Star Derailing Role / Film Actresses

A No Recent Examples rule applies to this trope. Unless the star directly announces their retirement, examples shouldn't be added until five years after the relevant role.

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A-F

• Jessica Alba became a star in 2005 with Sin City and Fantastic Four (2005). However, her career went downhill later in the decade with the Box Office Bomb The Love Guru (though it did hurt others a lot more). Machete was a mild hit, while Spy Kids: All the Time in the World was profitable but became critically reviled. She now does low-budget Direct to Video films, though her business the Honest Company luckily means she isn't hurting for money. Her biggest acting gig since was starring on L.A.'s Finest, a TV show which lasted two seasons despite terrible reviews.
• Happy Birthday to Me arguably killed Melissa Sue Anderson's career. Fresh off the success of Little House on the Prairie, her starring in a B-grade slasher must not have looked too good on a resume for her career ever since has been filled with nothing but D-list projects at best. Despite this, it later became a Cult Classic among slasher aficionados.
• Pamela Anderson saw her film hopes get killed off when Barb Wire failed. What also hindered her ability to move forward as an actress was her turbulent marriage to Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee and the illegal release of their sex tape. The Baywatch star tried regaining esteem on television, but her small screen career also died off with the negative reception of Stacked (see Live-Action TV in the main page under Actresses).
• Julie Andrews suffered a massive blow to her career with the back-to-back failures of Star! and Darling Lili - where she tried to play something different from her wholesome Disney image. She took some time off after the latter's release, as it coincided with her marriage to Blake Edwards and she inherited his children to raise. She didn't star in another solid hit until Victor/Victoria, but her momentum was dented again when a botched throat surgery negatively affected her singing voice. A true Career Resurrection finally came in the 2000s with The Princess Diaries becoming a major success.
• Lucille Ball sunk her film career playing the title role in the musical Mame, a role which she was universally agreed to be greatly miscast. She spent the rest of her career in television, which luckily worked out fine until Life with Lucy (see Live-Action TV in the main page under Actresses).
• The critical and box office failures of I Dreamed of Africa and Bless the Child (and to a lesser extent, her bitter divorce from Alec Baldwin) derailed Kim Basinger's post-Oscar momentum. It didn't help that Basinger, after her Oscar-winning role in L.A. Confidential (which in itself provided a brief Career Resurrection), didn't release another movie for three years. With the exception of 2004's Cellular, Basinger hasn't had a major, mainstream starring vehicle since, more often appearing in limited released features or supporting roles in things like 8 Mile, The Nice Guys, and Charlie St. Cloud.
  • Basinger's career was originally killed off by a series of critical and box office failures (as well as getting sued for backing out of Boxing Helena^note Which in all likelihood, gave studios and producers further incentive to not want to work with her out of fear that she might again abruptly try to walk off the set. Then again, Boxing Helena ended up bombing so badly that it's generally agreed that backing out of the film did less damage to her career than actually appearing in it would have. It killed the film career of the actress that ended up taking the part, Sherilyn Fenn, she is listed below and rumors that she was difficult to work with elsewhere) following her success in 1989's Batman, starting with The Marrying Man and finally ending with Prêt-à-Porter as the coup de grace.
  • Basinger's participation in the Fifty Shades saga appears to have killed off her film career for good. As of this writing, Basinger hasn't booked any more acting roles since that time. And to add insult to injury, in 2017, Basinger was awarded the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress, for her turn as Elena Lincoln in Fifty Shades Darker.
• Kate Beckinsale burst onto the scene in the early 2000s and became an action star with Van Helsing and the Underworld franchise, working steadily in Hollywood for the next few years. While she had begun to step away from blockbusters to focus on smaller projects a couple of years before, the 2009 bombs Whiteout and Everybody's Fine killed her momentum. She disappeared from the limelight, not appearing in any films for another three years, and after the bombing of Total Recall (2012), she was doing direct-to-video films and voiceover work. A shot at a comeback came in the form of Love & Friendship (an adaptation of Jane Austen's Lady Susan) in 2016, but a pair of critically savaged bombs afterwards (The Disappointments Room and Underworld: Blood Wars) quickly destroyed the goodwill she had built.
• In 2008, Julie Benz starred as a co-lead in three films - Rambo IV, Saw V, and Punisher: War Zone. Each one of them received bad reviews from critics, which in the case of the first two films, cast a shadow over their moderate box office results. Punisher: War Zone, however, was a Box Office Bomb, which was enough to convince studios not to give her any more leading film roles. Benz instead went back to the frontier of television, where she got her start (as Darla in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel), and where she would continue to find success (most notably as Rita in Dexter).
• Halle Berry was a Double Subversion. Her role in Catwoman (2004) killed interest in the possible Die Another Day spinoff featuring her character Jinx, and was a factor in killing the budding sub-genre of female-fronted superhero films for over a decade (although Elektra deserves some of the credit, too). At the same time, Catwoman humbled her enough to graciously accept the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress in person, saving her career from a complete meltdown; she almost wasn't in X-Men: The Last Stand because she was demanding a higher salary and a bigger part. However, Perfect Stranger was the death knell for Halle as a leading lady. The birth of her daughter and the nasty custody battle that followed couldn't have done anything to help. Cloud Atlas seemed like it could have been a Career Resurrection for her, but despite positive reviews, it ended up bombing at the box office instead; it didn't help that several actors, Berry included, performed in Yellowface during the segment "An Orison of Sonmi~451". Berry's filmography since then has consisted primarily of supporting roles in various franchise flicks like X-Men: Days of Future Past, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.
• Jessica Biel became popular due to 7th Heaven becoming a hit, and while her attempts at stardom were rarely successful with critics, she was comfortably on the B-list during the '00s. Then she made the Total Recall remake and Playing For Keeps in 2012, which both flopped at the box office. After those two movies came out, she has never starred in another major Hollywood film again, instead sticking to independent and direct-to-video films and marrying Justin Timberlake. She's returned to television with The Sinner, and has gained a lot of new popularity from her Adam Westing on Bojack Horseman, where she actually told the writers to go even harder on her than they planned.
• Rachel Bilson saw most of the hype she got with The O.C. wither when she starred in the underperforming The Last Kiss and Jumper, but it truly dispelled when the 2010 romantic comedy Waiting for Forever flopped. Although she had another success on TV when Hart of Dixie became a minor hit, she hasn't appeared in any films ever since 2014.
• Alexis Bledel, fresh off Gilmore Girls ending its run in 2007 and the success of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movies, promptly had her film career sunk with the back-to-back failures of The Good Guy and Post Grad in 2009. Thankfully, her career in television has remained prosperous with the Gilmore Girls revival series A Year in the Life and her Emmy Award-winning performance in The Handmaid's Tale.
• In 1992, Lorraine Bracco was coasting on the hype from her role in the 1990 Martin Scorsese gangster classic Goodfellas, which netted her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress that year. Hollywood immediately considered Bracco for numerous high-profile roles, including Selina Kyle/Catwoman in Batman Returns. She instead turned that role and several others down for three of 1992's biggest flops – Radio Flyer, Traces of Red, and Medicine Man. Medicine Man devolved into a particularly notorious debacle when Bracco flounced onto the Mexican jungle set incessantly grumbling to director John McTiernan about the filming conditions from the local food to the turbulent weather and problems she perceived with the script, with her behavior being enabled by a retinue of assistants. Hostility on the Set fomented between the two and leading man Sean Connery (who despite having complaints about filming conditions as well, was reportedly more sensible and civil when he voiced them). Naturally, the shoot became torturous for cast and crew alike. All three films became critically mauled Box Office Bombs, while Bracco would receive a joint Razzie Worst Actress nomination for her performances in Medicine Man and Traces of Red. She would later recover some esteem with her role in the HBO television series The Sopranos, but her film career remains inert.
• Lucille Bremer was a rising star in The '40s who debuted to much acclaim in Meet Me in St. Louis. Unfortunately, her first leading role, Yolanda and the Thief, was a Box Office Bomb, mostly because its surrealist fantasy themes were a bit too much for wartime audiences. She shouldered most of the blame and MGM lost interest in promoting her.
• Amanda Bynes got famous at a young age for the Nickelodeon series All That and The Amanda Show. After The Amanda Show was cancelled, she went on to star in The WB sitcom What I Like About You, and also starred appearing in many movies. However, besides Hairspray (2007), most of her movies weren't successful critically or financially. Sydney White was the final straw, as it bombed at the box office and got terrible reviews. She never got another leading role after that, only doing a supporting part three years later in Easy A, a supporting role in a Lifetime movie, and a guest spot on Family Guy before retiring from acting altogether and suffering a high-profile mental breakdown in 2013, which resulted in her being put under the conservatorship of her parents. She managed to recover from the breakdown after successful psychiatric treatment and going to fashion school. In a 2017 interview (her first major interview in years), she stated that she is planning to return to acting; however, she has no roles booked since then.
• Kate Capshaw first became known for playing Willie Scott in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, although her performance and character are one of the least-liked parts of the film. She kept working for the next several years before starring in and producing The Love Letter, which tanked critically and commercially. After being in a couple of Made-for-TV films, she retired from acting in 2001. Nowadays, she mainly supports her husband and Temple of Doom director Steven Spielberg.
• Glitter and its accompanying soundtrack steadily brought Mariah Carey to her personal lowest point in 2001, which exacerbated her already declining mental health. In fact, Carey suffered a nervous breakdown and was subsequently hospitalized weeks before the film's release. The film was a poorly received disaster that made $5 million despite having a $22 million budget. Carey spent some years out of the spotlight before making a comeback musically with her 2005 album The Emancipation of Mimi. While her time as a leading lady began and ended with Glitter, she did recover some critical esteem with a supporting role in the 2009 film Precious.
• Charisma Carpenter struggled to land any major roles after Angel ended its run in 2004. She did score a minor part in The Expendables, but unfortunately followed up its sequel with a starring role in 2015's Bound. This Mockbuster version of Fifty Shades of Grey appears to have extinguished her film career, as she's been relegated mostly to guest appearances and TV movies ever since.
