15 Actors Who Hated Their Movie Roles

Not every job you take is going to be a winner --maybe you're not a huge fan of your boss, co-workers, or the work in general.

Working in Hollywood may come across as more fun and glamorous than your 9-5, but not all of their jobs are a breezy, glittering experience either. Scores of big stars have since given interviews bashing certain past movie roles they've taken on, including Dakota Johnson in Madame Web, Channing Tatum in G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, and Megan Fox in Transformers.

"Of course it’s not nice to be a part of something that’s ripped to shreds, but I can’t say that I don’t understand," Johnson said of the negative reaction to Madame Web--but more on that later.

For some, their dislike stemmed from bad experiences with a director or studio executive. For others, it was a distaste for the actual character, which some blamed on the screenwriter or source material. And other actors felt the need to apologize publicly after receiving negative feedback from fans or critics who felt their performance missed the mark.

Regardless of why they didn't enjoy the experience, these 15 celebrities have voiced distaste for their previous movie roles.

Tatum played the titular role in the 2009 flick G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, but he later revealed he wasn't a fan of the movie or the experience.

"I'll be honest, I f**king hate that movie," he later told Howard Stern. "I was pushed into doing it. The script wasn’t any good. And I didn’t want to do something that I was a fan of since I was a kid and watched every morning growing up, and didn't want to do something that was, one, bad, and two, I just didn’t know if I wanted to be GI Joe."

Perhaps one of the most vocal actors when it comes to expressing dissatisfaction with a project, Robert Pattinson played vampire Edward Cullen in the fantasy-romance book adaptation series. He's given more than a handful of interviews making his stance on the character known.

"He's the most ridiculous person who's so amazing at everything," he once said to Empire Magazine. "The more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that's how I played him, as a manic-depressive who hates himself. Plus, he's a 108 year-old virgin, so he's obviously got some issues there."

Matt Damon starred as the titular Jason Bourne in the 2000s action trilogy. The third installment, The Bourne Ultimatum, left a sour taste in the actor's mouth (he skipped the fourth Bourne flick, but later returned for the fifth).

"I don't blame (screenwriter Tony Gilroy) for taking a boatload of money and handing in what he handed in," he told GQ in 2011. "It’s just that it was unreadable. This is a career ender. It's terrible. It's really embarrassing. He took his money and left."

John Boyega hit it big appearing as former Stormtrooper Finn in the recent Star Wars sequel trilogy. At the time, the actor recalled being "very genuinely happy to be a part of it." But looking back, he expressed disappointment in how the filmmakers handled characters of color.

"It’s so difficult to maneuver. You get yourself involved in projects and you’re not necessarily going to like everything," he told British GQ in 2020. "[But] what I would say to Disney is do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are, and then have them pushed to the side. It’s not good. I’ll say it straight up," he said.

Boyega added: "Like, you guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver. You knew what to do with these other people, but when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know f**k all. So what do you want me to say? What they want you to say is, 'I enjoyed being a part of it. It was a great experience.’ … Nah, nah, nah. I’ll take that deal when it’s a great experience."

George Clooney may be a beloved star now, but his 1997 role as Batman in Batman & Robin bombed at the box office, garnered tons of negative reviews, and led studio execs to scrap future Batman projects for the time being. Clooney went on to apologize for the role for years to come.

"Let me just say that I’d actually thought I’d destroyed the franchise until somebody else brought it back years later and changed it," he once said. "I thought at the time that this was going to be a very good career move. It wasn’t."

And, of course, Clooney briefly reprised the role in 2023's The Flash.

Ben Affleck starred in the 2003 Marvel movie Daredevil. Appearing on TimesTalk more than a decade later, Affleck said it fell beyond flat of his expectations for appearing in a superhero film, which in part sparked his interest in wanting to play Batman in Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.

"I wanted for once to get one of these movies and do it right--to do a good version. I hate Daredevil so much," he said.

The 2004 Catwoman film scored a whopping 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. Star Halle Berry's rating would likely be similar.

"I want to thank Warner Bros. for casting me in this piece-of-shit, god-awful movie," the actress joked onstage at theRazzie Awards, accepting the prize for worst actress while holding the Oscar she won just a few years earlier.

Jessica Alba played Susan Storm/Invisible Woman in Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007). It wasn't an enjoyable experience, she later recounted.

"I hated it. I really hated it," she told Elle. "I remember when I was dying in Silver Surfer. The director was like, 'It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica.'"

Emilia Clarke appeared alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in this 2015 Terminator reboot after previously working with the director, Alan Taylor, on Game of Thrones.

Taylor got "eaten and chewed up on Terminator. He was not the director I remembered. He didn’t have a good time. No one had a good time," she told Vanity Fair in 2018, adding that she was "relieved" at the film's poor box-office performance because it meant she wouldn't have to return for a follow-up.

Sally Field twice played Aunt May opposite Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man in the early 2010s, but the Oscar-winning actress didn't find the role to be the most fulfilling.

"It’s really hard to find a three-dimensional character in it, and you work it as much as you can, but you can’t put 10 pounds of shit in a five-pound bag," she once told Howard Stern.

Jennifer Lawrence starred opposite Chris Pratt in this 2016 sci-fi drama about two spaceship passengers who awaken 90 years too early on a journey to a new galactic home. Reflecting on the project later, the Hunger Games alum said working on the set made her wonder who "decided that this was a good movie."

"Adele told me not to do it," Lawrence told The New York Times (via Variety). "She said, 'I feel like space movies are the new vampire movies.’ I should have listened to her. Everything was like a rebound effect. I was reacting, rather than just acting."

Madame Web infamously was not one of the higher-reviewed films of this year--and star Dakota Johnson would have to agree. The actress and production-company-founder later reflected on the difficulty of making a quality movie when filmmakers and executives are too concerned with algorithms and statistics.

"My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not," she said in an interview with Bustle. "Audiences will always be able to sniff out bullshit."

She added: "It was definitely an experience for me to make that movie. I had never done anything like it before. I probably will never do anything like it again because I don’t make sense in that world. And I know that now. But sometimes in this industry, you sign on to something, and it’s one thing and then as you’re making it, it becomes a completely different thing, and you’re like, 'Wait, what?' But it was a real learning experience, and of course it’s not nice to be a part of something that’s ripped to shreds, but I can’t say that I don’t understand."

Megan Fox became a household name after appearing in Transformers, which she's quick to acknowledge. But that didn't mean she enjoyed the process.

"I can't shit on this movie because it did give me a career and open all these doors for me," she told Entertainment Weekly. "But I don't want to blow smoke up people's ass. People are well aware that this is not a movie about acting. And once you realize that, it becomes almost fun because you can be in the moment and go, 'All right, I know that when he calls 'Action!' I'm either going to be running or screaming, or both.'"

Fox's co-star, Shia LaBeouf, was similarly disenchanted with the quality of the blockbuster series.

"I wasn't impressed with what we did," he told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2010. "There were some really wild stunts in it, but the heart was gone. It's just a bunch of fighting robots."

Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the Star Wars saga, revealed to the Today show in 2008 that she wished she would have turned down the role and would never have signed up for it had she known what a juggernaut the films would turn out to be.

"I saw the heartbreak of celebrity," she said of her famous parents, singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds. "Get me away from that."