37 Actors Who Spoke Out Against Their Own Performances

Jennifer Lawrence on “mother!”

If an actor struggles to understand the context of a movie that they starred in, the translation to the audience is likely even more difficult to decode. In her performance as an unnamed woman in Darren Aronofsky’s “Mother,” Lawrence plays a woman who is terrorized as a mysterious couple foricbly moves into her and her husband’s (Javier Bardem) countryside home.

“I’m going to be honest. Well, I was sleeping with the director so I had CliffsNotes. So…five? Or a four,” Lawrence said when asked how much she understood the storyline on a scale of one to “totally confused.”

Shia LaBeouf on “Honey Boy”

It’s no secret that many lifelong actors struggle to cope with the chaotic and confusing imposter syndrome that childhood performing carries into young adulthood. But few use their creative devices to make an autobiographical film highlighting their struggles. While in a mandatory court-ordered rehab facility in 2017, Shia LaBeouf wrote the screenplay for “Honey Boy” after his therapist encouraged the actor to write about triggering events from his childhood while living with his dad in a motel. Years later on Jon Berthol’s “Real Ones” podcast, LaBeouf said he used his creative liberties to paint what he feels like is an inaccurate representation of his actual father.

“My dad was so loving to me my whole life. Fractured, sure. Crooked, sure. Wonky, for sure. But never was not loving, never was not there,” LaBeouf said.

Regretful for bashing his dad publicly, LaBeouf called the film’s narrative “nonsense.” —MF

Judi Dench on “Cats”

Sure, her laser-hot gaze seared through the movie screen and scorched our souls. But was Judi Dench really that bad in “Cats”? The eight-time Academy Award nominee seems to think so. “You kind of know yourself about something, I think,” Dench said in a 2020 interview with BBC Radio 4, noting that she had not seen the film or read reviews but that she thought people had been “rather kind” to her performance. In the same interview, Dench laughed about her Worst Supporting Actress nomination at that year’s Razzies: “Oh, that will be good.”

And later, in May, speaking with British Vogue, Dench specifcially complained about her costume in the movie (made significantly worse by that heinous CGI): “The cloak I was made to wear! Like five foxes fucking on my back.” —AF

Jamie Lee Curtis on “Virus”

“That’s a piece of shit movie,” Jamie Lee Curtis bluntly concluded of “Virus” in a 2010 interview with WENN (h/t Slash Film). Speaking at length about her role in the poorly constructed 1999 sci-fi flick from director John Bruno, Curtis said: “It was maybe the only time I’ve known something was just bad and there was nothing I could do about it. It’s an unbelievably bad movie; just bad from the bottom.”

“There’s a scene where I’m running away from this alien and I actually hide under the stairs,” she continued. “I come down some stairs and then duck up underneath them and I’m quivering and this big thing comes down the stairs and I’m freaking hiding under the stairs. This is something that can open walls of steel and I’m hiding under stairs!” Laurie Strode would never. —AF

Tom Hanks on “Philadelphia”

Tom Hanks won his first of two consecutive Oscars for his role as gay lawyer Andrew Beckett in “Philadelphia,” but it’s not a performance he’s eager to repeat. The actor recently spoke about the optics of a straight man playing a gay character, and when asked if a similar casting could be pulled off today, Hanks was blunt: “No, and rightly so.”

“The whole point of ‘Philadelphia’ was don’t be afraid,” he said. “One of the reasons people weren’t afraid of that movie is that I was playing a gay man. We’re beyond that now, and I don’t think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy.” —CZ

Viola Davis on “The Help”

Nobody doubts that Viola Davis gave an exceptional performance as maid Abileen Clark in 2011’s “The Help,” but the Oscar-winner has some regrets about the way the movie was structured.

“I just felt that at the end of the day that it wasn’t the voices of the maids that were heard. I know Aibileen. I know Minny. They’re my grandma. They’re my mom,” she told the New York Times. “And I know that if you do a movie where the whole premise is, I want to know what it feels like to work for white people and to bring up children in 1963, I want to hear how you really feel about it. I never heard that in the course of the movie.” —CZ

Javier Bardem on “The Last Face”

Sean Penn’s directorial outing “The Last Face” is one of the biggest bombs in the history of the Cannes Film Festival. The film, which told the story of a romance between two humanitarian workers in Africa, was overwhelmingly booed when it debuted at the festival, and is regarded as one of the biggest failures of Penn’s career. 