• Julie Christie saw her stature as an A-list actress wither away for years after the critical ridicule and financial failure of Demon Seed. She wouldn't recover until The '90s with an Academy Award nomination for Afterglow. She later got another Oscar nomination for Away From Her and briefly appeared in Harry Potter, two signs of a relatively healthy career.
• Rachael Leigh Cook lost most of her star power with Josie and the Pussycats (2001). While the failure of that film was clearly the biggest blow to her career, she was unlucky enough to play supporting roles in two other flops, Antitrust and Texas Rangers, that same year.^note Texas Rangers had actually been filmed back in 1999, but was only released in 2001. The only significant roles she's had since then are the voice of Tifa Lockhart in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII and Kingdom Hearts II, playing the female lead in TNT's summer procedural Perception (2012), and (since 2016) various Hallmark Channel movies.
• Sofia Coppola isn't an actress by trade to begin with and was a last-minute replacement for The Godfather Part III after Winona Ryder fell ill. However, her heavily criticized performance as Michael Corleone's daughter, as well as charges of nepotism (since her father was the director), effectively ended Sofia's acting career. However, she has enjoyed much greater success following in her father's footsteps as a director in her own right – which, given her entry on Creator Killer, is saying a lot.
• Joan Crawford's last notable film was What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?; while it was a Sleeper Hit, the attempts to recreate the momentum with Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (re-teaming her with rival Bette Davis) resulted in Joan being dropped halfway through filming because of erratic behavior. For the next decade, she only was able to get work in B-horror movies and guest spots on TV shows. Her reputation for being drunk and difficult to work with likely had something to do with it. She also tried to take over a role intended for her daughter on a soap opera, and reports described her drunken performance as so bad they would need to patch it together in editing. The final straw, however, arrived in 1970 with Trog, a British monster movie about a solitary Ice Age caveman (or "troglodyte") discovered by Crawford's anthropologist character and brought into civilization, only to later go on a killing spree. This sci-fi slasher was her last film and its failure, along with further, sporadic guest spots on TV, proved an ignominious end for the legendary star's screen career.
• Elisha Cuthbert got an "it girl" bump from being on 24 plus films like The Girl Next Door and House of Wax, until the 2007 Torture Porn film Captivity flopped. Her work afterwards were primarily bit parts and indie films, with her most notable roles being on the sitcom Happy Endings, and a major role in The Ranch.
• Miley Cyrus headlined the 2012 English-language remake of the French teen comedy LOL, which barely got a theatrical release and minimal promotion. The few that saw it weren't very fond of it, which assured that her Hannah Montana days have long passed. Another movie Cyrus made around the same time, So Undercover, went straight to DVD in North America on February 2013, after also receiving a very limited theatrical release abroad the past December. She focused on music since then, besides a 2019 episode of Black Mirror in what was a dark parody of her most famous TV role.
• Brooklyn Decker, already famous as a model, had much expected of her before she starred in Battleship. That film, unfortunately, was both a critical and commercial disaster, effectively ending any chance she had at becoming a movie star. Nowadays, she mainly does Direct to Video films and short-lived TV shows.
• Mr. Wrong, The Love Letter, and Goodbye Lover managed to derail the film career of Ellen DeGeneres, who, despite already having a successful stand-up career and a popular sitcom on ABC, couldn't break into major Hollywood motion pictures. Her only major project worth noting since then is the role of Dory in Finding Nemo and its sequel, Finding Dory. Her television career remained strong, however, in part thanks to the success of her nationally-syndicated talk show until 2020, when allegations of her show being a hostile workplace filled with racism and sexual harassment were discovered.
• Rebecca De Mornay, after initially becoming a major star in The '80s with Risky Business, Runaway Train, The Trip to Bountiful, etc., almost killed her momentum by playing the lead role in And God Created Woman, a 1988 film by Roger Vadim that shares a title with one of his old films starring Brigitte Bardot, but has almost no similarities beyond that. De Mornay's film wasn't as gainful nor as loved as Bardot's, with De Mornay even getting a Razzie nomination for Worst Actress. She was off the grid for some years before she tried mounting a comeback with Backdraft and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, only for that chance to be snuffed for good following the failure of Never Talk To Strangers. Afterwards, she's mostly done television or obscure features. Taking up an executive producer credit on that film probably didn't help. Her co-star Antonio Banderas luckily moved past that failure after landing roles in Evita and The Mask of Zorro immediately afterwards.
• Most of Bo Derek's career as a leading lady outside of her debut in 10 (1979) were in vanity projects directed by her husband John Derek. The last of these, the awful 1989 film Ghosts Can't Do It, well and truly sank her as a lead actress (and proved a Creator Killer for her husband). She still remains slightly prolific, but mostly in TV and occasional supporting roles in movies.
• Cameron Diaz was very popular in the 1990s and 2000s. However, by the 2010s her spark over viewers began fizzling out when The Green Hornet, Gambit, and The Counselor failed to enrapture them. This led to her starring in three critically hated films in a row in 2014: The Other Woman, Sex Tape (which also derailed Jason Segel's career; see Film Actors), and Annie (which impacted Quvenzhané Wallis as well; see below). She promptly took a hiatus from acting for eight years, coming out of retirement in 2022 to star in an action-comedy for Netflix.
• Hilary Duff, having gained plenty of hype from the success of her hit Disney Channel series Lizzie McGuire and her flourishing pop music career, attempted to bring her golden touch to film, in the early to mid-2000s. Although she had some financial hits (Agent Cody Banks, Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), A Cinderella Story) which were popular with tweens and early teenagers, they weren't very well-received. Soon, even her target demographic's interest began to wane when duds like Raise Your Voice, The Perfect Man, and Material Girls failed as badly at the box office as they did with critics. Disney's growing glut of shows and direct-to-TV films, most notably High School Musical, damaged her career further as attention turned towards them instead and away from her work. Duff promptly retreated to TV, where she would spend the next few years in guest parts. She got renewed attention in 2015 as a main cast member on Younger, and remained onboard that show for its entire run throughout. Eventually, she tried making a comeback in film while on a break between seasons. However, the project she chose, The Haunting of Sharon Tate, was widely reviled in 2019 and was compared unfavorably to another film about Sharon Tate released that year. Duff's performance as the title role earned her a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress, seemingly killing her film career for good. She was able to rebound with How I Met Your Father and still has an extremely vocal fanbase who are now adults, so time will tell if she can pull off a comeback in films.
• Faye Dunaway with her infamous performance of the above-mentioned Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. Prior to that, she was in Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, and Network. And after? Supergirl and Dunston Checks In. Dunaway's performance was especially polarizing, earning the acclaim of the notoriously Caustic Critic Pauline Kael on one hand but a Razzie award for Worst Actress on the other. Despite having become a Cult Classic since, Dunaway has had nothing but bad things to say about the film and her performance, and in her later years refused to even talk about it.
• Due to a string of Pepsi commercials, Hallie Kate Eisenberg became a big star for a short time. However, her movie career and 15 minutes were killed by Paulie and Bicentennial Man underperforming at the box office. After those two movies, she only did two theatrical movies — Beautiful, which only received a limited release, and How To Eat Fried Worms, which came out seven years after her last wide-release film. After those two movies, she was relegated to TV movies and independent films before vanishing in 2010, just as her brother Jesse was breaking out.
• Thanks to Tomcats and Thir13en Ghosts, Shannon Elizabeth's film career has essentially been reduced to supporting roles, American Pie sequels, and Direct to Video horror films. Her main income nowadays comes from playing professional poker.
• Sherilyn Fenn saw her career fall after Boxing Helena. She was riding high after Twin Peaks and a praised film adaptation of Of Mice and Men, but she went back to television for good after Boxing Helena bombed.
  • Boxing Helena was also a very near-miss for Kim Basinger, who decided to break her contract to avoid starring in the film. She was sued into bankruptcy but sustained no career damage, and won an Academy Award only a few years later, though such success didn't last for long (see above).
• Pamelyn Ferdin, a child star in the '60s and '70s, invoked this by starring in the 1978 slasher The Toolbox Murders, as her mother had pushed her into acting and she'd wanted to quit for a while by that point. Burning her "good girl" image to the ground by starring in a sleazy, lurid Exploitation Film certainly did the job, as she's mostly had only a few small roles since then (most notably voicing Shelley Kelley on the animated series Detention) and focused most of her time on animal rights activism.
• Linda Fiorentino made her breakthrough in the 1994 neo-noir The Last Seduction, to the point where critics said that she deserved an Academy Award nomination. (In fact, the only reason she didn't get one was that the film's producers premiered the film on HBO before releasing it in theaters, thus disqualifying it from any Oscar nominations.) Fiorentino received further fame for playing the female leads in Men in Black and Dogma respectively. Then it all fell apart in 2000 when her films What Planet Are You From? and Where the Money Is both flopped critically and commercially. Her next film Liberty Stands Still went straight to video, and she didn't do another film for seven years after that. It certainly didn't help when Kevin Smith, in the DVD Commentary for Dogma, talked about how difficult she had been to work with, to the point where he wished he had cast Janeane Garofalo (his second choice for the role) instead. Her being difficult to work with was also rumored as to why she's absent from the Men in Black sequel, which has a throwaway line explaining her absence from it. (She has only said she was "unavailable" for it.)
• Crista Flanagan's performance in later seasons of MADtv (1995) was promising, showing she could potentially be a great comedian despite the series' decline in popularity and quality. Then she made her feature film debut in 2007's Epic Movie, and became the most recurring actress in films made by its directors Seltzer and Friedberg afterwards. Giving the film industry such an appalling first impression soon doomed her to D-list obscurity and ensured MADtv remains her peak in terms of media exposure, for she never had a role in a feature film ever since. She has since taken on bit roles in various web and TV series, most notably Mad Men. Flanagan has now moved on to become a Program Director for an acting school, presumably because acting opportunities for her are becoming scarce.
