Random Actors Who Aren't Ashamed Of Their Flops (14 items)

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  (#8) Cybill Shepherd

  • 65

  At Long Last Love is a 1975 musical comedy that was nearly lost to time. It was lambasted by critics at the time of its release and barely made a blip at the box office. Written and directed by Peter Bogdanovich, the wunderkind director behind The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, At Long Last Love only had one home video release (in 1981) until it was finally released again in 2013 on Blu-ray in an alternate cut, prompting reappraisal from critics like The New Yorker's Richard Brody, who claims the film is a "masterwork."

  Cybill Shepherd, who was in a relationship with Bogdanovich at the time of filming, reflects on the production with nothing but positive memories. In an interview with RogerEbert.com, Shepherd called her time working on the film "a complete joy and one of my happiest experiences."
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  (#4) Dustin Hoffman

  • 81

  1987's superflop Ishtar is one of the most notorious films in all of Hollywood history. As it fell victim to extensive delays and a ballooning budget, the movie was denounced before it even came out and has gone on to become (arguably unfairly) labeled as one of the worst movies of all time. While it's obvious that both critics and audiences weren't exactly in love with the film, there are many worse movies from 1987 alone (hello again, Jaws: The Revenge). 

  While the film's production in Morocco was certainly turbulent, star Dustin Hoffman looks back on Ishtar fondly. In a 2009 interview with Ain't It Cool News, Hoffman explained:

  The thing I love about [Ishtar] - and I love it with all of its flaws - is that it has a statement to make. And that is: It is far, far better to spend a life being second rate in something that you're passionate about, than to spend a life being first-rate at that which you are not passionate about. I thought that was worth making a movie about.
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  (#6) Kevin Costner

  • 64

  In the late '80s and early '90s, Kevin Costner became one of the most successful actors in Hollywood thanks to films like The Untouchables, Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves, and The Bodyguard. But 1995 brought the sci-fi post-apocalypse of Waterworld, and Costner's career was never really the same after its release. It isn't entirely hated by those who have seen it, and it made a reasonable amount of money upon release, but it was the most expensive film ever made at the time and it failed to live up to the lofty expectations set by that kind of funding.

  Costner made headlines in 2015 after ardently defending the film against naysayers: "I know that people might think of Waterworld as a low point for me. It wasn’t... The movie with all its imperfections was a joy for me." Of course, he doesn't think it's perfect. He mentioned to HuffPost in 2013 that "...it was flawed - for sure. But, overall, it’s a very inventive, cool movie."
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  (#7) Tim Robbins

  • 60

  Hot off the heels of the massive successes of both Star Wars and Indiana Jones, George Lucas decided one of the projects he would like to executive produce was 1986's Howard the Duck. The oddball comedy, based on the Marvel comic of the same name, signed a death warrant for Marvel in Hollywood until Blade, X-Men, and Spider-Man brought the company back into the limelight. The movie struggled to make back half of its budget and was destroyed by critics upon release, but not everyone reflects on the project negatively.

  Tim Robbins had a supporting part, and while he knows it isn't a great movie, he did manage to make a pretty penny for his role as Phil Blumburtt. In a 2016 interview with Mandatory, Robbins talked about the movie:

  [I]t wound up going over its shooting schedule and I wound up getting paid twice for that movie because of all the overtime. So I think more about that than about the quality of the movie. I think more about that allowing me [the] opportunity to do a movie like Five Corners and to produce great plays with The Actor’s Gang, because of the money I was able to take in on that movie.
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  (#1) John Travolta

  • 65

  If you're looking for a big-budget, sci-fi epic that's utterly reviled by critics and audiences alike, then look no further than 2000's Battlefield Earth. This action film adaptation of the L. Ron Hubbard novel of the same name managed an abysmal critics' score of 3% and an audience score of 12% on Rotten Tomatoes. This is backed up by its dreadful box office performance and the fact that it swept the Golden Raspberry Awards that year.

  One of the few who seem to dig Battlefield Earth is its star/producer John Travolta. During a 2017 interview with the Daily Beast's Marlow Stern, Travolta was asked if he regretted making the movie. "No way," he replied. "Are you kidding? Why would I ever regret that? I had the power to do whatever I wanted, and I chose to do a book that I thought was worthy of making into a movie. It's a beautiful film."
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  (#9) Ben Affleck

  • 46

  2003's Gigli was released at the height of the Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez tabloid frenzy. During their year-and-a-half relationship, "Bennifer" became a staple of gossip magazines, and starring together in films like Gigli and Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl did nothing but fuel the fire. Gigli is notable for how its poor reception was at the time, and it certainly came nowhere close to recouping its $50+ million budget, but Affleck believes it's gotten undue flack over the years.

  While talking with The New York Times in 2016, Affleck mentioned that the film's director Martin Brest (Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run) was one of the best directors he'd ever worked with, and that the picture was unfairly targeted at the time. "It would have been a bad movie no one cared about but because I was dating Jennifer Lopez that made it a big f**king deal, you know," Affleck explained. "And not only is it a bad movie, they're dating each other in the bad movie! It got unfairly maligned."

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