But Javier Bardem, who starred alongside Charlize Theron in the film, is ready to laugh about it. In a recent appearance at Cannes for the festival’s 75th anniversary, Bardem called the movie “a great disaster,” but said it helps him keep perspective. 

“We worked hard on making that movie — I haven’t done any movie where people didn’t work hard,” he said. “But it was a missed [opportunity]. I mean, it was a [misfire] of a movie, in my opinion. People saw that, people shared that, and the whole rules of the festival changed after that. Right? Now [critics] cannot post reviews on the same day of the opening, because the opening of that movie that day was like a funeral. But I was laughing. I was like, ‘Yes — this is what it is to make movies.’ Sometimes you do ‘No Country for Old Men,’ sometimes you do [a film like] this one, and it is not important whether it’s great or bad. You keep on doing what you need to do. I mean, it’s like life.” —CZ

Willem Dafoe on “Aquaman”

Willem Dafoe will always be a legend in comic book circles for his performances as Green Goblin in the “Spider-Man” franchise. But his attempt to cross over into the DC Universe did not go nearly as well. He played Vulko in “Aquaman,” but in a 2018 interview with IndieWire’s Eric Kohn, Dafoe did not express much interest in returning to the campy underwater franchise.  

“I think they’re going to make another one,” he said. “We will see about my involvement in that.”

But it was what he didn’t say that revealed even more. Kohn wrote that “Asked if he enjoyed the experience, [Dafoe] underwent a shocking transformation. His eyes curled into slits and darkened as his eyebrows melted into the mass below. He hunched forward, and his tongue peered out between a narrow bracket of teeth. It was an eerie, almost satanic vision, as ominous as any of his most disturbing screen turns.”

All that said, Dafoe is in the cast of “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” opening March 17, 2023. —CZ

Jake Gyllenhaal on “Prince of Persia”

The Mike Newell-directed, Jake Gyllenhaal-starring 2010 video game adaptation “Prince of Persia” was a criticial and commercial flop, and it’s best remembered over a decade later as one of the worst examples of Hollywood whitewashing for casting a white American actor in the lead role instead of a performer of Iranian descent. Gyllenhaal admitted to Yahoo! in 2019 that the role wasn’t the call for him.

“I think I learned a lot from that movie in that I spend a lot of time trying to be very thoughtful about the roles that I pick and why I’m picking them,” Gyllenhaal said when asked about “Persia.” “And you’re bound to slip up and be like, ‘That wasn’t right for me,’ or ‘That didn’t fit perfectly.’ There have been a number of roles like that. And then a number of roles that do.” —ZS

Emma Stone on “Aloha”

Emma Stone apologized at a global level for taking on the role of a part-Hawaiian, part-Chinese woman in Cameron Crowe’s “Aloha” when she yelled “I’m sorry!” at the 2019 Golden Globes after co-host Sandra Oh quipped that “Crazy Rich Asians” was “the first studio film with an Asian American lead since ‘Ghost in the Shell’ and ‘Aloha.’”

Stone’s “Aloha” casting became one of the most well known examples of Hollywood’s history of whitewashing. Stone said in 2015 that the uproar around her casting opened her eyes “in many ways,” adding, “I’ve become the butt of many jokes. I’ve learned on a macro level about the insane history of whitewashing in Hollywood and how prevalent the problem truly is. It’s ignited a conversation that’s very important.” —ZS

Halle Berry on “Catwoman”

Halle Berry” didn’t wait long to disown her infamous comic book misfire “Catwoman,” giving a speech at the 2005 Razzie Awards that began with the following: “I want to thank Warner Bros. for casting me in this piece-of-shit, god-awful movie. It was just what my career needed — I was at the top, now I’m at the bottom.”

Speaking to Variety in September 2020, Berry said she was attracted to “Catwoman” after her planned James Bond spinoff movie about Jinx failed to move forward. The actress said, “I thought, ‘This is a great chance for a woman of color to be a superhero. Why wouldn’t I try this?’” During production, Berry said the movie’s storyline “didn’t feel quite right” to her.”

“I remember having that argument: ‘Why can’t Catwoman save the world like Batman and Superman do? Why is she just saving women from a face cream that cracks their face off?’” Berry said. “But I was just the actor for hire. I wasn’t the director. I had very little say over that.” —ZS

Rooney Mara on “Pan”

Rooney Mara’s role as Tiger Lily in Joe Wright’s 2015 fantasy adventure “Pan” ignited controversy as an example of Hollywood whitewashing, to which the actress would speak out against just a year later. “I really hate, hate, hate that I am on that side of the whitewashing conversation,” the “Carol” actress said in an interview. “I really do. I don’t ever want to be on that side of it again. I can understand why people were upset and frustrated.”