• Bridget Fonda was afflicted by this with Monkeybone and Kiss of the Dragon. After their release in 2001 (which preceded her marriage to film composer Danny Elfman and her suffering grievous injuries from a nearly fatal car accident two years later), Fonda retired from acting to be a full-time wife and mother.
• Claire Forlani played numerous love interests and supporting roles in several major movies of The '90s: including Mallrats, The Rock, and Meet Joe Black. However, she appeared in many flops beginning in 1999 with Mystery Men and eventually bottoming out with In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale in 2007. She's rarely been in a Hollywood film since that last one, mostly sticking to independent fare and TV shows. That said, she found success on TV with recurring roles on CSI: NY and NCIS: Los Angeles.
• Megan Fox became the latest in a long line of "it girl" sex symbols due to her role in the Transformers franchise. Her follow-up was the teen horror-comedy Jennifer's Body in which she played a demon-possessed Alpha Bitch; while the film itself (written and directed by women) was rooted heavily in feminist satire, 20th Century Fox's marketing campaign for it focused almost entirely on Fox's hotness, alienating its intended audience who wrote it off as a campy sex romp. Jennifer's Body has since been rediscovered, but at the time, not only did it disappoint at the box office and with the critics, but her performance was singled out as one of the film's bigger problems. After that, she invoked Godwin's Law in her criticism of Transformers director Michael Bay, directly resulting in Mikaela dumping Sam before the third film, and her follow-ups Jonah Hex and Passion Play were disasters. She was largely relegated to supporting roles afterwards, often playing the "hot chick". She tried to get her career back on track by reuniting with Bay for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), but while that film was a hit (negative reviews notwithstanding), the sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows was a Box Office Bomb that put both the franchise and Fox's comeback attempt on ice.
  • The failure of Jennifer's Body also badly damaged the Hollywood career of its writer Diablo Cody. See Creator Killer for more.
• Pamela Franklin was a popular child star in The '60s and her critically acclaimed performance as Sandy in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie seemed to be her adult Star-Making Role. Sadly, The Legend of Hell House typecast her as a scream queen. Franklin primarily did Made-for-TV Movie and TV appearances afterwards, before retiring from acting in 1981.

G-K

• Greta Garbo was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood in The '30s. Initially, she starred primarily in dramas like Grand Hotel (1932) and Anna Karenina (1935), but in 1939 she starred in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy Ninotchka, which was a big hit. So MGM decided to cast Garbo in another comedy, Two-Faced Woman (1941). The movie was a critically-panned dud, and Garbo retired from acting. Although there were attempts to revive her career (notably, the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard was offered to her first, but she rejected it, and subsequently Gloria Swanson got the role), she never appeared in a movie again and lived as a recluse until her death in 1990.
• Jennifer Garner saw her career take a hit with Elektra. Not helping matters was Alias ending simultaneously. She found herself in supporting roles and very few leading parts, and those that she did headline weren't big enough hits to change her momentum. Though she's had some well-received roles, she has yet to regain the former prominence she had.
• Lorraine Gary quit acting in 1979 after starring on TV and film throughout The '70s, most notably starring in Jaws and its sequel. She came out of retirement eight years later to reprise her role in Jaws: The Revenge, which got unanimously awful reviews and is deemed one of the worst films of all time. Although turning in a profit that was fine, it still is the lowest-grossing Jaws film. Gary promptly returned to retirement.
• Sarah Michelle Gellar struggled to sustain her A-list Teen Idol career after Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended. While The Grudge and its sequel were hits, The Return and Southland Tales both bombed. Those two films served as the finishing blow that drove her back to television in 2006, with her subsequent work either going Direct to Video or not being released in the US. Her television career would be derailed itself after the mixed reception Ringer and The Crazy Ones got.
• Whoopi Goldberg's career as an A-list star faded into center square and moderator on The View gradually, but it can be argued that the catalyst was Theodore Rex. Before that, she starred in The Color Purple, Ghost, The Lion King, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Sister Act. And after it? Not a whole lot. Whoopi only completed the movie because New Line Cinema threatened to sue her if she walked off the film – and after seeing Kim Basinger get sued into bankruptcy in the fiasco that was Boxing Helena, she decided she could live with the shame if it meant keeping the lights on. Theodore Rex was initially intended as a theatrical release but went straight to home video instead, making it the most expensive Direct to Video movie ever made. That's certainly something to keep in mind if you dare to watch it.
  • Whoopi suffered an earlier career derailment in the late-80s after an attempt to turn her into an action-comedy star led to box-office failures such as Fatal Beauty and Burglar. An attempt to recreate the success of The Color Purple with Goldberg in the lead became Clara's Heart, which also did poorly and is mostly best known as the film debut of Neil Patrick Harris. Her Academy Award-winning performance in Ghost led to a comeback lasting a couple of years.
• Heather Graham became famous in The '90s thanks to Twin Peaks, plus supporting roles in Boogie Nights and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. However, a chain of critically panned flops released between 2001 and 2002 erased her chances of becoming a bigger star. The first, Say It Isn't So, made just $12 million on a $25 million budget and drew disdain for its Audience-Alienating Premise (about two young lovebirds who discover they might actually be long-lost siblings). Her next lead role was in From Hell opposite Johnny Depp; while that film wasn't as hated, Graham drew the brunt of criticism for her "attempts" at an English accent that went all over the place. Graham's first film of 2002, Killing Me Softly, has the dubious honor of being one of a handful of films with a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The final straw was The Guru, a movie that bombed so horribly at the box office that she scarcely has been seen in a mainstream film since. Graham mostly sticks to independent films and TV shows nowadays, aside from a minor role in The Hangover.
• Jennifer Grey, with hits like Red Dawn (1984), Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Dirty Dancing, rose in The '80s. But her luck went south quickly when she underwent a rhinoplasty which made her almost unrecognizable to fans and friends alike, reducing her to flops as Bloodhounds of Broadway and Wind along with several made-for-TV films and guest appearances. Grey's biggest gig since then was competing on Dancing with the Stars in fall 2010 with what was a clear nod to her Dirty Dancing role, and later being crowned the season's winner.
• Melanie Griffith had hers with Cecil B. Demented. In The '80s, she was a star with films like Body Double, Something Wild, and Working Girl. Once The '90s reached, Griffith's career began faltering when she starred in poorly-received Box Office Bombs like The Bonfire of the Vanities, Shining Through, A Stranger Among Us, Milk Money, and Mulholland Falls. 2000's Cecil B. Demented marked the end of her run as a leading lady.
• Alyson Hannigan hasn't healed her film career from the Seltzer and Friedberg parody Date Movie in 2006, after which she wouldn't appear in a film (besides a voice role in Farce of the Penguins) for nearly five years. She, however, was already one of the stars of How I Met Your Mother by then, ensuring her television career (with which she discovered success with Buffy the Vampire Slayer) would continue unscathed.
• Jessica Harper had some success in The '70s, with lead roles in the Cult Classic Phantom of the Paradise and the horror film Suspiria. The '80s, however, weren't as good to her, with Stardust Memories, one of the biggest commercial flops from Woody Allen at the time, followed by Shock Treatment, a standalone sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show that failed to leave as big a mark as its predecessor.
• Anne Heche got lots of good press in The '90s for Wag the Dog, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Six Days, Seven Nights - which seemed to spell that her first leading role Volcano's Box Office Bomb status was just a fluke. However, she was unlucky enough to be chosen as Marion Crane in Gus Van Sant's infamous Shot-for-Shot Remake of Psycho. While it didn't damage the careers of others involved (Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen), her other starring role Return to Paradise was an Acclaimed Flop. Her coming out as LGBT apparently cost her roles - she later confessed she was told that directors didn't want to cast her because of it. Not helping matters was her deteriorating mental health resulting from years of childhood abuse. She never had a lead role in a theatrically released film past the '90s and mostly did indie films and television for the rest of her life.
• Katherine Heigl got a lot of attention while starring in Grey's Anatomy, and got some high-profile film work in movies like Knocked Up and 27 Dresses. She was on her way to becoming a household name before leaving Grey's Anatomy to pursue more film work, and went on to star in such flops as Killers, New Year's Eve^note which also helped kill the film career of Ashton Kutcher; see Film Actors, One for the Money, and The Big Wedding. Heigl started doing commercial and voiceover work afterwards, and unsuccessfully tried to make a comeback on Grey's Anatomy. In fall 2014, she starred in the TV drama State of Affairs, which was dismissed by critics, DOA in the ratings, and canned after one year. She went on to star in the CBS drama Doubt, which was canceled after 2 episodes. Her reputation for being very difficult to work with, in no small part thanks to her mother/manager, has had a lot to do with the post-Grey's fizzling of her film career.
• The 1970 film version of Song of Norway might have made Florence Henderson (who had already played Maria in the touring production of The Sound of Music) into the next Julie Andrews. Its critical and box-office failure, especially compared with the runaway success of The Brady Bunch, effectively killed her big-screen career as soon as it began; her next appearance in a theatrical film was a literally nameless supporting part in Shakes the Clown over two decades later. (Her Norwegian co-star, Toralv Maurstad, more predictably went back to making movies in his home country.)
• Natasha Henstridge became famous by playing a naked alien babe in Species. She also had success with The Whole Nine Yards. However, the failure of Ghosts of Mars derailed her star power for she has done TV and independent films exclusively since then.
• Katharine Hepburn was a rising star in The '30s but became known for her prickly attitude, tomboyish behavior (in a time when such wasn't nearly as socially accepted), and combative relationship with the press, which earned her the nickname "Katharine of Arrogance". Her unpopular public image caught up with her with a string of box-office disappointments in the latter half of the decade, with The Last Straw being Bringing Up Baby in 1938. While it's now regarded as one of her best films, and it did indeed receive praise from critics at the time, it bombed at the box office and many observers blamed Hepburn for its failure, with the Independent Theatre Owners of America even branding her box-office poison. Afterwards, RKO Pictures started offering her roles in B-movies, leading her to buy out her contract. In the words of film academic Andrew Britton, "No other star has emerged with greater rapidity or with more ecstatic acclaim. No other star, either, has become so unpopular so quickly for so long a time." Fortunately, she rebounded in 1940 with The Philadelphia Story, which helped her rebuild her public image by playing to her reputation as a stuck-up socialite (the film opens with her getting knocked over by Cary Grant and falling on her ass).
