It’s not easy to become famous. But keeping your fame is even more difficult. Probably every famous actor faces this problem because the competition in Hollywood is extremely fierce. Every year, more and more young actors attempt to take over this wonderful on-screen world in an effort to land a movie part and achieve fame. But only those with the greatest talent and perseverance can truly succeed at it.
In fact, even the top actors in the world can occasionally fall into disrepair. Consistently finding lead roles in good movies is challenging, which can cause periods where some excellent actors seem to be in only bad movies.
That’s the case with all of the celebrities on this list. They are not bad actors and were once among the highest-paid actors in Hollywood. However, now these ten actors are hard to make a living from their work in movies.
#1 Mark Wahlberg
Source: Courtesy Everett Collection
Most people wouldn’t consider Mark Wahlberg to be a stellar actor, but he's clearly included it in a string of bad films in recent years. His last well-received movie was 2018’s "Instant Family" (81%), and all seven he's starred in since then have been critically panned. In Wahlberg's case, his period of severe recession coincided with his focusing his career on major theatrical blockbusters — with the exception of "Uncharted" — to streaming movies. Despite performing relatively well in terms of viewing figures, movies including "Spenser Confidential" (36%), "Infinite" (17%), and "Me Time" (6%) were dumped on their respective streaming services with little fanfare amid negative reviews.
#2 Meg Ryan
Source: East News
Since one of her very biggest box office hits "You’ve Got Mail" (1998), Meg Ryan hasn’t starred in a single good movie. In recent years, Ryan has made a concerted effort to retire from Hollywood's A-list and focus on filmmaking, although numerous planned projects ultimately never materialized. However, she has directed and co-written an upcoming romantic comedy, "What Happens Later", in which she will co-star with another actor on this list, David Duchovny.
#3 Morgan Freeman
Source: East News
At 85, with an Oscar and more than 50 years of an acting career behind them, Morgan Freeman has absolutely nothing to prove to anyone. If you exclude his involvement in a few documentary projects and his varied voiceover parts, Freeman hasn't physically been in a highly acclaimed film since 2014's "Dolphin Tale 2" (66%). Since then, Freeman has a stonking seventeen panned movies to his name, many of them low-rent thrillers like "Last Knights" (16%), "The Poison Rose" (0%), "Vanquish" (5%), "Paradise Highway" (18%), and most recently the preposterously-titled "The Minute You Wake Up Dead" (0%).
#4 Liam Neeson
Source: East News
After the release of "Taken" in 2008,
Liam Neeson saw an undeniable career revival, remaking himself as a most unexpected action hero and consistent box office attraction - despite the mixed reviews. But in recent years, Neeson's production has dropped dramatically, shifting from the mid-budget genre to the cheaper, basic assembly genre that hasn't even been shown in theaters in many countries. Neeson's last major hit was the TV series "Ordinary Love" (93%) in 2019, and in the four years since, each of his seven films has earned primarily unfavorable reviews, with recent releases like "Memory" (29%), and "Marlowe" (23%) even receiving outright scathing reviews. With a score of just 11%, "Blacklight" is by far Neeson's worst-reviewed movie, indicating that he needs to put the formulaic action movies on hold and return to crafting high-quality dramas.
#5 Jessica Biel
Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS/East News
Jessica Biel has undoubtedly curtailed her career in recent years to concentrate on starting a family, and as a result, she has directed more toward the more schedule-friendly world of limited drama. Even so, Biel's last appearance in a lauded movie was 2012's "Hitchcock" (60%), and her nine movie roles since have ranged from the middlingly received "The Truth About Emanuel" (37%) to the outright panned "Accidental Love" (8%). Despite the fact that Biel has been praised for her recent performance in Hulu's "Candy" and received an Emmy for her role in "The Sinner" in 2018, she has not starred in any films since 2017.
#6 Mila Kunis
Source: Buena Vista Pictures
Yes, Mila Kunis is gorgeous, she's
funny, and she's a fascinating drama actress. But you barely know it from her 2012's hit comedy "Ted" (69%). Recently, her career has been filled with dud blockbusters like "Oz the Great and Powerful" (56%) and "Jupiter Ascending" (28%), forgettable comedies such as "Bad Moms" (58%) and "The Spy Who Dumped Me" (49%), and mawkish dramas like "Four Good Days" (55%). With thirteen serious failures in a row, for someone who starred in the Oscar-nominated film Best Picture (Black Swan) in 2010 like Kunis, it was a total flop.
#7 Billy Bob Thornton
Source: East News
After his supporting appearance in 2016's "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"(68%), Thornton hasn't been in a solid film. Some of his following roles include those in the massively unimpressive "Bad Santa 2" (23%), "London Fields" (0%), and Netflix's colossally dismal "The Gray Man" (46%). Though Thornton is at least involved in the occasional TV project, like
Fargo, Goliath, and 1883, to make sure you get to see him quality work somewhere, sadly he left away from the big screen.
#8 John Travolta
Source: Courtesy Everett Collection
John Travolta's career has been quite the rollercoaster ride. Although his Oscar-nominated performance in Pulp Fiction (92%) gave him a major resurgence throughout the mid to late 1990s, at the turn of the millennium, His career once again slipped. In the past 15 years, he has only one successful movie, the 2016 "Western In a Valley of Violence" (after a bevy of increasingly unambitious direct-to-video action-thrillers with five separate movies all receiving a disastrous 0% on the Tomatometer - "Life on the Line", "Gotti", "Speed Kills", "Trading Paint", and "The Poison Rose".)
#9 David Duchovny
Source: East News
Although Duchovny never made the leap from TV to cinema following the success of "The X-Files," Duchovny has acted in a number of genre movies over the past 20 years, mostly comedies.In 2022 alone, Duchovny has appeared in three films - "The Bubble" (21%), "The Estate" (30%), and "You People" (42%). However, none of these films offered anything to the actor. In the film industry, Duchovny's last decent film was "The Joneses", which grossed a barely fresh 62% in 2009. Well, that's Hollywood's loss, because they're slumbering on a massive talent right here.
#10 Diane Keaton
Source: East News
Diane Keaton has permanently etched herself into the hearts of millions of people through her performance across "The Godfather" trilogy, and her Oscar-nominated turns in "Reds" (90%), "Marvin's Room" (84%), and "Something's Gotta Give" (72%). But in the 20 years since she starred in "Something's Gotta Give", Keaton hasn't physically been in a single film that has received positive reviews; her only critically Fresh part being a voice role in Pixar's "Finding Dory" (94%). Since 2003, Keaton's career has been littered with almost 20 critically eviscerated dramas and low-rent comedies. It's unfortunate to see her starring in continually terrible, no-effort films.