27 Actors Who Have Major Regrets About Certain Roles They've Played
As an actor, you might get to play a role that feels like it was made for you. However, other times, you might get stuck in a role that you later end up wishing you hadn't accepted.
Fox / Via giphy.com
Here are 27 actors who have serious regrets about roles they've played in the past:
1.Sandra Bullock is "still embarrassed" that she was in Speed 2.
She told TooFab, "I’ve been very vocal about it. Makes no sense. Slow boat. Slowly going towards an island."
2.Gwyneth Paltrow called her movie Shallow Hal, which has been heavily criticized for its fatphobia, a "disaster."
In a joint interview with Netflix, her best friend/business partner Kevin Keating told her, "I'm not sure who told you to do that one, but it wasn't me. I wasn't there working for you. Not at that time."
3.Zoe Saldaña, who faced criticism for darkening her skin and wearing a prosthetic nose in Nina, said she "should have never played Nina [Simone]."
She told Bese, "I should have tried everything in my power to cast a Black woman to play an exceptionally perfect Black woman."
4.John Boyega said that Disney didn't know what to do with his character, Finn, and others played by people of color in Star Wars.
Lucasfilm / Via giphy.com
"What I would say to Disney is, do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are, and then have them pushed to the side. It’s not good. I’ll say it straight up," he said in a GQ interview. "What they want you to say is, ‘I enjoyed being a part of it. It was a great experience...’ Nah, nah, nah. I’ll take that deal when it’s a great experience."
5.Jennette McCurdy said she feels “ashamed” of having played Sam Puckett on iCarly.
Nickelodeon / Via giphy.com
On her podcast Empty Inside, she revealed that she felt "ashamed" of many of her previous roles, saying, "I feel so unfulfilled by the roles that I played and felt like it was the most cheesy, embarrassing... I did the shows that I was on from like 13 to 21, and by 15, I was already embarrassed.”
6.Halle Berry thought the story in Catwoman "didn't feel quite right" because her character's goal was to stop an evil cosmetics mogul instead of saving the world like male superheroes do.
She told Variety, "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?’ But I was just the actor for hire. I wasn’t the director. I had very little say over that.”
7.Robert Pattinson said that he would "mindlessly hate" Twilight if he hadn't actually starred in the franchise as Edward Cullen.
Summit Entertainment / Via giphy.com
He also told Empire, "The more I read the script, the more I hated this guy."
8.After Sandra Oh called out Emma Stone's whitewashed role in Aloha at the 2019 Golden Globes, Stone called out, "I'm sorry!" from the audience.
Previously, Stone told News.com.au, "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."
9.Blake Lively said that playing Serena van der Woodsen on Gossip Girl felt “personally compromising."
Warner Bros. Television / Via giphy.com
She told Allure, "People loved it, but it always felt a little personally compromising — you want to be putting a better message out there."
10.Evangeline Lilly would throw Lost scripts across the room in frustration at the amount of autonomy Kate Austen lost as the series went on.
On an episode of the podcast The Lost Boys, she said, "I felt that my character went from being autonomous — really having her own story, and her own journey, and her own agendas — to chasing two men around the island, and that irritated the shit out of me."
11.Andrew Lincoln was concerned about his character Mark in Love Actually being a stalker.
Universal Pictures / Via giphy.com
He told the Wrap that he asked director Richard Curtis, "Do you not think we’re sort of borderline stalker territory here?"
Curtis replied, "No, no. Not with you playing it, darling. You’ll be alright.”
12.Viola Davis wished the voices of her character Aibileen Clark and the other maids had been more centralized in The Help.
"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."
13.Alison Brie wishes that she didn't voice Diane Nguyen on BoJack Horseman because "people of color should always voice people of color."
On Instagram, she said, "We missed a great opportunity to represent the Vietnamese American community accurately and respectfully, and for that I am truly sorry."
14.Shailene Woodley said that she felt “stuck” playing Amy Juergens on The Secret Life of the American Teenager and it was one of the hardest things she had to do.
She told Bustle that she and a lot of her castmates disagreed with much of what was written into the show as it progressed. She said, "There were belief systems that were pushed that were different than my own. Yet legally, I was stuck there. To this day, it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do."
15.Early in his career, Zac Efron regretted playing Troy Bolton in High School Musical because of the way it caused him to be typecast in other movies.