• Jennifer Love Hewitt became famous thanks to Party of Five and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Though the latter film's sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer was torn to shreds by critics, it still did decently at the box office. She continued finding success with Can't Hardly Wait, Heartbreakers, and the live-action Garfield films, but her film career was practically killed off in 2007 when Shortcut to Happiness flopped. This intended adaptation of the short story The Devil and Daniel Webster co-starring Alec Baldwin (who also directed) and Anthony Hopkins had Hewitt play a Gender Flipped version of Satan. It actually finished filming back in 2001 but was plagued with financial and legal issues that left it on The Shelf of Movie Languishment for six years. The finished project, extensively re-cut against Baldwin's wishes in post-production, received a limited release without any fanfare, and got bad reviews from the minuscule number of people who did see it. While Hewitt's male co-stars were able to move past this flop^note Baldwin was already starring on the wildly popular sitcom 30 Rock by the time this film was released, and regained esteem as a supporting actor on film with Blue Jasmine, Still Alice, and later Mission: Impossible sequels (Shortcut to Happiness remains the only film he has directed, though); Hopkins starred as Odin in Thor and its sequels in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in addition to turning in Oscar-nominated or winning work in The Two Popes and The Father, she hasn't appeared in a major Hollywood film besides making a cameo in Tropic Thunder. Hewitt retreated to television afterwards, where she's found a tiny measure of success (with starring roles in Ghost Whisperer, Criminal Minds, and currently 9-1-1).
• Katie Holmes has had several ups and downs throughout her screen career. She, having initially garnered some recognition on television for her role as Joey Potter on Dawson's Creek, tried to lengthen her success onto film with a few critical and/or financial hits, including The Ice Storm (which was her actual screen debut, having filmed it a year before getting her role on Dawson's Creek), Wonder Boys, The Gift, Phone Booth, and Pieces of April. Unfortunately, her first role after Dawson's Creek ended in 2003 was in 2004's First Daughter. The romantic comedy-drama became a Box Office Bomb (budgeted around $30 million, it made slightly more than $10 million in its theatrical run) and was panned by moviegoers. Although she had success the following year with roles in Batman Begins and Thank You for Smoking, her performances were widely considered one of the weakest parts in both movies (with her role in Batman Begins even getting her a Razzie nomination for Worst Supporting Actress ^note which might explain why they recast her character with Maggie Gyllenhaal for The Dark Knight). None of her films since besides Logan Lucky in 2017 have been able to grab a similar level of high acclaim, with her starring role opposite Adam Sandler (see Film Actors) in Jack and Jill being a particularly low point. Her performance in it got her another Razzie nomination in the same category before she got nominated for Worst Actress with 2020's Brahms: The Boy II and The Secret: Dare To Dream.
• Julianne Hough was hyped as a star in the making after initially emerging as one of the pro dancers on Dancing with the Stars then starring in the successful Footloose remake, but the failure of Rock of Ages battered her career badly. Her next blockbusters Safe Haven and Dirty Grandpa were hated far more while her only major screen work since has been returning to DWTS, this time as a judge then later as a co-host. She attempted an acting comeback as part of Fox's Grease Live! in 2016, which premiered without fanfare.
• Bryce Dallas Howard, hyped as a rising star by being the daughter of Ron Howard, had much expected of her and made an immediate impression starring in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village (2004). But her stock quickly fell after playing the title role of Lady in the Water, a critically panned Box Office Bomb which came out amid the beginning of the backlash against Shyamalan. She later carved a niche as a character actor with roles in The Help and 50/50 (2011), but never fully satisfied her hype. However, her role in Jurassic World made her more famous than she ever had been before. She's also started to follow in her father's footsteps by carving out a respectable directing career, with an acclaimed documentary (Dads) and two well-received episodes of The Mandalorian under her belt, plus an upcoming remake of Flight of the Navigator.
• Olivia Hussey received a lot of hype for her debut in Romeo and Juliet (1968) and was immediately offered roles in major films. As she was only sixteen and extremely agoraphobic, she alienated producers of True Grit and Anne of the Thousand Days through youthful nerves. She did maintain critical acclaim with her follow-ups in All the Right Noises and The Summertime Killer, despite them being smaller indies. However, she killed a lot of momentum by starring in the legendary failure that was the Lost Horizon remake. Not helping matters was her turbulent relationship with Christopher Jones taking a toll on her mental health. She did manage to regain some goodwill with Jesus of Nazareth and Black Christmas (1974) (which became a Cult Classic), and managed to be part of the All-Star Cast in Death on the Nile.
• Robin Johnson's career was torpedoed by her debut appearance, Times Square, less because of its critical and commercial performance (neither of which were particularly stellar) than because of a three-year exclusive contract with the Robert Stigwood Organization. Her hands were more or less tied for the three years; she couldn't accept any offers to appear in anything, and yet RSO wasn't offering her anything. Even after her contract expired, she couldn't find any steady work as an actress and eventually just gave up.
• Milla Jovovich's career started with Two Moon Junction, which was a critical disaster but was successful at the box office. She then starred in flops such as Return to the Blue Lagoon and Kuffs. Dazed and Confused was a critical success that was Vindicated by History, but a box office failure at the time. After that, Jovovich disappeared from movies and focused on her musical career, attaining success with her 1994 art rock album The Divine Comedy. She didn't appear in another movie until 1997's The Fifth Element, which was successful. But alas, she starred in two more flops, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc and Zoolander, though again, the latter became a Cult Classic later on. While her career picked up again with the success of the Resident Evil Film Series, any movie not part of that franchise, like No Good Deed (2002), Ultraviolet (2006), A Perfect Getaway, The Fourth Kind, and The Three Musketeers (2011), more often than not flop. She now makes Direct to Video films.
• Ashley Judd suffered this in 2004 with Twisted and De-Lovely. The films' poor critical and commercial receipts signified the end of her headlining days as a leading lady. Though Judd since has focused on modestly-budgeted ensemble and independent features, she's pretty much better known nowadays for her political activism and for being one of many women who came forward to out former employer and disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein as a serial sexual harasser (which in turn led to revelations that Weinstein played a part in her career decline by blackballing her from several major projects, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as revenge for her rejecting his sexual advances).
• Victoria Justice headlined Nickelodeon's Victorious and appeared to be a star on the rise before Fun Size. After that film flopped, the show was cancelled and Nickelodeon severed ties with Justice. The fact that her Victorious co-star Ariana Grande became more popular than she was only rubbed further salt into the wound. Justice veered towards a darker direction with Eye Candy, but that show was canned after one season due to low ratings despite positive reviews. Since then, her career has been reduced to low-profile indie films.
• Diane Keaton was a highly-respected actress with an Academy Award and adequate drawing power before Because I Said So and Mama's Boy were released in 2007. But after those two movies got abysmal reviews (with the former getting Keaton nominated for a Worst Actress Golden Raspberry Award which she lost to the below-mentioned Lindsay Lohan) and the latter became a Box Office Bomb, she has mostly starred in flops.
• Nicole Kidman saw her career falter with the failures of Bewitched, The Golden Compass, and Australia. While she did survive those disasters, her next big project, Grace of Monaco, may have finally ended her reign as an A-lister after it suffered a bad Troubled Production, ultimately skipping theaters altogether and being dumped straight to Lifetime. Luckily, she recovered quickly with supporting roles in Paddington (2014), Lion (which got her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress), and Aquaman (which later became her highest-grossing movie). Kidman later won two Emmy Awards for acting in and producing Big Little Lies, then got another Oscar nomination for Best Actress playing the aforesaid Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos.
• After leaving Smallville, Kristin Kreuk saw her potential film career go down the toilet when she headlined Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li as the title heroine. It, hated by audiences, critics, and Street Fighter fans alike, became a notorious Box Office Bomb that grossed about $13 million on a $50 million budget and received uniformly negative reviews. Kreuk hasn't appeared in a mainstream film since, promptly returning to television with the CW's Beauty and the Beast (2012).
• Lisa Kudrow managed to parlay the hype she got from Friends into a decent film career with successes like Romy and Michele's High School Reunion and Analyze This. Unfortunately, starring opposite Damon Wayans (see Film Actors) in the 2003 romantic comedy Marci X has apparently disinclined Hollywood from having her headline a major blockbuster again. While she's kept working on various films like Easy A, Neighbors (2014), and Booksmart, other actors, not her, were often the main audience draw. She has continued finding success on TV with The Comeback, netting a few Emmy nominations.
• Mumta Kulkarni was a rising star in Bollywood during The '90s, playing the love interest in several large hit films like Aashiq Awara, Waqt Hamara Hai. and Krantiveer. But then she starred in China Gate. By most accounts, she and the director did not get along, and rumor has it the only reason she wasn't fired outright was that a gangster intervened on her behalf. Regardless, the film flopped and her career soon dried up. In recent years, she's been in the news for allegations of drug smuggling, so her career is probably over.

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• After getting an Oscar nomination for Chicago, Queen Latifah received many starring and supporting roles through the 2000s. But starting around 2010 with Valentine's Day, her career began to slip as her next films (Just Wright, The Dilemma, Joyful Noise, etc.) were released to far less glowing reception as her prior work. For several years, her only mainstream releases came from reprising her role as Ellie in the Ice Age movies. Besides that, her only high-profile work was hosting her own short-lived talk show. However, she got acclaim for playing Bessie Smith in HBO's Bessie. It then won four Emmy Awards including one for her as a producer, and she was also nominated for her performance. Later, she had her first mainstream success in years after Girls Trip became a Sleeper Hit in 2017.
