Celebrities Who Regret Past Acting Roles: Ryan Reynolds, Ben Affleck, Sarah Jessica Parker and More

Viola Davis

Despite earning an Oscar nomination for her role of Aibileen Clark in 2011’s The Help, Viola told Vanity Fair that she regrets taking the part. “There’s no one who’s not entertained by The Help,” she said in 2020. “But there’s a part of me that feels like I betrayed myself, and my people, because I was in a movie that wasn’t ready to [tell the whole truth].”

Katherine Heigl

The Grey’s Anatomy alum opened up to Vanity Fair about her role in 2007’s Knocked Up, calling the film “a little sexist.” “It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight,” Katherine said in 2008. “It exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, on some days.”

Shailene Woodley

“To this day, it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” Shailene told Bustle in 2020 of her role in The Secret Life of the American Teenager. “I read [three] episodes and I signed a contract for six years,” she recalled. “[Those episodes] all hit home. I had friends in high school who were pregnant … There were a lot of things that were written into the scripts that not just me, but a lot of the cast, disagreed with. There were belief systems that were pushed that were different than my own. Yet legally, I was stuck there.”

Matt Damon

Matt might be known as Jason Bourne, but there is one film in the franchise he fully regrets. “This is a career-ender,” he told The Hollywood Reporter of The Bourne Ultimatum. “I mean, I could put this thing up on eBay, and it would be game over for that dude. It’s terrible. It’s really embarrassing. He [Tony Gilroy] was having a go, basically, and he took his money and left.”

Jennette McCurdy

The Nickelodeon alum opened up on her “Empty Inside” podcast in 2021 about her role on iCarly. “I was a famous 19-year-old … I had everything at my fingertips,” Jennette recalled. “I actually really resented my life because I didn’t like the projects that I was a part of.”

“I felt a lot of shame — that I wasn’t able to identify at the time — because I didn’t like waltzing onto an over-lit, cheesy set and shouting a line. It felt so pointless and shallow,” the former child star added.

George Clooney

The Oscar winner has never lived down his ill-fated turn wearing the batsuit in 1997’s Batman & Robin. “I did one superhero movie and I f—ked it up so bad, they won’t let me near the set,” he joked during an October 2021 Q&A for his latest film, The Tender Bar. He went on to add that he just wasn’t superhero material, and the movie was out of his wheelhouse. “My work, where my bread is buttered, is the kind of films that I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, which is sort of the prime time for American filmmaking, which were all story-based,” George explained.

The actor/director is so embarrassed by his performance that his wife, Amal, has never seen the film. “He won’t let me watch it, she revealed to Variety in an October 2021 red carpet interview. Her husband backed Amal up, with George adding, “There are certain films I just go, ‘I want my wife to have some respect for me.'”

Ryan Reynolds

Ryan’s disdain for 2011’s Green Lantern is common knowledge. There’s even a scene in Deadpool 2 where he reprises the role and shoots himself in the head.
“It also fell victim to the process in Hollywood, which is like poster first, release date second, script last,” he previously told Entertainment Weekly. “At the time, it was a huge opportunity for me, so I was excited to try and take part in it.
The silver lining is that the Canadian actor met his wife, Blake Lively, through the project. They now share three children. 

Ben Affleck

The Boston native has made it very clear he is not impressed by 2003’s Daredevil, in which he played the starring role. 
“Daredevil didn’t work at all”, Ben told Entertainment Weekly in 2007. “If I wanted to go viral, I would be less polite. That was before people realized you could make superhero movies and make them well. There was a cynical sense of ‘put a red leather outfit on a guy, have him run around, hunt some bad guys and cash the check.’”
That being said, he met ex-wife Jennifer Garner on set, and they went on to have three children together. So, not all was lost. 

Sarah Jessica Parker

SJP acknowledged Sex and the City 2 was perhaps not the best, but she did not discount its box office success. 
“I can see where we fell short,” the actress told an audience at Vulture Festival. “I understand, I actually get it. I will say, I also understand how much frickin’ money it made. I feel like that is forgotten in the discussion.”

Jessica Alba

Sometimes, it’s not the film itself but the experience on set that the actor regrets. Jessica Alba opened up about the sexism she experienced on the set of Fantastic Four.
“I hated it. I really hated,” she previously told Elle about her time working on the film. “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.’”

Channing Tatum

“I’ll be honest, I f—king hate that movie,” Channing Tatum said about 2009’s G.I. Joe. “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 [I] didn’t want to do something that was, one, bad, and two, I just didn’t know if I wanted to be G.I. Joe.”

Daniel Craig

Daniel Craig has been surprisingly open about never wanting to reprise his role as James Bond. 
“I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists,” the Knives Out actor told Time Out about the possibility of returning as the iconic spy. “No, not at the moment. Not at all. That’s fine. I’m over it at the moment. We’re done. All I want to do is move on.” 

Idris Elba

Idris Elba’s role in The Wire gave a major boost to the talented actor’s career. However, he admitted he had a “problem” with the show. 
“We’re all idolizing Stringer Bell, but who are we really idolizing?” he reflected on James O’Brien’s podcast. “Are we idolizing a smart drug dealer or a dumb narcotics dealer? What are we saying here? Is it OK to pump a community full of heroin but because you’re smart at it, that makes you cool? That was a problem for me.”

Kate Winslet

Titanic is one of Kate Winslet’s most iconic roles, but she confessed that she doesn’t think she was very good in it. 
“Every single scene, I’m like, ‘Really, really? You did it like that? Oh my God.’ Even my American accent, I can’t listen to it. It’s awful,” she told the Telegraph. “It sounds terribly self-indulgent, but actors do tend to be very self-critical. I have a hard time watching any of my performances, but watching Titanic, I was just like, ‘Oh God, I want to do that again.'”

Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt called 1992’s The Devil’s Own a “disaster” while speaking with Newsweek in 1997.
“[It’s] the most irresponsible bit of filmmaking, if you can even call it that, that I’ve ever seen,” he said at the time. 

Zac Efron

Zac Efron admitted his role as Troy Bolton in High School Musical still haunts him a bit. 
“I step back and look at myself and I still want to kick that guy’s ass sometimes,” he previously told Men’s Fitness. “He’s done some kind of cool things with some cool people – he did that one thing that was funny – but, I mean, he’s still just that f—king kid from High School Musical.”