Mara also agreed with a petition that circulated around the release of “Pan” condeming the project for featuring four white actors in the lead role. The actress said, “Do I think all of the four main people in the film should have been white with blonde hair and blue eyes? No. I think there should have been some diversity somewhere.” —ZS

Christopher Plummer on “The Sound of Music”

Five-time Oscar winner “The Sound of Music” is one of the most beloved films ever made, but it wasn’t for the late Christopher Plummer. In a 2010 interview with the Boston Globe, Plummer admitted that he was “a bit bored” with his character, Cpatain von Trapp. As the actor explained, “Although we worked hard enough to make him interesting, it was a bit like flogging a dead horse. And the subject matter is not mine. I mean it can’t appeal to every person in the world. It’s not my cup of tea.”

Those were light words compared to the following Plummer told The Hollywood Reporter the next year: “”[I]t was so awful and sentimental and gooey. You had to work terribly hard to try and infuse some minuscule bit of humor into it.” —ZS

Jamie Foxx on “Stealth”

The 2005 science-fiction action movie “Stealth” brought together Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, and Jamie Foxx, but the latter admitted he lied through his press tour by telling reporters the movie was good. As Foxx said during the press tour for “The Kingdom” that it was a relief to be promoting a movie he actually thought was good, unlike “Stealth.” As the actor put it: “Sometimes you do a movie and you have to go promote it, so on ‘Stealth’ I was like, ‘Yeah, this is the greatest.’ And people would see me after seeing the movie and say, ‘I can’t believe you lied to me like that.’” —ZS

Jennifer Lawrence on “Passengers”

None other than 15-time Grammy winner Adele warned Jennifer Lawrence not to do Morten Tyldum’s 2016 sci-fi flop “Passengers,” co-starring Lawrence and Chris Pratt as toxic codependents who awake in the middle of a cryo-sleep journey that should’ve lasted more than a century. In an interview with the New York Times, Lawrence recalled: “Adele told me not to do it! She was like, ‘I feel like space movies are the new vampire movies.’ I should have listened to her.”

Lawrence said she was wary of fans’ potential disillusionment with her films following the end of the “Hunger Games” trilogy in 2015: “I was like, ‘Oh no, you guys are here because I’m here, and I’m here because you’re here. Wait, who decided that this was a good movie?’” —AF

Michael Fassbender on “Assassin’s Creed”

Fassbender starred in the video game adaptation of “Assassin’s Creed,” which barely made a dent at the box office in 2016. “For sure, it wasn’t ideal…I think we missed an opportunity there a little bit,” Fassbender said in an interview with Movie’n’co. 

When asked what he would have done differently, Fassbender said: “I would make it more entertaining, that’s really the main note. The feeling of the film, I think it took itself too seriously and I would get to the action a lot quicker. I think there’s three beginnings of the film, which is a mistake.” —ZS

Robert Pattinson on “Twilight”

“Twilight” made Pattinson an international superstar, but he was probably the franchise’s least supportive fan. In between making quips about the films on talk shows, the actor had this to say in one interview: “When I read it, I was convinced that Stephenie was convinced that she was Bella. It was like it was a book that wasn’t supposed to be published, like reading her — her sort of sexual fantasy.”

“Especially when she says that it was based on a dream, and it’s like, ‘Oh, then I had a dream about this really sexy guy’ and she just writes this book about it,” he continued. “I was just convinced that this woman is mad, she’s completely mad, and she’s in love with her own fictional creation.” —ZS

Nicole Kidman on “Australia”

Baz Luhrmann gave Nicole Kidman one of her most iconic roles in “Moulin Rouge!,” but their follow-up “Australia” was anything but legendary. The epic romance starred Kidman opposite Hugh Jackman, but her role as English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley is one she’d rather forget. “I can’t look at this movie and be proud of what I’ve done,” Kidman admitted on a Sydney radio station. “It’s just impossible for me to connect to it emotionally.” —ZS

Jim Carrey on “Kick-Ass 2”