• Jennifer Lawrence, in an interview with Kyle Buchanan for The New York Times, cited 2016's Passengers as the film that ended her run as a Hollywood "it girl" and made her seriously start questioning her career choices. Lawrence's career exploded in the early '10s thanks to both hit franchise blockbusters like The Hunger Games and X-Men: First Class and acclaimed performances in prestige dramas like Winter's Bone, Silver Linings Playbook (which won her an Oscar), and American Hustle, but by mid-decade, a combination of declining reviews for her films, a nude photo leak scandal, and (as noted in this video by The Take) growing cynicism towards her lad-ette Not Like Other Girls public persona took the shine off her career. Passengers was the tipping point, a role that she said Adele even warned her not to take, a warning that she felt in hindsight she should've listened to. When the failure of Passengers was followed up by that of mother! (2017), Red Sparrow, and Dark Phoenix, Lawrence took a two-year break from acting before returning with Don't Look Up. Further roles in Causeway and No Hard Feelings followed.
• Heather Locklear lost her chance at becoming a major film star when she appeared in 1989's The Return of Swamp Thing, a sequel which was criticized for its Camp tone compared to the darker original and became a Box Office Bomb. Although none of the cast profited from its failure, Locklear received the shortest end of the stick when she won a Golden Raspberry Award for her performance in the film. After that flop, her film career was primarily limited to cameos. Fortunately, her television career, where she first discovered success via her lead role in Dynasty, remained intact with roles in Melrose Place and Spin City.
• Lindsay Lohan's career had been in a nosedive shortly after it peaked with Mean Girls, mainly due to her out-of-control personal life and diva antics. It was after I Know Who Killed Me bombed at the box office and was ruthlessly savaged by critics and audiences alike that Lohan lost her status as a bankable actress and her roles became limited to television and indies. It's a pretty safe bet that even if her life hadn't fallen apart so badly, it's still not too likely that her career and "it girl" status would've fared much better after the critical and box-office flop of that film. A few years later the indie film The Canyons killed any semblance of a career she had left, from terrible reviews and accounts that she was impossible to work with, as chronicled in a scathing feature by Stephen Rodrick for The New York Times Magazine, and she hasn't appeared in anything since. In 2014, she managed to get clean and finished community service with her probation officially ended in addition to making her stage debut in Speed-the-Plow, though critical reception of her role was divisive and it's not enough to revive her career yet.
• The flop of BloodRayne killed most of the buzz Kristanna Loken had after starring as the T-X in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Loken's primarily done low-budget Direct to Video and independent movies ever since, besides a supporting role in the equally unsuccessful In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.
• Much was expected from Eva Longoria before Over Her Dead Body, because of Desperate Housewives along with her sex symbol status. Then this film premiered and revealed that although looking sexy was a strong suit of hers, headlining a movie wasn't. Its failure ensured she won't be leading anything for a while. Longoria has rarely appeared in films afterwards, and even then mostly in minor roles in Direct to Video fare.
• Jennifer Lopez in Gigli. Like her spear counterpart, her career would recover – albeit as a musician – before The Boy Next Door killed her career all over again in 2015. After having a Career Resurrection in 2011 with her song "On the Floor" being a hit and becoming a judge on American Idol, Lopez attempted to revive her film career. Her first attempt, What to Expect When You're Expecting broke even while her second attempt, Ice Age: Continental Drift was a hit at the box office. However, neither of these movies was critically praised. That being said, considering the success of those two movies, she quit American Idol so she could pursue acting full-time. However, she then did Parker, which became a Box Office Bomb. She ended up returning to American Idol but tried to revive her film career one last time with The Boy Next Door. Although that movie was modestly successful at the box office, the critics trashed the hell out of it with bad reviews leading to a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This prompted her to back out of a film career and stick to TV with Shades of Blue. She resumed her film career in 2018 with Second Act, which received mixed reviews although it was better received than The Boy Next Door. Her next film after that, Hustlers, earned widespread critical acclaim with her performance being lauded by critics as one of her best performances. She received a Golden Globe nomination for her role although it was unfortunately overlooked at the Oscars, so only time will tell if this will result in her doing a full-fledged Career Resurrection.
• Jane March starred opposite Bruce Willis (see Film Actors) in the hated 1994 erotic thriller Color of Night, which became one of the year's worst films critically and financially. Willis was fortunately one of the biggest stars in The '90s and swiftly shrugged off this flop's effect with Pulp Fiction the same year, but March's career never truly recovered afterwards. Her next major Hollywood role was playing Jane opposite Casper Van Dien as the titular character in Tarzan and the Lost City, which only forced her career further into its grave.
• White Fire arguably killed British actress Belinda Mayne's potential future as a leading lady. Being in one sleazy, exploitive role after another did not do well for her reputation as an actress, and White Fire seems to have been the final straw. Since then, she's mostly appeared in minor film roles and on television, most prominently as the titular Chimeron queen in the Doctor Who episode "Delta and the Bannermen".
• Kelly McGillis was a rising star in the mid-to-late 1980s following the successes of Witness, Top Gun and The Accused. But then 1989 saw the release of Cat Chaser, which led her to become disaffected with Hollywood amidst the film's Troubled Production and her problematic working relationship with Peter Weller, and eventually went straight-to-video following poor test screenings. McGillis then went into semi-retirement in Florida, taking a few parts for the better part of a decade until she resumed acting full-time. She has since focused on made-for-TV films and independent features with a few mainstream works in between.
• Kristy McNichol became famous in the mid-to-late 1970s as a child actress in the ABC drama Family, only for her hype to vanish early in The '80s. She had some success in 1981 when Only When I Laugh became a box office hit, while also earning a six-figure salary – unprecedented for a teenager – for starring opposite Dennis Quaid in The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia. However, her career decline began next year when The Pirate Movie, which co-starred Christopher Atkins (see Film Actors), became one of 1982's biggest misfires, with McNichol receiving a Razzie nomination for her performance. While filming her next film, Just the Way You Are, McNichol, who already had a past history of emotional problems, suffered a nervous breakdown that delayed filming for over a year. She continued acting into The '90s, but her work comprised mostly of television films or shows (notably Empty Nest). Her appearances in theatrical releases were mainly limited to supporting roles before she officially announced her retirement from acting in 2001. She's since claimed her emotional turbulence during her youth were rooted in her closeted homosexuality at the time, also noting that she's been happier and stress-free after coming out.
• Leighton Meester's hopes of becoming a bankable star after Gossip Girl ended were torpedoed in 2011-12 by a string of three back-to-back flops: The Roommate, Monte Carlo (2011), and That's My Boy, the last of which got her nominated for two Golden Raspberry Awards (Worst Screen Combo with Adam Sandler, and Worst Screen Ensemble). The Judge in 2014 was The Last Straw, causing her to return to television, where she's found success with the sitcom Single Parents.
• Bette Midler was a sensation by the end of The '90s: via Ruthless People, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Beaches, Hocus Pocus, and The First Wives Club. She also garnered two Oscar nominations for The Rose and For the Boys, while not even a flop like Stella (which got her a Razzie nomination) could bring her down. But after Isn't She Great (which got her another Razzie nomination) and Drowning Mona bombed in 2000, none of her starring vehicles hit the big time again aside from the Disney+ exclusive Hocus Pocus 2.
• Sarah Miles became one of the British New Wave's biggest stars thanks to The Servant and Blow Up and earned an Oscar nomination for Ryan's Daughter. Set to transition from sex symbol to serious actress, She starred in the Vanity Project Lady Caroline Lamb, directed by her husband, screenwriter Robert Bolt. Lamb was an expensive, critically reviled flop that destroyed Miles' reputation. Her career further dissolved through The '70s with revelations of bizarre hobbies (she admitted to drinking urine and being a spiritualist, among other things), the dissolution of her marriage to Bolt (though they later reconciled), and the scandals surrounding The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, where her publicist/lover committed suicide on-set. Today, Miles remains known more for her eccentricities than her dwindling acting roles.
• Hayley Mills was a successful child star for Disney in The '60s. After her Disney contract ended, she moved towards darker roles to shake off her wholesome image. The film Deadly Strangers drew so much controversy^note which, oddly enough, didn't damage her relationship with Disney one bit that she left the industry for several years. She attempted a comeback on TV in The '80s with Good Morning Miss Bliss, but that was eventually re-tooled into the more famous Saved by the Bell (dropping Mills completely). However, she has found more success on the stage.
• Maika Monroe got a Hollywood Hype Machine push after her acclaimed lead performances in the 2014 horror films It Follows and The Guest, only for her intended mainstream breakthrough in a big-budget Summer Blockbuster to be as Patricia Whitmore in Independence Day: Resurgence two years later. Not only did the film flop, but Monroe's casting was particularly controversial, as Mae Whitman, who played Patricia as a child in the original Independence Day, was still a popular working actor, leading to backlash against Monroe and claims that Patricia was recast purely because the studio wanted a more conventionally attractive leading lady.^note Whether or not this is true depends on who you believe. The film's director Roland Emmerich said that Whitman declined to reprise her role, but Whitman herself retweeted both Anna Kendrick criticizing the recasting and an essay that did the same, indicating that she wasn't asked back to begin with. Afterwards, Monroe went back to horror, independent films, and supporting roles, and while she's continued to win acclaim as a scream queen, she hasn't starred in any major studio films since.
• Demi Moore was one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood in the early '90s, owed mainly to her star-making turn opposite Patrick Swayze in Ghost (1990). However, her star power faded around the mid-to-late '90s after a string of flops such as the loose film adaptation of The Scarlet Letter, Striptease, and G.I. Jane (the latter two films were "Worst Actress" Razzie winners for Moore). In the years following those films, Moore's productivity slowed as she took time off to raise her daughters, only appearing in a few major films, the last such big hit being Mr. Brooks. She has since found some success acting in independent cinema.
• Mandy Moore had a somewhat successful career as a movie star, even though her movies weren't huge hits critically or financially. In 2007, her career in movies was killed by four flops: License to Wed ^note which also killed the careers of John Krasinski and Robin Williams (see Film Actors), Because I Said So opposite the aforementioned Diane Keaton, Dedication, and Southland Tales opposite the also aforementioned Sarah Michelle Gellar. Moore mainly did guest spots on TV for almost a decade afterwards, besides Tangled. Fortunately, she rebounded impressively with a widely acclaimed role on the NBC drama This Is Us, where she even impressed the crew enough to also play the older version of her character under makeup rather than a separate actress.
