When actors throw their own movies under the bus
Some films are so bad even the actors promoting them can't deny just how rubbish they are – as these cinematic turncoats prove...
1. George Clooney: "I think we might have killed the franchise."
Film: Batman & Robin (1997)
Box office: $238.2 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 11%
"My phone rang, and the head of Warner Bros said, 'Come into my office, you are going to play Batman in a Batman film' and I said, 'Yeah!' I called my friends and they screamed and I screamed and we couldn't believe it!
"I just thought the last one had been successful so I thought I was just going to be in a big successful franchise movie. I think we might have killed the franchise."
2. Arnold Schwarzenegger: "It's the worst film I have ever made."
Film: Red Sonja (1985)
Box office: $6.9 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 15%
"It's the worst film I have ever made. Now, when my kids get out of line, they're sent to their room and forced to watch Red Sonja 10 times. I never have too much trouble with them."
3. Halle Berry: "I was at the top, now I'm at the bottom."
Film: Catwoman (2004)
Box office: $82 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 9%
"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.
"It was what it was but I know if we had a chance to do it again, I know we'd make it better. We'll make a better story and have a better villain. I always thought we should've had a better villain than a woman whose face cracked off, but that's the past. I'm over it. But I would do it, I loved being Catwoman."
4. Alec Guinness: "Star Wars' dialogue... is lamentable"
Film: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
Box office: $775 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 94%
"Apart from the money, I regret having embarked on the film. I like them well enough, but it's not an acting job, the dialogue – which is lamentable – keeps being changed and only slightly improved, and I find myself old and out of touch with the young."
All of which is true, from a certain point of view.
5. Mark Wahlberg: "F**king trees, man, the plants. F**k it."
Film: The Happening (2008)
Box office: $45 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 17%
(Speaking during the promotional tour for The Fighter in 2010) "I was such a huge fan of [Amy Adams]. We'd actually had the luxury of having lunch before to talk about another movie, and it was a bad movie that I did. She dodged the bullet."
"I don't want to tell you what movie… All right, The Happening with M Night Shyamalan. It is was it is. F**king trees, man, the plants. F**k it. You can't blame me for wanting to try to play a science teacher. You know? I wasn't playing a cop or a crook."
6. Bob Hoskins: "F**kin' nightmare. F**kin' idiots."
Film: Super Mario Bros (1993)
Box office: $20.9 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 16%
[Asked about the worst job he'd ever done, his biggest disappointment and what he'd change about his career]: "Super Mario Brothers."
"It was a f**kin' nightmare. [The directors'] own agent told them to get off the set! F**kin' nightmare. F**kin' idiots."
7. Josh Brolin: "If I'm ever really rich, I'll do that movie again. Seriously."
Film: Jonah Hex (2010)
Box office: $10 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 12%
"I think it deserved that bashing for reasons that those critics will never know. We were almost ready to drop [the movie] when this kid [director Jimmy Hayward] came up. He was an interesting young guy full of energy and he was obsessed with Jonah Hex.
"I thought, 'This is either a really bad decision or a brilliant decision'. Really bad... If I'm ever really rich, I'll do that movie again. Seriously."
8. Jamie Lee Curtis: "It's an unbelievably bad movie"
Film: Virus (1999)
Box office: $30.6 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 9%
"That's a piece of shit movie. 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. 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!
"It was maybe the only time I've known something was just bad and there was nothing I could do about it."
9. Shia LaBeouf: "It's just a bunch of robots fighting each other."
Film: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Box office: $836.3 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 19%
"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.
"[Director Michael Bay] 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."
10. Shia LaBeouf (again): "Harrison Ford wasn't happy with it either."
Film: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Box office: $786.6 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 78%
"I feel like I dropped the ball on the legacy that people loved and cherished. [Harrison Ford] 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?"
11. Sylvester Stallone: "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot was the worst."
Film: Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992)
Box office: $45 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 4%
"I made some truly awful movies. Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot was the worst. If you ever want someone to confess to murder, just make him or her sit through that film. They will confess to anything after 15 minutes."
12. Colin Farrell: "Miami Vice? I didn't like it so much."
Film: Miami Vice (2006)
Box office: $163 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 47%
"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."
13. James Franco: "That movie sucks."
Film: Your Highness (2011)
Box office: $24 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 27%
"Your Highness? That movie sucks. You can't get around that."
14. Michael Caine: "I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
Film: Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
Box office: $51.8 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 0%
"I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
15. Danny Dyer: "I've made over 40 films. A quarter of them are shit."
Film: N/A
Box office: N/A
Rotten Tomatoes rating: N/A
"I've had a good run. I've made over 40 films. I'd say a quarter of them are shit, another quarter are all right and I'd say half of them have got something to say."
16. Charlize Theron: "That was a bad, bad, bad movie."
Film: Reindeer Games (2000)
Box office: $32 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 25%
"That was a bad, bad, bad movie. But I got to work with [director] John Frankenheimer. I wasn't lying to myself - that's why I did it."
17. Christopher Plummer: "It was so awful and sentimental and gooey."
Film: The Sound of Music (1965)
Box office: $282.2 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 85%
"It was so awful and sentimental and gooey. You had to work terribly hard to try and infuse some minuscule bit of humour into it."
18. Megan Fox: "Michael Bay wants to be like Hitler on his sets."
Film: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Box office: $836.3 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 19%
"[The Transformers franchise has] too much SFX and not enough acting opportunities.
"[Director Michael Bay] wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he's a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he's not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he's so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And it's endearing to watch him.
"He's vulnerable and fragile in real life and then on set he's a tyrant. Shia [LaBeouf] and I almost die when we make a Transformers movie. He has you do some really insane things that insurance would never let you do."
19. Jason Bateman: "The second one was garbage..."
Film: Horrible Bosses 2 (2014)
Box office: $106.6 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 21%
"The first one was funny. The first one put up some money. The second one was garbage as far as box office goes. Who knows if it was on the merits or when they released it, but it did not do any money.
"Don't go out and buy a bunch of tickets for the first one unless you want a second one, because we don't have any discipline in this town. A lot of people saw the first one, but there are plenty of films that made a lot of money where no one is interested in seeing another one."
20. Nicolas Cage: "They just didn't have it worked out back then"
Film: Ghost Rider (2007) and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011)
Box office: $228.7 million and $132.5 million
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 26% and 17%
"Ghost Rider was a movie that always should've been an R-rated movie," Cage explained. "David Goyer had a brilliant script which I wanted to do with David, and for whatever reason they just didn't let us make the movie.
"That movie is a still a movie that should be made, not with me obviously, but it should be an R-rated movie.
"Heck, Deadpool was R-rated and that did great. Ghost Rider was designed to be a scary superhero with an R-rating and edge, and they just didn't have it worked out back then."
21. Chloe Grace Moretz: "I am just as appalled as everyone else."
Film: Red Shoes & the 7 Dwarfs (2018)
Box office: $6.6m
Rotten Tomatoes rating: n/a
Kick Ass star Moretz was obliged to step in and apologise last summer despite this movie not even coming out yet, as the publicity has already curdled and gone bad.
The poster and trailer for Korean animated fairytale parody Red Shoes & the 7 Dwarfs ask, 'What if Snow White was no longer beautiful?' and show off a shorter and larger version of the princess.
"I have now fully reviewed the marketing for Red Shoes," she tweeted. "I am just as appalled and angry as everyone else, this wasn't approved by me or my team."
Chloe made it clear that she still fully supports the movie – just not the message of the posters.
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