Disney / Via giphy.com
He told Men's Journal that being a Disney star wasn't the life he imagined for himself. He said, "I was like 17. And I said, ‘Guys, you know this is not at all what I want to do?’ And they were like, ‘Really?’”
16.Christian Bale tried to get out of the singing and dancing that playing Jack Kelly in Newsies required.
He never wanted to do a musical in the first place. In a 1997 interview with Movieline, he said, "When I first read the script, I thought it wasn't a musical. Later, after I realized it was, I asked [the director] if maybe I could duck over here into the pub while the numbers were going on, and then come out when it was over."
17.Megan Fox was fired from her role as Mikaela Banes in theTransformers franchise after publicly calling director Michael Bay "a nightmare to work for."
Paramount Pictures / Via giphy.com
"He’s like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous madman reputation," she told Wonderland. "'Be hot.' I’ve had that note on set before. 'Mike,' I’ll say, 'Who am I talking to? Where am I supposed to be looking at?' And he responds, 'Just be sexy.' I get mad when people talk to me like that."
18.On the set of Blade Runner, Harrison Ford had a lot of tension with director Ridley Scott because they disagreed on whether or not Rick Deckard should be a replicant, and he objected to the voice-over narration because he felt the character "was a detective who did very little detecting."
Ford told Vanity Fair, "I was obliged by my contract to record that narration, which I found awkward and uninspired."
19.Channing Tatum said that Paramount "pushed" him into playing Duke in G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra because of a three-picture deal.
He said that he wasn't given an option to pass on the film. In an interview with Howard Stern, he said the studio told him, "You’re doing this or we’re going to sue you."
20.Michelle Pfeiffer said she took on the role of Stephanie in Grease 2 because she was "young and didn't know any better."
Paramount Pictures / Via giphy.com
She once revealed that she couldn't believe how bad it was and said that she "hated that film with a vengeance."
21.Jamie Dornan felt "quite uncomfortable" playing Christian Grey in 50 Shades of Grey.
Universal Pictures / Via giphy.com
He told Entertainment Weekly, "I felt like it was very far away from me, and sometimes I struggled with it."
22.Katherine Heigl called the portrayal of her character Alison in Knocked Up "a little sexist."
Universal Pictures / Via giphy.com
"It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys. It exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it on some days," she told Vanity Fair. "I’m playing such a bitch; why is she being such a killjoy? Why is this how you’re portraying women?"
23.Christopher Plummer found playing Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music boring.
20th Century Fox / Via giphy.com
He told the Boston Globe that he was "a bit bored" with the captain in 2010. However, his dislike of the character wasn't a new thing; a 1966 New York Times article revealed that he called the film "The Sound of Mucus."
24.Angus T. Jones came to regret playing Jake Harper on Two and a Half Men because the show's content conflicted with his religious faith.
In a November 2012 video for an Alabama-based church, he said, "I’m on Two and a Half Men, and I don’t want to be on it. Please stop watching it. Please stop filling your head with filth."
Soon after, however, he issued an apology, saying, "I apologize if my remarks reflect me showing indifference to and disrespect of my colleagues and a lack of appreciation of the extraordinary opportunity of which I have been blessed. I never intended that."
Two years later, he said, "I was a paid hypocrite because I wasn’t okay with it, but I was still doing it.”
25.Jessica Alba almost quit acting when the Fantastic Four director told her she needed to "cry pretty" as Susan Storm.
"The director was like, 'It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica.' He was like, 'Don't do that thing with your face. Just make it flat. We can CGI the tears in.' And I'm like, but there's no connection to a human being," she said. "And then it got me thinking: Am I not good enough? Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough? Do people hate them so much that they don't want me to be a person? Am I not allowed to be a person in my work?"
26.Sean Connery was fed up with playing James Bond after seven James Bond films.
giphy.com / Via United Artists
According to the Guardian, he said, "I have always hated that damned James Bond."
His friend Michael Caine also told the Wall Street Journal, "He’d be walking down the street and people would say, ‘Look, there’s James Bond.’ That was particularly upsetting to him.”
27.And finally, Jenny Slate made the decision to stop voicing Missy Foreman-Greenwald on Big Mouth because "Black characters on an animated show should be played by Black people."
On Instagram, she said, "At the start of the show, I reasoned with myself that it was permissible for me to play 'Missy' because her mom is Jewish and white — as am I. But 'Missy' is also Black...ending my portrayal of 'Missy' is one step in a life-long process of uncovering the racism in my actions."
