Right now I’m painfully watching a Sci-Fi movie starring Lorenzo Lamas. Co-starring with him is a pretty and apparently talented young lady named Hayley DuMond. Poor, poor girl. I’ve seen video games with better effects (no, I really have). Who have you felt sorry for in the past in movies and TV?
Sean Connery in First Knight.
Matthew Broderick in Project X.
Both horrible, terrible movies.
I once imagined Sean Connery in a sequel to Highlander. I’m glad they never made that movie.
Well, the first one that comes to mind is actually the last movie I saw (lest, you wonder about my taste, please understand, I was being a good daddy in taking my young daughter to a picture she wanted to see.)
I refer, somewhat ashamedly, to Eragon and the unfortunate Jeremy Irons who, I can only presume, was blackmailed or in some other way coerced to co-star in it.
Ummm… how about Dennis Quaid, Ellen Barkin, John Goodman and the Dewey Balfa Band in The Big Easy? My teeth are still on edge.
Then again, how could I neglect to mention what is surely the best actor in the worst movie, but who, apparently, had no trouble descending down to the bottom of the pit when he co-starred in The Jazz Singer. Perhaps, if only someone had told Sir Laurence (Olivier) that there are differences, admittedly subtle, between Yiddish and Irish accents, he might have come across better. As it was, after sitting through that miscarriage of a film, I was the one who needed to sit shiva. I mourned the loss of a fine, fine actor.
The main actors in the Davinci code are all known to be pretty good.
Too bad the movie sucked royal ass. But we can blame that on the director…or Dan Brown.
Ewan MacGregor in the Star Wars prequels, although I felt worse for Natalie Portman because she did a crappy job.
Ice-T in Breakin’ 2: Electric Bugaloo… he was only there for a second, but he was there.
Harry Lennix in The Matrix Reloaded. Presumably he was paid well enough.
Henry Fonda, Michael Caine, Patty Duke, Slim Pickens and Olivia de Havilland in The Swarm. Of course, I felt much worse for me, because I was watching it.
Raul Julia in Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, although I’ve only seen the Mystery Science Theater version.
Donald Sutherland and Edward Norton in the Italian Job remake.
Bill Murray as the voice of Garfield.
(I confess I didn’t see it; I suspect pretty strongly that I don’t need to, though.)
Raul Julia’s last role was in Streetfighter with Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Not felt sorry for the genuinely good actor but felt sorry for the two higher rated actors who went against him and helped produce a totally unbalanced but, probably because of that lack of balance, an entertaining movie.
I refer to “The Specialist” starring Sylvester Stallone, with his nuanced neanderthal approach to acting, Sharon Stone, whose acting shone brightly in comparison to Sly, and finally, James Woods who despite chewing up the scenery showed both of the “star” actors up and actually managed to provide a lot of positive entertainment value to the whole sorry mess.
Yes, I know, I’m a bit warped.
I hope Gene Kelly was able to pay off whatever bills were coming due when he signed on for a godawful piece of crap like Xanadu.
Bela Lugosi’s Ed Wood movies would have to be the bottom of the barrel.
Christopher Walken in Gigli.
Is that the same reason he starred in Dungeons & Dragons?
I’m sure the Jeremy Irons blackmail somehow involved little pieces of green paper with pictures of dead white guys on them.
Sean Bean has made a career out of being the best thing in some godawful movies.
Bite your tongue, Sublight. That’s a cinematic classic, that is. 
And, I see from a current trailer that he’s starring in a pointless remake of The Hitcher, brought to us by the folks who made the recent pointless remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. God, I hate those people.
Neil Dickson in Biggles. A talented and immensely likeable actor in one of the most badly-scripted movies I’ve ever sat through.