# The worst role an actor/actress has on their resume? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 11, 2015, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-role-an-actor-actress-has-on-their-resume/722259 "2015-06-11T15:38:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2015, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-role-an-actor-actress-has-on-their-resume/722259/81 "2015-06-16T02:53:37Z")
Not exactly the same definition of “worst role” but you have to acknowledge Kevin Costner in _The Big Chill._ Wait, you say, weren’t Costner’s scenes cut completely out of that movie? Not completely. Remember the opening when the undertaker is preparing the corpse for the funeral, and he carefully covers up the slashed wrists? Those are Costner’s wrists. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2015, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-role-an-actor-actress-has-on-their-resume/722259/82 "2015-06-16T03:24:37Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Nicolas Cage in the remake of “Left Behind”. > > It wouldn’t have been so bizarre if he was known to be a practicing Christian, but AFAIK he is not. I haven’t had the nerve to open my DVD of that but I still bet he is worse in The Wicker Man. He took the LB role after being persuaded by his brother, who is a minister. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2015, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-role-an-actor-actress-has-on-their-resume/722259/83 "2015-06-16T03:26:39Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > And for another embarrassing role, how about the late Christopher Lee as a supervillain singing about… booze?: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ntGVb\_wgx0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ntGVb_wgx0) Great voice, awful film- I just read his autobio a few months ago & he even makes positive comments about that P.O.S. in that it gave him the chance to show off his singing voice & to work with Alan Arkin. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2015, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-role-an-actor-actress-has-on-their-resume/722259/84 "2015-06-16T03:40:43Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > DeNiro always seemed to me like he thought he was funny, and wanted to play comedy roles. But he’s not very funny (to me, anyway). He was a great actor, who played some of the most iconic roles in film history. And then, he tried to go funny. > > I did think he was pretty good in Midnight Run, but that is the only movie I can think of where he actually made me laugh. Everything else, like “Analyze This” or “Meet The Parents”, he always seems to try too hard. I think Midnight Run was helped enormously by the fact that he was playing the straight guy in a “buddy action comedy.” If a serious actor, especially an intense/intimidating one, is going to try to veer into comedy, straight guy roles are where it’s at, because it allows him to more or less “be himself” in a comedic context. ---
**Author:** ![Sasori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@Sasori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sasori)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2015, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-role-an-actor-actress-has-on-their-resume/722259/85 "2015-06-16T14:12:07Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > Christopher Plummer as the Emperor of the Universe in [Starcrash.](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079946/) > > It is a cheesy, low-budget Italian ripoff of _Star Wars_, and Plummer is obviously just phoning it in for a quick paycheck. > > And yet he still gives a better performance than the rest of the cast combined. > > According to imdb, he filmed all his scenes in a single day, and got paid $30,000 (in 1978 dollars) for that one day’s work. As a capitalist, I heartily approve. What, no love for Joe Spinell’s most enthusiastically evil Count Zarth Arn? Cute Caroline Munro forced to work in a mine wearing a latex bikini and high heels wasn’t half bad either. How David Hasselhoff ever got to work again in the film industry after that movie debut is beyond be, however. But here’s another one for your capitalistic approval: Shelley Winters, Henry Fonda and John Huston stayed conveniently in the US to sleepwalk through their parts in the incredibly boring italian stinker Tentacles. No idea how much they were paid, but I hope it was worth it. Poor Boris Karloff made a handful of really bad, barely watchable mexican horror movies shortly before his death. Not that I thought less of him (I can only guess he needed the money after his expensive lung surgeries) but seeing this frail, obviously sick man clearly at death’s door being carted around in a wheelchair through that dreck made me cringe. Thankfully, they were released posthumously. Forest Whitaker shoudn’t have been in Battlefied Earth. Nobody should, but especially not him. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2015, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-role-an-actor-actress-has-on-their-resume/722259/86 "2015-06-16T14:22:16Z")
> [@Sasori](#): > > Poor Boris Karloff made a handful of really bad, barely watchable mexican horror movies shortly before his death. Not that I thought less of him (I can only guess he needed the money after his expensive lung surgeries) but seeing this frail, obviously sick man clearly at death’s door being carted around in a wheelchair through that dreck made me cringe. Thankfully, they were released posthumously. > > . Boris was no stranger to bad movies earlier in his career, either. There’s no other way to explain his playing the villain “Gruesome” in the poverty-row movie **Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome** , or his Mr. Wong movies, of **The Ape**. He made these while he was making his highly regarded Universal roles. You take your work where you can get it. ---
**Author:** ![Cartoonacy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/848f3c/32.png) [@Cartoonacy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartoonacy)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2015, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-role-an-actor-actress-has-on-their-resume/722259/87 "2015-06-16T15:59:01Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Lead role in what may have been a comic book franchise movie? It’s not hard to figure out why she took it. Turned out to be a dog, but she may not have known that DC does not grok female superheroes at all. Or maybe she thought their cluelessness wouldn’t translate into the movie. But it’s hard to see it as a total misjudgement, unlike most of the films being nominated here. I don’t even think of it as a comic book movie. It had no more in common with the similarly-named comic book character than _Starman_ or _The Karate Kid_. ---
**Author:** ![BurnMeUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@BurnMeUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BurnMeUp)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-role-an-actor-actress-has-on-their-resume/722259/88 "2015-06-18T22:14:59Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Everyone in Movie 43 - _Movie 43_ > > I can’t imagine what sort of blackmail material its perpetrator had on these people, but it was apparently worse than telling the world they were partially responsible for this atrocity. Makes me think of a Moe quote on the Simpsons “I done things I ain’t proud of. And the things I am proud of are disgusting.” ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-role-an-actor-actress-has-on-their-resume/722259/89 "2015-06-18T22:36:26Z")
John Houseman. Rollerball. ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-role-an-actor-actress-has-on-their-resume/722259/90 "2015-06-19T03:53:28Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Early role, so it doesn’t count. A better choice is his attempt at a zany farce “Oscar”. It’s a remake of a 1960s French film and has all the traditional hallmarks of a competent French farce…except that Stallone really doesn’t have the comedy chops to pull off farce, and the rest of the cast wasn’t spectacular either. Or Stallone’s attempts at both comedy and singing in “Rhinestone” (1984) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-role-an-actor-actress-has-on-their-resume/722259.md?page=4)