Richard Burton in Exorcist 2: The Heretic. (However, that movie’s trivia section at IMDb claims he did it so he could get the psychiatrist role in Equus.)
As already stated, the usual answer to “Why did they take those terrible parts” is “Money.”
Better fodder for accusations of “whoring” is when they do commercials, usually not seen in their own country, which is kind of an admission even they are embarrassed by it. Julia Roberts, Jodi Foster and Richard Gere, among many others, have done this. Olivier did Polaroid camera tv ads, and his contract stipulated they not be shown in England.
I’m not. If he didn’t understand the original, it’d be that much easier for him to want to change it.
By the way, if the “Executive Producer” as perk theory is correct, you’d think he would have taken it for a lot of his recent really bad movies. He hasn’t. See his IMDb page. If there’s any movie I’d expect to require extra perks it’d be The Avengers:
Gregory Peck in “The Omen” - rumor had it that he went for a percentage instead of salary, knowing the flick would be on TV forever, and that he could pass it on to his grandkids as an annuity.
I’ve seen an interview with Caine in which he admitted a deathly fear of not working, and claimed it’s common among actors. It’s hard enough to break in to the big time, and it’s easy to be forgotten if you take a break from it.
Chris Eccleston is a fantastic actor - for examples if you can track down the British TV mini-series “Our Friends in the North”, or the first ten episodes of “Cracker”. Actually, they are both worth getting hold of anyway, being utterly great.
He has said as much in multiple interviews. And he loved it that fans took an interest in the ridiculousness of it all and helped make it even more ridiculous.
It was the studio execs that thought it was going to be a huge hit because of that. Jackson knew exactly what he was getting into.