50 Actors Who Distanced Themselves From Their Movies
Unprofessional, or just honest?
Jim Carrey
The Movie: Kick-Ass 2
The Distance: Carrey withdrew his support explaining that the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school changed his opinion on the film's violent content.
He posted on Twitter: "I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence.
"I meant to say my apologies to others involve with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart."
The Fall-Out: Universal Pictures has yet to comment on Carrey's decision, but the Twitterverse immediately called for the actor to donate his fee to charity. He hasn't tweeted since.
Megan Fox
The Movie: Transformers
The Distance: Given the opportunity to talk about her breakout blockbuster, Fox not only trashed the movie but also had a dig at the director.
"I'm terrible in it," she told Entertainment Weekly. "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."
The Fall-Out: Bay didn’t stay quiet for long, and went on record to say: "Nobody in the world knew about Megan Fox until I found her and put her in Transformers."
Megan Fox (Part 2)
The Movie: Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen
The Distance: During an interview with CBS to promote Transformers 2, Fox said: "I'm in the movie, and I read the script, and I watched the movie, and I still didn't know what was happening. If you haven't read the script and you go and understand it, you may be a genius."
Shortly afterwards, she compared Michael Bay to Hitler in an interview with Wonderland, saying: "He's like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous madman reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is." Ouch.
The Fall-Out: According to Bay, it was the film's executive producer Steven Spielberg who demanded Fox was booted from the third film in the franchise following the Hitler comment.
But despite being clearly miffed at his cast's comments, Bay has cast Fox in his new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, so clearly the hatchet has been buried.
Shia LaBeouf
The Movie: Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen
The Distance: LaBeouf hit the nail on the head when he described Tranformers 2 as "just a bunch of robots fighting" in an interview with The Associated Press in 2010.
He told them: "When I saw the second movie, I wasn’t impressed with what we did…There were some really wild stunts in it, but the heart was gone… we got lost. We tried to get bigger…Mike 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."
The Fall-Out: Luckily for LaBeouf, Bay also admitted his disappointment with the movie and apologised, saying the film was "crap" and blaming the 2007/8 writers' strike for its failure.
Shia LaBeouf (Again)
The Movie: Indiana Jones & The Crystal Skull
The Distance: That LaBeouf just doesn't know when to ferme his bouche.
At the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, Shia LaBeouf told the Los Angeles Times: "I feel like I dropped the ball on the legacy that people loved and cherished. . . We [Harrison Ford and LaBeouf] had major discussions. He wasn't happy with it either.
"I just felt sort of pigeonholed. Like I didn't have enough meat to chew on. I just feel like we were trying to enforce innocence on an audience that wasn’t willing. You can’t force things, you know?”
The Fall-Out: Spielberg reportedly gave LaBeouf a talking to.
Shia told The Hollywood Reporter that he "deeply regrets" his comments, adding: “He told me there’s a time to be a human being and have an opinion, and there’s a time to sell cars. It brought me freedom, but it also killed my spirits because this was a dude I looked up to like a sensei.”
Mark Wahlberg
The Movie: The Happening
The Distance: Wahlberg acknowledged the Razzie-nominated turkey by describing it unfavourably during a press conference, saying Amy Adams "dodged a bullet" by not appearing in the film.
"Fuck it. It is what it is. Fucking trees, man. The plants. Fuck it. You can’t blame me for wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook."
The Fall-Out: There doesn't seem to have been any. In fact, Wahlberg has been praised for being "refreshingly honest".
Wesley Snipes
The Movie: Blade Trinity
The Distance: A year after the film's release Wesley Snipes attempted to sue New Line Cinema and other producers for $5m claiming they failed to pay him his full salary and used him to promote a potential spin-off franchise involving some of the film's other actors.
The Fall-Out: The suit was settled, though no details were released, but co-star Patton Oswald did reveal that all was not well on the set in a 2012 interview with The A.V Club.
Oswald revealed that Snipes would stay in character throughout the shoot and "a lot of the lines that Ryan Reynolds has were just a result of Wesley not being there."
The actor apparently sat down with David Goyer and said: "I think you need to quit. You're detrimental to this movie." To which Goyer responded: "Why don't you quit? We've got all your close-ups and we could shoot the rest with your stand-in."
Oswald recounted: "And that freaked Wesley out so much that, for the rest of the production, he would only communicate with the director through Post-it notes. And he would sign each Post-it note 'From Blade'."
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Sam Worthington
The Movie: Terminator Salvation
The Distance: In an interview on the set of Clash of The Titans (oh, the irony), Worthington addressed the terrible hype that surrounded Terminator Salvation and told Hitfix: "We just have try and do the best character we can do at that time. And I can nitpick with the best of them, man, and go down the list of things I saw on IMDB where they found holes in it and go, 'You are f***ing right. If there was a big ten-ton robot coming outside that gas station, surely we would f***ing hear it!' And I missed that!
"So I go, 'I gotta be a bit better when I'm looking through my scripts!' So that kind of raises my games a bit, cause I feel like an idiot for not saying it to McG."
The Fall-Out: Well, seeing as the man was right, it's not surprising that nobody's said a word to the contrary. He hasn't worked for McG since, though…
Sam Worthington (Part 2)
The Movie: Clash Of The Titans
The Distance: Rather sweetly, Sam Worthington fell on his sword, criticising his own performance rather than the film itself.
In an interview with XFINITY Entertainment, he said: "I’m the lead of that film and I don’t really like what I did in it. I believe I should have pulled my socks up a bit better and done a bit better and created a character, rather than just being a conduit for the action.
"I think... we kind of let down some people. I think I can act fucking better, to be honest."
The Fall-Out: As long as we're all agreed, we see no reason to discuss this further.
Colin Farrell
The Movie: Miami Vice
The Distance: Seems that audiences weren't the only ones unhappy with this adaptation of the cult 80s crime series.
Speaking to Total Film, Farrell said: "Miami Vice? I didn’t like it so much. I understood that we were trying to paint a relationship with Tubbs and Crockett that was so grounded and familiar that there was no need for them to incessantly talk to each other — or look at each other — over two and a half hours."
The Fall-Out: There's been none whatsoever. Still, we liked it.