What Actors Said About Their Biggest Flops

Budget: $48 million

Box Office: $20 million

Bob Hoskins did not enjoy making 1993's Super Mario Bros. During the production, he was stabbed four times, nearly drowned, electrocuted, and had his finger broken.

According to co-star John Leguizamo, nobody involved in the film remembers it fondly. In his autobiography, Leguizamo writes that he and Hoskins would drink Scotch between takes just to get through the days (which resulted in the aforesaid broken finger when Leguizamo drunkenly crashed the Mario brothers' van).

In 2007, Hoskins told the Guardian that Super Mario Bros. was the worst film he ever made: 

It was a f*ckin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! F*ckin' nightmare. F*ckin' idiots.

Budget: $100 million

Box Office: $82 million

In 2002, Halle Berry became the first Black performer to win an Academy Award for best actress. That was for starring in the critically acclaimed Monster's Ball. Three years later, she starred in the critically panned Catwoman, and was awarded the Golden Raspberry for worst actress. 

Berry could have ignored the insult; most actors do. Instead, she showed up to the Razzies to accept her award in person - and even brought along her Oscar. Berry's acceptance speech was merciless, sparing neither the writers nor the studio nor her (since-fired) manager for involving her in such a fiasco:

First of all, I want to thank Warner Bros. for putting me in a piece-of-sh*t, godawful movie. It was just what my career needed! I was at the top, and then Catwoman just plummeted me to the bottom. Love it! It’s hard being on top. It’s much better being on the bottom.

I want to thank my manager Vincent Cirrincione. This guy loves me... He loves me so much that he convinces me to do projects even when he knows they’re sh*t! That’s how much he really loves me. My only advice to you... is next time I do a movie, if I get a chance to do another movie, maybe you should read the script... Just counting the zeros behind the one really isn’t enough. You really got to read the script. I love you, man. Love you.

Budget: $46 million

Box Office: Figures vary - Box Office Mojo claims $5 million, while MSN $1.9 million.

What The Star Said: Infamously, Inchon has never been released on home video, so you'll need to canvass the bootleg market to sample this stinker for yourself. By most accounts, it's a mediocre-if-not-horrendous movie that can't be saved by its screen legend star.

Olivier was unashamed to admit he took the role entirely for the paycheck:  

People ask me why I'm playing in this picture. The answer is simple. Money, dear boy. I'm like vintage wine. You have to drink me quickly before I turn sour. I'm almost used up now and I can feel the end coming. That's why I'm taking money now. I've got nothing to leave my family but the money I can make from films. Nothing is beneath me if it pays well.

Budget: $45 million

Box Office: $33 million

Even the most ardent Dungeons & Dragons player will tell you, the 2000 movie is hot garbage. Little of its plot or characters has anything to do with the tabletop game's decades-spanning lore, and neither the script nor the effects do the actors any favors. But Jeremy Irons, who plays the film's central villain, makes a meal of the scenery.

After the film came out, Irons politely justified his casting by saying that, like Alec Guinness in Star Wars, he was brought on to lend the picture some gravitas. Years later, he finally dropped the pretense. As Marina Hyde reports in the Guardian:

"Are you kidding?" [Irons] inquired of those wondering why he'd taken the role. "I'd just bought a castle, I had to pay for it somehow."

Budget: $75 million

Box Office: $30 million

Jamie Lee Curtis has nothing good to say about 1999's sci-fi horror flick Virus:

That's a piece of sh*t movie. It's an unbelievably bad movie; just bad from the bottom. [...]

It was maybe the only time I've known something was just bad and there was nothing I could do about it. I just do the best I can and there have been bad movies that have been wildly successful and great movies that have tanked, so you never know. It was an independent precursor to all of these Marvel comics movies. I thought maybe that fan base would show up for it, but no.

Budget: $200 million

Box Office: $219 million

What The Star Said: Just looking at the numbers above, 2011's Green Lantern appears to have broken even - but those figures don't account for the film's marketing budget. By one account, Lantern lost Warner Bros. about $75 million.

But star Ryan Reynolds would ultimately have the last laugh. He parlayed Green Lantern's failure into major success for his fourth-wall-busting antihero Deadpool, who mocks the movie relentlessly in his 2016 and 2018 films.

According to Reynolds, Lantern's biggest issue was it didn't have a clear story to tell:

With Green Lantern, I don’t think anyone ever figured out exactly what it was. That isn’t to say the hundreds of men and women didn’t work their fingers to the bone to make it as good as possible. It also fell victim to the process in Hollywood which is like poster first, release date second, script last. At the time, it was a huge opportunity for me so I was excited to try and take part in it.