugh wasn’t saying on press tours.

It was widely reported that Pugh and Wilde got into a screaming match on the movie’s set. One of Pugh’s co-stars, Christopher Pine, had a similiar disinterest in talking about the movie. When asked about his other project at the time, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, he was more than happy to talk about it.

Orson Welles

The acclaimed actor and director voiced Shrapnel in the 1986 animated film The Transformers: The Movie. Judging by this quote about his experience, Welles wasn’t a fan:

“You know what I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy. Some terrible robot toys from Japan that changed from one thing to another. The Japanese have funded a full-length animated cartoon about the doings of these toys, which is all bad outer-space stuff. I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I’m destroyed. My plan to destroy Whoever-it-is is thwarted and I tear myself apart on the screen.”

Emilia Clarke

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. When asked if she’s happy with how her final scenes went in Game of Thrones, Emilia Clarke’s reaction said it all. You can tell she wasn’t at all happy, but tried to save face.