• Chloë Grace Moretz was acclaimed in the late '00s and early '10s as a child star for her performances in Kick-Ass, Let Me In, and Hugo, but her attempts at movie stardom in her teenage years, including Dark Shadows, Movie 43, Kick-Ass 2, Carrie (2013), and If I Stay, got mixed to negative reviews and none of them were very successful at the box office. The last straw was 2016's The 5th Wave, a critical and financial disappointment that ended her run as a potential leading lady. It didn't help that two of her subsequent films, I Love You, Daddy and Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs, were mired in controversy, the former for being the passion project of Louis C.K. only for his career to be hammered by sexual harassment allegations (which caused the movie to not be released), and the latter for an ad campaign that suggested that overweight women weren't beautiful, a campaign that Moretz herself was critical of. After the failure of The 5th Wave, she dropped out of all the projects she'd been attached to (most notably The Little Mermaid (2023)) and got pickier with her roles, saying that she'd stretched herself thin by caring more about box-office receipts than the quality of her work. Since then, she's mostly done more low-key and independent films, as well as the TV series The Peripheral (2022).
• Olivia Munn began and ended her leading lady career with The Babymakers, which became both a critical and a commercial disaster. The distributor had expected Munn's cult appeal to sell the movie to audiences, but not even that could save it. She later gained a comfy supporting role in The Newsroom, but hasn't been the leading lady in any films since. A turn as Psylocke in X-Men: Apocalypse didn't help matters, as she was reduced to being a Satellite Character. Office Christmas Party was a box office hit, though that was probably because of Munn's more famous co-stars. The Predator tanking also didn't aid her situation very much.
• The Wicker Tree, the 2011 "spiritual sequel" to The Wicker Man (1973), introduced viewers to Brittania Nicol, who played the film's protagonist, Beth Boothby. The film's poor performance in both theaters and with critics led to its obscurity, and Nicol's career was over before it even started. This is her only on-screen credit.
• Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen saw their screen careers fall with New York Minute. The twins' one and only "adult" theatrical outing grossed just $21 million during its box office run, putting an end to their "twin" films. (Mary-Kate did do a few supporting roles in films like The Wackness and Beastly.) They remain successful in other ventures as shortly after that movie's release, they both became presidents of their company Dualstar (which continues to see success) and fashion line The Row (which is largely respected amongst their peers).
• Nicole Parker was almost universally regarded by fans of MADtv (1995) as a fan favorite, often viewed as one of the few highlights of a comedy sketch show that was otherwise dipping down in quality and popularity. Unfortunately, she, similarly to fellow MADtv alum Crista Flanagan, made her feature film debut in the Seltzer and Friedberg films Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie, and like Flanagan, in retrospect this was probably the worst error she could've made in her career. She hasn't landed a role in a feature film ever since besides a relatively little part in Funny People, but it was largely fanservice. Parker managed to turn her acting career around by playing to her greatest strengths – Broadway performances, although she remains largely in D-list obscurity even after landing the role of Elphaba in the Broadway production of Wicked.
• Sarah Jessica Parker was at her career zenith after Sex and the City concluded in 2004. She then tried and failed to establish herself on film with some poorly received, although fiscally successful, romantic comedies like The Family Stone and Failure to Launch, while her biggest hits came by returning as Carrie Bradshaw in the Sex and the City films. Her films after the sequel premiered to steadily worsening reception, with the final straw coming in 2018 following the major failure of Here and Now – a remake of Agnès Varda's classic 1962 French New Wave film Cleo From 5 to 7. Parker sticks to television afterwards, which continues bringing her successes such as Divorce and the Sex and the City continuation And Just Like That...
• Lori Petty, following her well-received roles in Point Break (1991), A League of Their Own, and Free Willy, was offered the chance to headline her own major project with Tank Girl, a film adaptation of the comic book of the same name. When it got negative critical reviews and bombed quickly at the box office, she has since been stuck making Direct to Video movies. She did garner positive attention from directing The Poker House, although most of it now is retroactive ever since its lead actress Jennifer Lawrence became a huge superstar. Petty has regained some footing with Orange Is the New Black, though that show's ensemble nature makes it unclear whether she truly made a comeback.
• Maria Pitillo had appeared throughout The '90s in numerous films, often in a supporting capacity (Chaplin, True Romance, Natural Born Killers, etc.). She was later cast as the female lead in the American adaptation of Godzilla (1998). Although it was intended as her breakthrough role to major audiences, the film's primarily negative reception, with Pitillo's performance in particular being criticized as a key reason why the film failed to resonate, instead made it her lead balloon. Her male co-stars Matthew Broderick and Jean Reno managed to move past its failure, but her career slowly withered away before she retired in 2008.
• Paulina Porizkova was well-known in The '80s as a model and in 1984, at age eighteen, became the first woman from Central Europe to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Numerous cover appearances in Cosmopolitan, Elle, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, etc. further boosted her profile, spurring studios to try making her into a movie star. Although things seemed to begin well for Porizkova with a supporting role in the Oscar-nominated Anna with Sally Kirkland, her first lead role in Her Alibi with Tom Selleck extinguished her chances of becoming a larger celebrity. Selleck recovered fast (with his own Star-Derailing Role coming much later on; see Film Actors), but Porizkova's career onscreen was mostly limited to reality TV afterwards. Her biggest gig since was as a judge on America's Next Top Model.

Q-T

• Melissa Rauch starred in The Bronze (which she also co-wrote) after establishing herself as a comedic actress on television with The Big Bang Theory. Its failure closed the book on her prospective film career before it could start, with most of her later film roles being minor. She stayed onboard The Big Bang Theory until its run was finished in 2019, continuing her career in television with a starring role in the 2023 revival of Night Court opposite John Larroquette.
• Alyson Reed was set to shift from being a rising star on Broadway to becoming a full-fledged movie star in Hollywood when she nabbed the lead female role in the 1985 film adaptation of the musical A Chorus Line opposite Michael Douglas. When it instead became a critical and commercial flop, Reed, unlike Douglas, who was coming off his Star-Making Role in Romancing the Stone and would find further Academy Award-winning success with Wall Street, didn't appear in another film for four years (in the raunchy sex comedy Skin Deep). She promptly returned to the stage, where she found a measure of success (along with a Tony nomination for her performance as Sally Bowles in the 1987 revival of Cabaret). Reed's screen career post-The '80s mainly comprised of bit parts on television, though she would later become known to a younger audience when she appeared as Ms. Darbus in High School Musical and its sequels.
• Christina Ricci became a star at age 11 when she played Wednesday Addams in the 1991 film adaptation of The Addams Family, transitioning successfully from a child actress (with Addams Family Values and Casper) to an adult one (with The Ice Storm, The Opposite of Sex and Monster). Then Ricci starred in Cursed (2005), a werewolf slasher film directed by Wes Craven that sadly endured excessive Executive Meddling courtesy of The Weinstein Company (with Craven later deprived of all creative control). The final result, subjected to a lot of reshoots and re-edited from the original R-rating to a more box-office friendly PG-13 rating, was called one of the worst films of 2005, also becoming a Box Office Bomb that didn't recoup its budget. Ricci's films for the next three years (Penelope (2006), Black Snake Moan) were lower-budget films that underperformed as well before she tried mounting a comeback. Speed Racer was meant to be the big blockbuster that would reaffirm her as a star, but its box office failure instead proved to be the final straw in 2008. For the next thirteen years, she starred in projects that were rarely, if ever, successful before finally nabbing another high-profile role and an Emmy Award nomination for her performance in the Showtime drama Yellowjackets. She returned to the Addams Family universe as a different character in the Netflix series Wednesday.
• Denise Richards saw her career momentum plummet when her performance in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough was lambasted as one of its weakest links, while her most prolific role afterwards was in the ill-received slasher flick Valentine two years later. Her screen appearances since that film flopped badly have now diminished to reality television like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, or the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful.
• Daisy Ridley suffered a slap in career, following the mixed reception and troubled production of the "Star Wars" film, "The Rise of Skywalker". The COVID-19 Pandemic kicking in following the release was no help either.
• Rihanna made her acting debut in 2012's Battleship, for which she "won" the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress. Aside from a few scant voice roles and cameos, she didn't star in a major film for five years until appearing in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and then Ocean's 8. The former was another infamous bomb while the latter was a slight success, though that probably was because of the bigger actresses in its ensemble cast. She's mostly focused on her music afterwards.
• Molly Ringwald, after ending her professional relationship with John Hughes, set out to make a name for herself with duds like For Keeps? and Fresh Horses, which didn't set the box office on fire. The last straw for her came with Betsy's Wedding (budget, $26 million, box office, $19.7 million). Ringwald might've pulled off a Career Resurrection if she'd taken some of the offers she was still getting - Blue Velvet, Pretty Woman, Days of Thunder, Ghost, Edward Scissorhands, A League of Their Own, Jerry Maguire, Scream - but she declined each one of them. She later retreated to France to continue her career but returned to America upon finding no success abroad either. After being in several low-quality films and TV shows, she got a slight reprieve with The Secret Life of the American Teenager. While it got mixed-to-negative reviews, the show was enough of a hit in ratings to last five seasons on ABC Family (with Ringwald being part of the main cast for the first four). She later got a recurring role on Riverdale and starred in the Netflix true-crime miniseries Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
• Rebecca Romijn pivoted from a successful modeling career in The '90s to a potentially good acting one after playing Mystique in 2000's X-Men, but the consecutive failures of Rollerball (which negatively impacted Chris Klein as well; see Film Actors) and Femme Fatale (2002) dampened her stardom. Romijn hasn't been in any hit films afterwards besides returning for X-Men sequels, although she has continued acting on television with roles in Ugly Betty and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
• Diana Ross was afflicted by this with The Wiz. Ross, already an immensely popular singer during The '60s and The '70s, attempted many forays into acting, achieving mild success until taking up the role of Dorothy in the 1978 film adaptation of the popular Broadway musical The Wiz. Ross fought for the role despite concerns that she was too old for it, being in her early thirties at that time (and in the movie itself she looks even older). Her casting led to some of the most drastic changes in the script, none of which resonated with audiences. The film was a major critical and financial flop with most of the criticism being leveled at her performance, effectively ending her career as an actress. Fortunately, the film's failure barely harmed her immensely successful singing career.