Jim Carrey had a change of heart about starring in the super-violent action film “Kick-Ass 2” after the events of Sandy Hook. “I did ‘Kick-Ass’ a month before Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence,” he tweeted. “My apologies to others involved with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.” —ZS

Channing Tatum on “G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra”

“I’ll be honest. I fucking hate that movie,” Tatum said of the live-action “G.I. Joe” adaptation on Howard Stern’s radio show. “I was pushed into doing it. The script wasn’t any good. And I didn’t want to do something that I — that I was a fan of since I was a kid and watched every morning growing up — and didn’t want to do something that was 1) bad, and 2) I just didn’t know if I wanted to be G.I. Joe.” —ZS

Colin Farrell on “Miami Vice”

Colin Farrell has found career success as of late in the independent film world thanks to “The Lobster,” “The Beguiled,” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” but there was a time when major studios wanted him front and center. Such was the case for Michael Mann’s “Miami Vice” remake, which the actor has admitted to “not liking very much.” He called the movie slow and not relatable enough. —ZS

George Clooney on “Batman & Robin”

George Clooney’s infamous turn as the Caped Crusader has been torn to shreds by comic book fans and movie critics alike, so much so that Clooney knows there’s no reason to defend the film. “It was a difficult film to be good in,” Clooney admitted. “With hindsight it’s easy to look back at this and go ‘Woah, that was really shit and I was really bad in it.’”

Clooney later said, “The truth of the matter is, I was bad in it. Akiva Goldsman — who’s won the Oscar for writing since then — he wrote the screenplay. And it’s a terrible screenplay, he’ll tell you. I’m terrible in it, I’ll tell you. Joel Schumacher, who just passed away, directed it, and he’d say, ‘Yeah, it didn’t work.’ We all whiffed on that one.” —ZS

Charlize Theron on “Reindeer Games”

The less said about John Frankenheimer’s “Reindeer Games” the better for Charlize Theron. The actress admitted the crime thriller is a “bad, bad, bad movie.” Theron starred opposite Ben Affleck in the film, which couldn’t recoup its $45 million budget at the box office. —ZS

Matt Damon on “The Bourne Ultimatum”

“The Bourne Ultimatum” is often cited as the strongest entry in the Damon-starring franchise, but the actor definitely doesn’t see it that way. He told GQ that he was hardly a fan of Tony Gilroy’s trilogy-ending screenplay.

“I don’t blame Tony for taking a boatload of money and handing in what he handed in,” Damon said. “It’s just that it was unreadable. This is a career-ender. I mean, I could put this thing up on eBay and it would be game over for that dude. It’s terrible. It’s really embarrassing. He was having a go, basically, and he took his money and left.” —ZS

Dev Patel on “The Last Airbender”

M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender” adaptation is one of the most offensive examples of Hollywood whitewashing this century. Patel, who quickly entered the blockbuster world after the success of Oscar winner “Slumdog Millionaire,” has admitted to hating the experience of making it.

“I know what I’m afraid of playing: those big studio movies. After ‘Slumdog [Millionaire],’ I did a film that was not well received at all,” Dev told The Hollywood Reporter. “I completely felt overwhelmed by the experience. I felt like I wasn’t being heard. That was really scary for me, and that’s really when I learned the power of no, the idea of saying no.” —ZS

Jeremy Irons on “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”

“Batman v Superman” was a disaster across the board. Although Jeremy Irons’ work as Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred was one of the movie’s more favorable components, the actor knew what a dud the blockbuster was.

He responded to the film’s bad reviews by telling the Daily Mail, “Deservedly so. I mean it took $800 million, so the kicking didn’t matter but it was sort of overstuffed … It was very muddled.” —ZS

Matthew Goode on “Leap Year”

“The main reason I took it — so that I could come home at the weekends. It wasn’t because of the script, trust me,” Goode told The Telegraph about the 2010 romantic-comedy in which he starred opposite Amy Adams. “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.’” —ZS

Sally Field on “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”

“It’s not my kind of movie,” Sally Field told Howard Stern about the maligned superhero sequel. “But my friend Laura Ziskin was the producer, and we knew it would be her last film, and she was my first producing partner, and she was a spectacular human. It’s really hard to find a three-dimensional character in it, and you work it as much as you can, but you can’t put 10 pounds of shit in a 5-pound bag.” —ZS

Daniel Radcliffe on “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”

“It’s hard to watch a film like ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,’ because I’m just not very good in it. I hate it,” Radcliffe told the Daily Mail. “My acting is very one-note and I can see I got complacent and what I was trying to do just didn’t come across.” —ZS

Jude Law on “Alfie”

Jude Law stepped into the shoes made famous by Michael Caine in the 2004 “Alfie” remake, but the movie only grossed $13 million domestically opposite its $60 million budget. Law knows a box office bomb when he sees one, and he admits the film “didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted it to.”

