Actors Whose Careers Never Really Recovered

There are no shortage of Hollywood stars who don't shine quite as brightly as they used to. After setting the bar high earlier on in their careers, it must've been hard for these standouts to live up to the expectations. It's interesting to think just how many former Hollywood A-listers have shifted to the acting B-list, so without further ado, here are some actors whose careers took a turn for the worse.

Early on in his career, Eddie Murphy was one of the funniest actors on screen. His standup was hilarious, and his movies were generally well-received. But that was a long time ago. His last movie worth the watch was Shrek, and before that, his last good project was 1999's Life opposite Martin Lawrence. His 2012 movie A Thousand Words holds a Metascore of 26/100. Oof. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Tim Robbins was once a household name, from 1988's Bull Durham all the way up through 2003's Mystic River. He had some great movies in between, including The Shawshank Redemption, Nothing to Lose, and Jacob's Ladder, but it's been a long while since Robbins has managed to headline a movie, let alone offer up a noteworthy performance.

Oh, Hilary Swank, what happened? Her breakout performance in Million Dollar Baby showed that she could hold her own in a leading role, and she followed it up with a stellar performance in Freedom Writers, the story about a young teacher who inspires her class of at-risk students. Since her success with 2007's P.S. I Love You, she hasn't starred in anything notable. Have you heard of You're Not You or The Homesman? Don't worry: no one else has either.

Say what you want about Nicolas Cage now, but he had no shortage of great movies earlier on in his career. Gems like It Could Happen to You and Raising Arizona showed the world just what the young actor could do. Cage was at his best between 1996's The Rock and 2005's Lord of War, with a string of great movies in between. Con Air was an impressive performance, Face/Off opposite John Travolta was amazing despite being completely insane, and his starring roles as Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Adaptation remains one of Cage's most memorable and impressive performances. But things started to go downhill for Cage with 2006's The Wicker Man, which was followed up the dismal Ghost Rider. Cinematic abominations such as Dying of the Light, Knowing, and Left Behind reveal a Cage who has little in common with the actor we used to love.

Mike Myers has more than a few classic comedies under his belt, including Austin Powers, Wayne's World, and Shrek, but, he hasn't been in a successful feature since Shrek the Third came out in 2007. He did, however, release The Love Guru, which was a miserable and borderline racist film that could easily be in the running for most un-funny comedy of all time.

John Travolta has a resume filled with some of the greatest movies to ever hit the silver screen, including Grease, Pulp Fiction, and Face/Off, but he also has a ton of duds mixed in there, including Wild Hogs, Battlefield Earth, and Be Cool. Unfortunately, Travolta's bad movies outweigh the good by a long shot, dragged down by flops such as Old Dogs, Savages, Killing Season, and The Forger. It's enough to break Danny Zuko's heart.

A former James Bond, Pierce Brosnan has seen his career dwindle into obscurity. After starring in The Matador in 2005, he led a string of movies that no one seemed to care about. He was in Mamma Mia!, sure, but other than that, his films from 2006 through 2013 were unmemorable. Brosnan did see a slight bump in 2014 when he surprised audiences with one of the year's best action movies, The November Man, but that role must have been a fluke, because the poorly made projects resumed soon after.

An argument could be made here that Dean Cain's four-year run as Superman on Lois & Clark was actually the anomaly in an otherwise unremarkable Hollywood career, but that would be ignoring his other smash TV hits like The Division and Clubhouse. Okay, maybe those were weak examples, but he's clearly one of the kings of the TV movie, with not only Gentle Ben, but also Gentle Ben 2: Black Gold, The Dog Who Saved Christmas, and that Scott Peterson flick. No, still not feeling it? What about Max Havoc: Ring of Fire, the sequel to the action classic that we all know and love, Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon? Wait, he didn't even play Max Havoc? This is getting bad. You're sensing our sarcasm by now, right? Good, because there are five more The Dog Who Saved [Something] movies. Let's move on.

After winning an Academy Award for Girl, Interrupted, Angelina Jolie broke a major barrier by becoming a bona fide female lead in action movies such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. But in between those were some real bombs like Life or Something Like It, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and Alexander—Oliver Stone's 2004 epic about the Macedonian ruler that CinemaBlend categorized as "on par with the worst movies of the year." She continued her streak of questionable films in between voiceover work for the Kung Fu Panda franchise with Salt, Wanted, and The Tourist. Then, in 2011, she took a turn behind the camera. Her directorial debut, In The Land of Blood and Honey, and her sophomore effort, Unbroken, were both well received, but she ran out of steam with By the Sea. The Wrap called it "aggressively humorless" with "yawns aplenty," so whether Jolie decides to continue on the directing or acting track remains to be seen. There's also a solid chance that, at this point, she only works in Hollywood to pay the bills anyway. Her diplomatic work as Special Envoy for The UN Refugee Agency is a pursuit so selfless, she could star in Gigli 2-10 and still come out looking like a better human being than most of us.