• Rene Russo was already famous as a model once she started her acting career. Although she made her film debut in 1989's Major League, numerous hits like Lethal Weapon 3, In the Line of Fire, Outbreak, Get Shorty, Tin Cup, Ransom, and The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) remake released in The '90s, were what established her as an actress. However, massive flops in the next decade such as The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Showtime, Big Trouble, and the 2005 remake of Yours, Mine, and Ours, sadly precipitated her career decline. After those duds, Russo took an acting hiatus for five years. She luckily experienced a resurgence starring as Frigga in the MCU film Thor (a role she reprised in Thor: The Dark World and Avengers: Endgame) while also being praised for her supporting performance in Nightcrawler.
• Meg Ryan had a brief moment where her career was derailed after making Against the Ropes in 2004, having not appeared in a theatrically released film until 2007's In the Land of Women. Although she's still acting to this day, she has never recovered the A-list status she had in the '90s, beginning in 1989 with When Harry Met Sally.... Before that, Ryan's derailing role was in 2000's Hanging Up, ironically the final film Walter Matthau, who died shortly thereafter, did (he was its narrator).
• While her career isn't completely derailed thanks to her roles as Uhura in the rebooted Star Trek film franchise and Gamora in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Colombiana failing in 2011 killed any chance of convincing Hollywood to let Zoe Saldaña lead a major motion picture. The projects she's done since were either indie films or supporting roles in major pictures, mostly in the franchises mentioned above.
• Jenny Seagrove worked intermittently on the British screen and stage before attaining her first lead role in The Guardian (1990), a horror film helmed by The Exorcist director William Friedkin. The Guardian, though, failed to reach the same heights as Friedkin's past work, with Seagrove's hype dissipating after its box office underperformance and poor critical reviews. Since then, she hasn't had a role in a major project.
• Jean Seberg saw her Hollywood career wither with the 1969 bomb Paint Your Wagon, despite the presence of famous co-stars such as Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood in addition to starring in Airport the following year. Marvin remained a respected actor while Eastwood gradually rose up into the echelons of Hollywood legend, but Seberg had a rough time in The '70s. It didn't help that she was being targeted and smeared by the FBI's COINTELPRO operation around this time because of her support for the Black Panthers, including false rumors that she had a baby with activist Raymond Hewitt. She moved to Europe permanently one year later, where she remained until she died of suicide in 1979.
• Cybill Shepherd became a star thanks to The Last Picture Show and became a muse, and eventual lover, of director Peter Bogdanovich, which ended his marriage to writer Polly Platt. Bogdanovich subsequently cast Shepherd as the lead in two of his films, Daisy Miller and At Long Last Love. Both films were critical and commercial flops and Shepherd garnered immense criticism for her performances, giving her the reputation of a horrible actress whose rise to fame was solely because she was sleeping with a famous film director. Shepherd later retreated to television, where an acclaimed turn on Moonlighting restored her reputation.
• Brooke Shields got acclaim for her work on the film Pretty Baby. She then followed it up with The Blue Lagoon and Endless Love, the former a notoriously Troubled Production that spent almost two decades in Development Hell and a Creator Killer for Randal Kleiser, who was never able to match the huge success of Grease, and the latter being only known for Tom Cruise's debut, which got terrible reviews and were box-office disappointments, as well as controversy over her sexualization by her Stage Mom, considering she was underage at the time. However, the 1983 movie Sahara ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back, as after that film flopped at the box office, she has pretty much been stuck doing independent films, Direct-to-DVD films, and television shows (including a decent run on Suddenly Susan) ever since. Her moving-image career would effectively be ended with the TV series Lipstick Jungle, which was canceled by NBC after a disappointing run of 20 episodes, and since then, she largely focused on her family and on Broadway. Today, she is mostly known as a fashion model.
• Elisabeth Shue seemingly transitioned successfully from a prolific child/teen actress of The '80s into a respected adult actress with her Oscar-nominated role in 1995's Leaving Las Vegas, only to lose a lot of her hype years later with 1999's Molly. This film drew controversy and a lot of ire from disability rights groups due primarily to Shue's performance as an institutionalized, autistic woman. The backlash this movie suffered hurt its reception critically and financially; while Shue still remained active as an actress on film and TV, she never regained the leading lady stature she previously had.
• Jessica Simpson saw her film career killed by Blonde Ambition. Although The Dukes of Hazzard and Employee of the Month flopped with critics, they performed well at the box office and boosted her star power. After this movie bombed, her only major part afterwards was a cameo in The Love Guru.
• Leelee Sobieski was fresh off the momentum from Never Been Kissed and Eyes Wide Shut when she took her first lead acting role, The Glass House, which was a critical and commercial flop (it made only $18 million domestic). Once the next "It Girl", she was reduced to working in lesser roles in films like the remake of The Wicker Man, 88 Minutes, and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. Her TV debut in the swiftly-cancelled NYC 22 doesn't look likely to change much in her career direction, either. She eventually quit acting altogether to focus on raising her children and later started a new career as an artist under her married name, Leelee Kimmel.
• Jordin Sparks became famous after winning American Idol, then tried becoming a movie star with Sparkle. However, it did average business at the box office and was met with mixed reviews. Her next major project was the 2014 Christian apocalyptic thriller Left Behind alongside Nicolas Cage, which was released amidst his own career decline (see Film Actors). It became a maligned Box Office Bomb infamous for its 0% score on the website Rotten Tomatoes. While her film career has hit a dead end, her music career has luckily gone on without a hitch. Her screen work since has mostly been reality TV, like Dancing with the Stars.
• Hailee Steinfeld was hyped as a potential star of tomorrow after nabbing an Academy Award nomination at 13 for her acting debut in the 2010 remake of True Grit, soon receiving a number of offers for major projects. She turned them down and took a few years off of acting instead, choosing to return with a new adaptation of Shakespeare's classic Romeo and Juliet in 2013. Unfortunately, that film tanked with Steinfeld getting singled out in its many bad reviews. Over the next two years, a glut of projects featuring her, including Ender's Game (which was made worse by certain remarks the source material's author said pre-release) and Barely Lethal, were released to critical and audience indifference, while her potential nearly curdled into a "what if" situation had she not taken a break. Luckily, she soon bounced back commercially with Pitch Perfect 2 (a film that also marked the start of a successful second career for her as a singer) and critically with The Edge of Seventeen. Pitch Perfect 3 was also a financial hit despite not as good reviews as its predecessor, while Bumblebee was widely considered to be a return to form for the Transformers film series. She also voiced Spider-Gwen in the Spider-Man: Spider-Verse films and portrays Kate Bishop in the Marvel Cinematic Universe show Hawkeye, roles she is both set to reprise in future projects. Preceding Hawkeye, she made her television debut playing Emily Dickinson on the critically acclaimed series Dickinson.
• Julia Stiles became a breakout star seemingly overnight thanks to the box office (if not critical) hit of 10 Things I Hate About You. However most of the movies she was in that followed, except for The Bourne Series and Save the Last Dance, were critical and/or box office bombs. The Prince & Me was the last straw as she has stuck to TV shows and independent films since that film bombed, with the exception of more Bourne, The Omen remake, and Silver Linings Playbook. She got a lot of good press for her supporting role in the 2019 Sleeper Hit Hustlers.
• Sharon Stone suffered from this with Basic Instinct 2, which was ironically a reprisal of her Star-Making Role. Its financial and critical failure (amplified by Stone "winning" a Worst Actress Golden Raspberry Award for her performance in it) marked the end of her run as an A-list leading lady, following other noteworthy flops in the early 2000s like Cold Creek Manor and Catwoman (2004).
• Mena Suvari, prior to the Day of the Dead (2008) reboot, was an indie queen who made a name for herself starring in a string of popular and well-regarded teen films, including American Pie and the critically praised, Academy Award-winning American Beauty. She followed this up with many flops like Loser or Sugar & Spice. This culminated with Day of the Dead, which tanked abysmally in the United States and was critically mauled. Besides her widely disregarded work in Kingdom Hearts II as the voice of Aerith, Suvari's only appeared in bit parts on television and Direct to Video films afterwards.
• Hilary Swank's career was abruptly halted by the 2007 releases of The Reaping and P.S. I Love You. She tried to regain some of her critical respectability (she had been a two-time Oscar winner with Boys Don't Cry and Million Dollar Baby) with the biopic Amelia and the drama Conviction over the next two years, but the former was a critical and commercial failure while the latter became an Acclaimed Flop (though she was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance). Swank's movies began going Direct to Video by 2011, as seen with the thriller The Resident. Following a part in the poorly-received ensemble romantic comedy film New Year's Eve, few of her film projects have been announced since.
• Loretta Swit went from being one of Hollywood's top actresses to a notorious blacklist victim after the TV commercial satire film Beer failed, spending her later years doing small television appearances and cameos. She's done nothing notable since The Love Boat ended, with a 20-year acting drought from 1998 to 2019.
• Raven-Symoné became popular with tweens when That's So Raven ended up being a hit. It led Disney to hype her up as the next big star, as she started appearing in many of their TV movies, doing music videos for many of their theatrical movies, and doing voice-over work for many of their animated shows. They then tried to turn her into a movie star with College Road Trip. However, the movie got terrible reviews and only did average at the box office, which helped solidify her as just another former Disney Channel star. After the movie came out, she never got the lead role in another major film again and only does guest spots on various TV shows and voice work now. Her biggest hit was... a sequel series to her breakout role in Raven's Home!
