Actors who criticized their own Box Office bombs

Mrs. WebMarvel’s latest superhero movie and a Spider-Man spin-off, debuted in February 2024 to overwhelmingly negative reviews. Its 13 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and 26/100 Metacritic score were bad enough, but the film’s star Dakota Johnson‘s own comments about the film’s press tour didn’t exactly help matters.

Asked if she could name the three Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, she replied (between giggles) with “Spider-Man: Here He Comes,” “Spider-Man: And He’s Back” and “The Goblet of Spider-Man.” They are all clearly false.

She didn’t stop there as she continued one of the most entertaining press tours we’ve ever seen. Johnson later said that she had seen exactly 4 percent of all Marvel films and that she could win an Oscar for her drive-in stunt Mrs. Web (spoiler: she didn’t do the stunt driving), and how she constantly tries to get her friend arrested.

Oh, and she has no plans to actually see the movie she was promoting.

To be fair, that’s typically Johnson’s policy for all her films. She calls it a way of self-care.

“For me it’s a way not to end up in an existential crisis,” says de Fifty Shades of grey the star said in an interview with Magic FM. “Not watching my movies is like self-care.”

She later added, “I don’t know when I’ll see it.”

Johnson hasn’t called at all Mrs. Web another flop, but that’s clear. The numbers and reviews say it all. While we wait for her next viral moment, keep scrolling to see how other actors responded to their biggest box office bombs.

Jennifer Hudson: Cats (2019)

“You know what? I think it was a little bit overwhelming,” the EGOT winner said of the critically devastating, star-studded adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s Broadway musical. “It’s a shame it was misunderstood. I think people will see it differently later. But it’s something I’m still very proud of and grateful to have been a part of.”

Rooney Mara: Pan (2015)

Sometimes the criticism goes further than the quality of the film. Critics were furious Pan (on Peter Pan et al.) for casting Mara, who is of European descent, to play the Native American character Tiger Lily. In retrospect, Mara understands why people were angry.

“I really hate, hate, hate that I’m on that side of the money laundering conversation. Really,” she said. “I never want to be on that side again. I can understand why people were angry and frustrated. …Do I think all four of the main people in the movie should have been white, with blonde hair and blue eyes? No. I think there should have been some diversity somewhere.”

Ryan Reynolds: Green Lantern (2011)

“There were just too many people giving too much money and if there was a problem, instead of saying, ‘Okay, let’s stop spending on special effects and let’s think about [the] character,” he said at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in 2023. “That’s just never… the thought was never there to do that. … It wasn’t a feeling I wanted to repeat. So I really took ownership as much as I could over the next few years, it was the only way to kind of process it.

George Clooney: Batman and Robin (1997)

Clooney famously played Batman for just one film. “Let me just say that I actually thought I had destroyed the franchise until someone else brought it back years later and changed it,” he said during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show. “I thought at the time that this would be a very good career move. It wasn’t that.”

Alec Baldwin: Rock of Ages (2012)

“It was a complete disaster,” Baldwin said The cover of the film version of the hit Broadway jukebox musical. “A week later you’re like, ‘Oh God, what have I done?'”

Jessica Alba: Fantastic four (2005)

“I hated it. I really hated it,” she said Elle from her early foray into superhero fare. “I remember dying in Silver Surfer. The director said, ‘It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be more beautiful when you cry? Have a nice cry, Jessica.’”

Kumail Nanjiani: Eternals (2021)

Negative reviews can damage any actor’s ego, and Nanjiani admitted Michael Rosenbaum‘s “Inside of You” podcast which is Marvel’s response Eternals – for which he famously transformed his body with a personal trainer – led him to seek therapy.

“It was very difficult, and at the time I thought it was unfair to me and unfair to me [my wife] Emily, and I can’t approach my work this way anymore. Some [thing] needs to change, so I started counseling. I still talk about that with my therapist.”

Tom Hanks: The bonfire of vanities (1990)

“One of the crappiest movies ever made,” he said of the movie it was based on Tom Wolfe‘s classic novel. “And yet, if I hadn’t gone through that experience, I would have lost something valuable. … Bonfire taught me that I couldn’t make a core connection. … When I played Sherman McCoy, people stopped me on the street to say, ‘You’re not Sherman McCoy.’ I was like, ‘Oh, yeah?’ I went against everything about the character and even the screenplay, but I kept telling myself, ‘No, no, no – there’s a way I can get into this.’

Halle Berry: Cat lady (2004)

Berry appeared at the Razzies to personally accept her Worst Actress award Cat lady (a standalone DC Comics film about Batman’s nemesis) and used her acceptance speech to criticize everyone involved with the film.

“First of all, I would like to thank Warner Bros. thank you for putting me in a terrible movie. It was exactly what my career needed! I was at the top, and then Cat lady just plunged me to the bottom. Love it! It’s hard to be on top. It’s much better to be at the bottom,” she said. “I want to thank my manager Vincent Cirrincione. This man loves me. …He loves me so much that he convinces me to do projects even when he knows they’re no good! That’s how much he really loves me. My only advice to you… is that next time I make a movie, if I get a chance to make another movie, maybe you should read the script. … Just counting the zeros after the ones is really not enough. You really need to read the script. I love you husband. Love you.”

Jamie Lee Curtis: Virus (1999)

“That would be the latest piece of s–t. … It’s just terrible,” she told IGN about the box office flop based on the comic book of the same name. “That’s the only good reason to be in bad movies. Then when your friends have done that [bad] movies that make you say, “Ahhhh, I have the best.” I bring Virus.”

Ben Affleck: Gigli (2003)

“It created a lot of negative feelings for people about me,” Affleck said Entertainment weekly of the film starring his love Jennifer Lopez. “There is that aspect of people that I got to see that was sad and difficult, it was depressing and made me question things, feel disappointed and doubt myself a lot. But if the response to Gigli If that hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have ultimately decided, “I really have no other option but to direct films,” which has turned out to be the real love of my professional life. So in that respect it’s a gift. And I got to know Jennifer, with whom the relationship has been very meaningful to me in my life.”

Charlize Theron: Reindeer games (2000)

“That was a bad, bad, bad movie,” she said Esquire in 2007. “But even though the movie might have been bad, I went with it Johannes Frankenheimer. I didn’t lie to myself – that’s why I did it.”

Jennifer Lawrence: Mother! (2017)

“It’s amazing what we’ve done – some people hate it and the people who hate it really hate it,” she said Variety of the divisive film directed by then-boyfriend Darren Aronofsky. “But it’s nothing that needs to be defended and when I read a negative review I just feel defensive.”