We’re watching Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), in which Charles Coburn (1877-1961) acts. We watch a lot of movies on TCM, and we see him frequently. I just can’t get past that he was a White Supremacist.
Mel Gibson was so cool in the Mad Max movies. But then he went nutso and anti-Semitic. Can’t look at him in the same way anymore/
I was watching one of the Men in Black movies, and my enjoyment of it was damaged by Will Smith’s assault on Chris Rock. I wondered if I’ll ever enjoy his work the same way again.
Agree. I have negative visceral response whenever I see a movie advertised that includes him. Even if re-runs of Fresh Prince end up on an ignored TV- I will make a point of turning off or at least changing the channel.
To give a counterexample, I think I’m probably still fine watching Kevin Spacey in his existing body of work despite his fall from grace - because he so often plays deeply flawed (if not downright sinister) characters. Rationally it should not be this way, but the fact that he has been exposed as a creep in real life feels viscerally less disturbing when he’s playing a creep on the screen.
Me too, though the thing that really pushed it over the edge for me was seeing him telling a story on a talk show about copiloting a large private plane with a friend that lost cabin pressure in the passenger cabin and finding it hilarious that the third friend, who was in the passenger cabin, passed out. Can’t think of him as other than a psychopath now.
Perhaps in a somewhat similar vein, I think many people, myself included, are fine with seeing O.J. Simpson in the Naked Gun movies because his entire role in them is to be on the receiving end of cartoon violence (what TVTropes calls the Chew Toy).
There are two things going on here: Actors you once liked for their work but now think have lost whatever it was that made them worth following; either because they take on roles in bad movies (Robert De Niro) or because their talent now seems diminished or limited to a standard type they always play (I suppose Nicolas Cage could suit both categories).
Then there are people who said or did bad things, and you can’t watch them since their fall from grace. Some may be able to claw their way back into your good graces (Will Smith, maybe), others, depending on what it was they did, may not (Spacey) and even if their acting gigs have come to an end, you would have a hard time watching the older stuff. (There’s also the ones that you haven’t heard the dope on; a couple previously mentioned here but I won’t say which ones, what I don’t know can’t hurt me.)
One thing I’ll say - if an actor expresses political views I don’t agree with, Jon Voigt or Kelsey Grammar for instance, it doesn’t bother me or affect my ability to enjoy their work. Unless they’re unrepentant Nazis.
I have two. MASH (the original movie) was the first time I’d ever seen Donald Sutherland, who I really enjoyed. When Klute came out, I wasn’t quite so impressed by him, and since then I’ve never liked him in anything.
Kirstie Alley. Loved her in Cheers. After the series ended, I soon realized it was her character (Rebecca) who I’d been liking, as it became increasingly obvious how pathetic the actress herself is.
But Kirstie Alley had a short-lived series, Fat Actress that was quite funny in a Curb Your Enthusiasm sort of way, and she certainly was game in making fun of the rather cruel things people said about her.
DeNiro would qualify on the basis of the latter, since he promoted a bogus antivax “documentary” and tried to get it included in a film festival, then teamed up with one of the most virulent antivaxers out there, RFK Jr.
The background was DeNiro having an autistic child. But most parents of autistic children don’t attack vaccination and enable antivax liars.
I wouldn’t pay to see movies starring actors/actresses who’ve done highly sleazy things. I can still watch their performances on TV without their sleaze necessarily getting in the way of my enjoyment of the film/show.
Oh! I just thought of another category: people who continue to work with actors who shot off their mouths and have been de-facto blacklisted for it. If you thought Mel Gibson was untouchable after his very racist and anti-semitic phone message to his estranged lover got leaked, how did you feel about Jodie Foster hiring him to star in The Beaver - was she being a loyal friend by giving him a second chance, even if his participation pretty much guaranteed the film would fail? Or did his ugly behavior taint your view of her? (Or has the passing of time and his mea culpas washed away at least some of the distaste?)
Then there’s the Woody Allen problem (and please, let’s not get into who said what and who you believe), there’s a lot of performers (including Greta Gerwig and Michael Caine) who either said they would refuse to work with him, or they regret having done so; if you tend to side with Woody and Soon Yi’s version of the past, such declarations might seem cowardly and unfair; if you are on the Farrows’ side it well might affect your view of those who did work with Woody after the accusations came out but haven’t denounced him, as well as those who might do so in the future. Are they themselves off your dance card?