• Lio Tipton (formerly Analeigh), first gaining prominence for placing third on Cycle 11 of America's Next Top Model, was tapped by Hollywood studios to headline romantic comedy films such as Crazy, Stupid, Love, arthouse film Damsels in Distress (which featured their first lead role), and Warm Bodies. Then derailment quickly came with their second lead role in the indie film Two Night Stand, which bombed with critics and audiences alike and fizzled their career before they could go anywhere with it. They tried to bounce back with the ABC romantic comedy series Manhattan Love Story, but it got canceled after only four episodes.
• V.I. Warshawski seems to be a dividing line in Kathleen Turner's career. Before, she'd been riding the success of Body Heat and Romancing the Stone to critical and commercial success (and award nominations) in films like Prizzi's Honor, Peggy Sue Got Married, and The War of the Roses. Along the way, though, her rheumatoid arthritis worsened and she developed a drinking problem and a reputation for being difficult to work with. After Warshawski failed to launch a series of movies based on the other books in the series, which she expected to star in, Turner was a lead in three more films (House of Cards, Undercover Blues, Moonlight and Valentino), none of which set the screen on fire, then did Serial Mom, A Simple Wish, and Baby Geniuses. Since then, she's accepted mainly supporting roles in smaller films and drifted into TV work.

U-Z

• Nia Vardalos became a huge star when her film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which she starred and wrote, became a sleeper hit at the box office. However, she then did a sitcom spin-off called My Big Fat Greek Life, which was quickly cancelled due to bad reviews and low ratings. She then tried to follow up her success with Connie And Carla, which flopped at the box office. She then ended up attempting a comeback in 2009 when she starred in My Life In Ruins. However, that ended up flopping at the box office as well. Since then, she's stuck to independent films and TV work. It seems she made the My Big Fat Greek Wedding sequels in hopes it would lead to a Career Resurrection for her. They were financially successful but panned by critics.
• Sofía Vergara hit it big with a Star-Making Role in the popular TV series Modern Family. She soon received tons of offers, mostly in supporting roles, like The Smurfs, and voice work, like Escape from Planet Earth. She then tried to become a movie star with Hot Pursuit; unfortunately for her, that movie bombed critically and underperformed financially. She's since stuck to Modern Family and has done some independent films, with her only mainstream film since being a small part in The Emoji Movie.
• Quvenzhané Wallis was a rising star at the beginning of The New '10s thanks to being the youngest Oscar nominee for Beasts of the Southern Wild. Then she headlined Annie (2014), which was a modest box office success but was blasted by critics. She's hardly acted since besides one independent film, a bit part in Trolls, and an appearance in a Beyoncé music video. The highest-profile role that she's had since Annie has been a guest-starring arc on Blackish. Since Quvenzhané is still young, there's definitely still a chance that she could come back and become a bigger star in the future. But for the time being...
• Maiara Walsh got hit by this hard with 2013's The Starving Games, a Seltzer and Friedberg-made parody of The Hunger Games. Known previously for Cory in the House and Desperate Housewives, her potential went under following this film's failure. She stuck to TV afterwards, like Switched at Birth.
• Naomi Watts saw her career get practically destroyed thrice. She barely got started when she had a major setback with Tank Girl alongside Lori Petty, and spent the rest of The '90s struggling in Hollywood until she was cast in Mulholland Dr. This led her to have a solid career ^note with 21 Grams and The Impossible netting her a couple of Academy Award nominations for Best Actress, while The Ring, its sequel, and King Kong (2005) became huge box office hits until she headlined five bad movies in a row during the early 2010s: the plain boring psychological horror film called Dream House in 2011, two equally bad animated flicks, two English dubs of the French adult animated sci-fi psychological thriller The Prodigies and a unofficial animated film adaptation from Mexico of the famous cartoon from the 1960s of the same name called Top Cat: The Movie in 2012, the widely critically panned ensemble comedy flick Movie 43 and in which she played the Princess of Wales in the epically bad biopic Diana both released in 2013 which both earned a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress nomination. However, few critics blamed Watts for Diana's worst excesses and most pitied her for being in it at all. While she got well-reviewed for her work in St. Vincent (2014) as well as Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) the following year, her good luck vanished as soon as it came when Movie 43, The Sea of Trees, The Divergent Series: Insurgent, its sequel Allegiant, and Shut In were both reviled critically and/or became huge Box Office Bombs both of the latter earned her again Razzie nomination for Worst Actress, with The Book of Henry being the last nail in the coffin for her film career as it both hugely bombed and was widely critically panned and become a laughing joke or stock due to the film's poor premise and the film's failed attempt being Oscar Bait derailing her film career. She has since then now done low budget direct-to-DVD flicks and television roles as a result of her box office failures during the late 2010s.
• Raquel Welch suffered this with Myra Breckinridge. A major sex symbol of The '60s, she accepted the title role in an adaptation of the critically acclaimed book of the same name with the intention of proving her skill. The film, contrary to expectations, instead became a notorious Box Office Bomb and was universally panned, with even the book's author Gore Vidal calling it "an awful joke." She struggled to regain approval in The '70s and nearly pulled off a comeback with the success of The Three Musketeers (1973), which vanished after the critical and financial failure of Mother, Jugs & Speed. Welch didn't star in a major studio film for twenty years, with her next one being the also unsuccessful Chairman of the Board (which additionally snuffed Carrot Top's film career as well; see Film Actors). Aside from minor parts in Legally Blonde and How to Be a Latin Lover (which in 2017, was her final film), she never acted in any big projects again before her death in 2023.
• Though Welcome to 18 stars Courtney Thorne-Smith and Mariska Hargitay managed to survive its abysmal box office performance, JoAnn Willette was limited to TV work afterwards. Her use of an ethnic slur and later pirating the film made things worse, which was soon handled by the film's production company Green Griffin. Many of Willette's scenes were edited out of current home media prints as a result of her racist remark.
• Mae West took a hit to her popularity when her film Belle of the Nineties was hastily censored by Paramount to appease the enforcers of the Production Code. She was soon overtaken as screen queen by Shirley Temple, and subsequent efforts to rehabilitate her image failed, culminating in a Role-Ending Misdemeanor in which she was fired by Paramount for causing a scandal at NBC by appearing alongside Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Her biggest screen success since then was My Little Chickadee, in which Universal paired her with fellow washup W. C. Fields.
• Mara Wilson's movie career died with A Simple Wish. After that one, she only did one more theatrical movie, Thomas and the Magic Railroad, before she decided to retire from film acting after no longer finding it fun. Her choice was largely fueled by her being typecast as insufferably precious characters, which caused many to assume she was actually like that in real life. She's since transitioned into writing plays, where she often has to issue warnings about their adult content to people expecting something lighter given her acting career. She came out of retirement in The New '10s, mostly as a guest voice artist.
• Reese Witherspoon lost a lot of career momentum she gained with her Oscar-winning performance as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line when she starred in two flops: the 2007 political thriller Rendition, and the 2008 holiday romantic comedy Four Christmases. Rendition made $27 million on a $27 million budget and sharply divided critics, while Four Christmases was critically panned despite being comparatively more successful at the box office.^note The latter film also presaged the career decline of Vince Vaughn, who would later see his star derailed with The Dilemma (see Film Actors). Witherspoon wouldn't regain the stature she previously had until she starred in 2014's Wild, which netted her another Oscar nomination (though she didn't win this time). Although her film career was battered again by Hot Pursuit (which also damaged the career of the aforementioned Sofía Vergara), she would sustain her career through her work on television (such as Big Little Lies, The Morning Show, and Little Fires Everywhere).
• Pia Zadora lost her stardom after the terrible response to The Lonely Lady. The massive controversy over her Golden Globe win for New Star of the Year, widely assumed to have been the result of her husband bribing the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (especially after she also won the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst New Actress), only soured people that much further on the idea of her as a major star. She only had a few small roles and cameos after this film, though her musical career proved to be slightly more successful.
• Renée Zellweger was one of the biggest actresses of the late '90s and early-mid '00s, starring in hits like Jerry Maguire, Bridget Jones' Diary, and Chicago. She also won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in 2003's Cold Mountain. Until 2007, she was known to be one of Hollywood's highest-paid actresses. Her movies became less financially and critically successful as her career went on, but she was still able to snag some decent parts. Then she made Case 39, a movie that was delayed twice and, when it was finally released in 2010, received negative reviews and flopped at the box office, opening at #7 in its first week. Zellweger didn't star in another film for five years. A drastic change in her looks in 2014, supposedly due to extensive plastic surgery, to the point she is almost unrecognisable, was most likely the final nail in the coffin. She returned to the screen in 2016 with Bridget Jones's Baby, which got decent reviews and international box office (it disappointed at the US box office), but didn't do much to revive her career. Soon afterwards she picked up a potential comeback role in Judy (2019), a biopic of Judy Garland. Her performance as the star herself won her renewed critical acclaim, eventually culminating with an Academy Award for Best Actress.
• Catherine Zeta-Jones got hit by this in 2012. She broke out in The '90s as one of its premier ingénues, establishing herself in her native Britain on television before scoring big in Hollywood with The Mask of Zorro. Further successes with Entrapment, High Fidelity, and Traffic came next, before she won an Academy Award for her performance in Chicago. The nudge her victory provided boosted her career when Intolerable Cruelty, The Terminal, Ocean's Twelve, The Legend of Zorro and No Reservations became hits too. She took a hiatus from acting after that last one, not appearing in a mainstream Hollywood movie for five years after its release. Upon returning to the screen in 2012, she had the rotten luck of starring in three of the year's worst disasters: Rock of Ages, Lay the Favorite, and Playing For Keeps. Side Effects and Red 2 became moderate successes in the following year, though neither were big enough to revive her career. She hasn't starred in a theatrically released film since Dad's Army in 2016, but has found some success on television playing Olivia de Havilland on the Ryan Murphy-created series Feud. She then played Morticia Addams on the Netflix show Wednesday, created by Tim Burton.

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