If we're saying Shia LaBeouf's career "took a bad turn," we're saying that with the full understanding that he was behind the wheel, steering it towards Crazytown faster than you can say, "Wow, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull was terrible." In fact, it was LaBeouf trash-talking that very movie that started his rapid ostracization from Hollywood. While promoting Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps—another critical flop—in Cannes, LaBeouf talked about "dropping the ball" on the Indiana Jones franchise and mocked the writing and directing of the film, which was done by Steven Spielberg. Not exactly the guy you want to piss off in Hollywood. LaBeouf went on to finish his Transformers run, then plunged headfirst into odd independent projects such as Charlie Countryman and Nymphomaniac, in which it was rumored he had actual sex on camera. Even if that isn't true, it pretty much guarantees he's never going to make blockbuster movies based off of children's toys ever again.

To his credit, LaBeouf seems to have chosen his career path intentionally, telling the Los Angeles Times, "There's this coming-of-age thing that's happening within me. I've come from family-fare, pop-culture, Steven Spielberg-safe, made-for-a-generalized-populace [projects], and I have these yearnings to do different things." You do you, Shia. We'll probably just wait to see whatever that is until it's free on cable.

Throughout the '80s, Mickey Rourke carved out a niche for himself as a dark, yet enticing sexual icon in films such as 9 ½ Weeks and Angel Heart, but his alleged drug use and erratic behavior earned him a difficult reputation, prompting director Alan Parker to go so far as to say, "Working with Mickey is a nightmare. He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he is going to do." In 1991, a few rocky years after his tumultuous work with Parker, Rourke quit acting to go back to boxing. In an interview with The Telegraph, Rourke said he only lasted eight fights before a doctor warned him that he'd have serious neurological problems if he continued, so he returned to Hollywood, where he basically languished in obscurity for about 14 years, until Robert Rodriguez gave him a smaller role in Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and a significant role in Sin City. A few years later, Rourke headlined the critically acclaimed The Wrestler and finally found the redemption he'd been waiting for. Sure, we could mention the subsequent Iron Man 2, and that dreadful Russian accent, or Java Heat, the movie co-starring Kellan Lutz that's actually called Java Heat, but why ruin a nice moment? Let's just keep going.

Paul Giamatti became a household name in 1997 after starring as Kenny "Pig Vomit" Rushton, Howard Stern's reprehensible boss in Private Parts. He would star in numerous other hits such as Sideways, Cinderella Man, and the critically-acclaimed HBO miniseries, John Adams. But John Adams aired in 2008, and since then it's been hit-or-miss for Giamatti. Mostly miss. Has anyone even heard of The Hawk is Dying, Ironclad, or Cosmopolis? Critics have, and gave the highest of those three a Metascore of 58/100. And what about Rock of Ages, the musical that's so bad even Tom Cruise couldn't bail it out, and we're talking about a guy so bankable they've decided to reboot The Mummy on his back. Anyway, Giamatti seems to at least be on the upswing after a clear low point with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in which he played Aleksei Sytsevich, aka Rhino, in a performance so hacky, Sony cancelled the whole franchise. Okay, we admit there may have been other factors in that decision. On a more positive note, Giamatti is currently one of the leads in the smash hit Billions on Showtime, so maybe premium cable is more his speed.

After Jerry Maguire, Bridget Jones's Diary, Chicago, and Cold Mountain, Renee Zellweger proved she was not only a Hollywood "It Girl," but one with some serious acting chops as well. That's why it's strange that following Cinderella Man in 2005, she did a string of under-performers such as Miss Potter, Leatherheads, and New in Town. Shortly after this run of duds, the purse-lipped actress took a self-imposed hiatus. She told Vogue, "I got sick of the sound of my own voice: it was time to go away and grow up a bit." When she came back, the internet lost its collective mind over the fact that her face looked a little different—Um, hello, it's called aging, you jerks!—but Zellweger had a powerful silencer waiting. She planned her return on the the long-awaited third installment of her popular Bridget Jones franchise, the inevitable success of which was bound to muffle any nonsense talk about eye lifts and cheek injections. In response to the ridiculous speculation about her face, she released a statement to Marie-Claire which read, in part, "I'm glad folks think I look different! I'm living a different, happy, more fulfilling life, and I'm thrilled that perhaps it shows." Get it, girl.