But does Law regret taking on the role? Not at all. “Part of the reason you embark on a creative journey is to sometimes fall flat,” he said. “It can also sometimes lead to triumph.” —ZS

Kate Winslet on “Titanic”

Winslet has fond memories of making James Cameron’s record-breaking epic “Titanic,” but her actual performance in the movie isn’t met with much appreciation. Upon the film’s 3D re-release, Winslet told The Telegraph: “Every single scene, I’m like ‘Really, really? You did it like that? Oh my God… Even my American accent, I can’t listen to it. It’s awful. Hopefully it’s so much better now. It sounds terribly self indulgent but actors do tend to be very self-critical. I have a hard time watching any of my performances, but watching ‘Titanic’ I was just like, ‘Oh God, I want to do that again.’” —ZS

Megan Fox on “Transformers”

Megan Fox is not a fan of her work in her breakthrough film “Transformers,” but she blames herself as much as she does director Michael Bay. “I’m terrible in it,” Fox has said of the movie. “It’s my first real movie, and it’s not honest and not realistic. The movie wasn’t bad, I just wasn’t proud about what I did… But unless you’re a seasoned veteran, working with Michael Bay is not about an acting experience.” —ZS

Mark Wahlberg on “Boogie Nights”

Wahlberg, who is a devout Catholic, joined Cardinal Blasé Cupich at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago and revealed Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” was one of the film’s he regretted most.

“I just always hope that God is a movie fan and also forgiving, because I’ve made some poor choices in my past,” Wahlberg said. “‘Boogie Nights’ is up there at the top of the list.” —ZS

James Franco on “Your Highness”

James Franco’s hit-or-miss career hit a new low with David Gordon Green’s “Your Highness.” The director recruited his “Pineapple Express” stars Franco and Danny McBride to star in a medieval stoner comedy, but the magic couldn’t strike twice (not even with Natalie Portman). “‘Your Highness’? That movie sucks,” Franco bluntly told GQ. “You can’t get around that.” —ZS

Alec Guinness on “Star Wars”

Over the years, plenty of amateur “Star Wars” historians have overstated — and understated — Alec Guinness’ distate for his role as a founding father in George Lucas’ sprawling sci-fi saga set in a galaxy far, far away. Though it’s true Guinness was deeply troubled by the outsized mark his one-time performance as Ben Kenobi left on his career (the respected British actor played parts in “Doctor Zhivago” and “Lawrence of Arabia” among other classics not mentioned enough), his remarks about the mega-franchise were measured in his 2003 autobiography, “Blessings in Disguise.”

“A refurbished ‘Star Wars’ is on somewhere or everywhere, I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy,” he wrote (h/t Culture Slate). “I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned. Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having… Let me leave it by saying I can live for the rest of my life in the reasonably modest way I am now used to, that I have no debts and I can afford to refuse work that doesn’t appeal to me.” —AF

Michelle Pfeiffer on “Grease 2”

“Grease” didn’t need a sequel, and Michelle Pfeiffer seemed to know it.

“I hated that film with a vengeance and could not believe how bad it was,” the three-time Oscar nominee once reportedly said of the notorious flop-turned-cringe cult film. Pfeiffer starred as Pink Ladies ringleader Stephanie opposite Maxwell Caulfield as prim and proper exchange student Michael. “At the time I was young and didn’t know any better,” she concluded. —AF

Jennifer Aniston on “Leprechaun”

Jennifer Aniston would really prefer it if we would all stop talking about “Leprechaun.” The schlocky, shamrock slasher marked the first major acting credit for the soon-to-be “Friends” icon, who on numerous occasions since has described the cult classic as more than a bit “embarrassing.”

Speaking with Howard Stern in 2019, Aniston said she was initially super excited about the Mark Jones-helmed project and believed it would be her big break. “I watched it like, 8 years ago with our mutual friend Justin Theroux for shits and giggles,” she explained. “We were dating. It was one of those things when I tried to get that remote out of his hand and there was just no having it. He was like, ‘No, no, no, no, this is happening.’ I just kept walking in and out, cringing.” —AF