Screen Stars

Brad Pitt - Keanu Reeves - Laurence Fishburne - The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) - Adam Sandler - Will Smith

Entertainers:
Wesley Snipes - Jason Statham - Ben Stiller - Mark Wahlberg - Denzel Washington

Popular Actors:
Bruce Willis - Owen Wilson - Ewan McGregor - Viggo Mortensen

World Famous Actors:
Eddie Murphy - Mike Myers - Edward Norton - Chris O'Donnell - Clive Owen

Golden Globes Awards Trophy

Movie Actors Article: Unbreakable: Film Stars With Box - Office Flops

1. Bruce Willis

All hail the Teflon don of cinematic failure.

Over the course of his perhaps regrettably hyper-prolific career, Willis has appeared in some of the biggest, most notorious flops of the past few decades, golden turkeys like Sunset, Hudson Hawk, The Bonfire Of The Vanities, North, Breakfast Of Champions, The Story Of Us, and Perfect Stranger.

Yet he remains one of Hollywood's biggest stars and most bankable names. It helps that Willis winks and smirks his way through many of his performances as a way of letting the audience know that he doesn't believe in the foolishness he's appearing in any more than they do.

2. George Clooney

Clooney became famous relatively late in life, on the strength of his smoldering, sensitive performance on the TV show ER, and by the time his face started getting splashed across the covers of Us and People, he'd developed a keen interest in not wanting to be embarrassed.

After the well-paying debacle of Batman and Robin, Clooney made an overt retreat from blockbusters, cozying up to sympathetic auteurs like Steven Soderbergh and the Coen brothers (and some not-so-sympathetic ones, like Three Kings director David O. Russell), while cultivating a reputation as Hollywood's Gentleman Superstar.

Television news pundits who oppose Clooney politically make a point of noting that his name rarely top-lines smash hits anymore, but that kind of windfall has rarely been the motivation for films like Solaris or Syriana, or Clooney's directorial efforts Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind and Good Night, And Good Luck.

Clooney's picture still shows up in magazines and on entertainment shows - Fox News included - but he's now a movie star who enjoys being well-known while not much caring whether his movies are.

3. Brad Pitt

Like pal George Clooney, Pitt favors challenging roles in off-kilter fare.

Also as with Clooney, those quirky projects tend to flop miserably, as have pretty much all his films from the past decade that didn't have "Ocean" or "Mr. and Mrs." in their titles.

The critically revered, audience-resistant The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford is the latest and most dramatic example of Pitt's propensity for high-minded flops, though it's hard to understand how a film with a title like that could fail to draw in the masses.

Even Fight Club, Pitt's defining triumph, was a sizable commercial failure upon its theatrical release, as were the less-beloved Meet Joe Black, Spy Game, The Mexican, Seven Years In Tibet, The Devil's Own, Cool World, and Kalifornia.

Yet Pitt retains his superstar status in no small part because he looks the part; he's still considered big even as the grosses for his pictures shrink.

5. John Travolta

Travolta's career has risen from the grave more times than a slasher-movie villain.

By all rights, Travolta's post-Pulp Fiction comeback should have died following the historic disaster of Battlefield Earth, but after a punishing, flop-laden decade, this preternaturally resilient man-animal rebounded big time with big, flashy, embarrassing roles in two of last year's biggest sleeper hits: Hairspray (which really isn't so bad, once you take Travolta's bizarre stunt turn out of the equation) and Wild Hogs.

No mere mortal should be capable of withstanding so many flops, yet Travolta's career is never quite down for the count. Let's face it: If you can survive Moment By Moment, Two Of A Kind, The Experts, Perfect, Mad City, Lucky Numbers, Battlefield Earth, A Love Song For Bobby Long, and Lonely Hearts, you can survive just about anything, up to and including a thermonuclear war and several zombie/robot resurrections.

The entertainment media is slow to admit a mistake, so the magazines that declared drawling Texan McConaughey the "star of the future" back in 1996 are partly to blame for a decade's worth of distractingly one-note performances, often in direct conflict with the tone and style of what's going on around them.

To be fair, the public has also had a hand in McConaughey's stardom, by goosing flabby romantic comedies like The Wedding Planner and Failure To Launch to unexpected box-office success.

But those same audiences haven't followed McConaughey to rugged action fare like Sahara or Reign Of Fire, even though his physical build and laconic personality is better suited to rakish-adventurer roles than emotionally complex love-interest parts.

So McConaughey seems doomed to a career full of impossible choices: keep on doing what he's bad at, or risk disappointing the people who pony up the dough.

8. Nicolas Cage

Cage's current showing at the box office in National Treasure 2 not only stands as proof that he hasn't been dragged down into unemployment by his many flops, it's an object lesson in why.

While a large percentage of his films over the past dozen years or so have been moderate-to-catastrophic financial failures - for instance: Next, The Weather Man, The Wicker Man, Lord Of War, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Windtalkers, Bringing Out The Dead, and Snake Eyes, he still manages to pull off a National Treasure or a (gulp) Ghost Rider every now and then...

...Reminding Hollywood of the massive payoffs of his back-to-back '90s hits, Leaving Las Vegas, Con Air, The Rock, and Face/Off. Still, he's established a pretty clear track record at this point.

He makes money in big, dumb action films, and loses it everywhere else. Looking at the bottom line, it's hard to understand why Hollywood keeps trying to plug him into quirky, personality-driven fare, especially since as an actor, he generally just has the one personality to offer.

9. Keanu Reeves

And speaking of one-note acting, Reeves had the great fortune to start out his career with a handful of films that made his limited range, from blank affability to blank rigidity, look like carefully crafted acting.

His roles in River's Edge, Dangerous Liaisons, the Bill and Ted movies, Parenthood, and My Own Private Idaho all pinpointed appropriate aspects of his little-changing affect so cleverly that it looked like he had range.

By the time films like Dracula, Much Ado About Nothing, Johnny Mnemonic, and A Walk In The Clouds proved otherwise, it was too late - he already had a juggernaut career. And the success of The Matrix sealed the deal.

Not even theatrical flops like The Watcher, Sweet November, Thumbsucker, Constantine, A Scanner Darkly, and even The Matrix Revolutions have been able to stop him from getting work, even though the closest thing he's had to a hit lately was the so-so 2006 love story The Lake House. Coming later this year: Reeves as Klaatu in a remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. No, seriously, we aren't kidding even a little bit.

13. Samuel L. Jackson

On the other hand, Samuel L. Jackson's career didn't take off until he was well into his 40s.

He seems intent on making up for lost time by ascribing to the Christopher Walken school of accepting any role offered him, no matter how ridiculous or undignified.

Since his Jungle Fever breakthrough, Jackson has appeared in a punishing gauntlet of flops like The Long Kiss Goodnight, 187, Sphere, Rules Of Engagement, Formula 51, Twisted, In My Country (a.k.a. Country Of My Skull), The Man, Snakes On A Plane, and Home Of The Brave.

Then again, Jackson's cult fan base seldom holds him responsible for his bad/failed movies, and a Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, or Negotiator every couple of years goes an awfully long way toward winning back fans' hearts.

18. Josh Hartnett

As the lithe-framed object of desire in 1999's The Virgin Suicides, Hartnett must have looked like a certain up-and-coming star, with a face destined to fill young girls' journals with heart-shaped stickers.

Though there turned out to be perilously little beyond those hooded eyes, Harnett has never been in want of major roles in major bombs.

After stopping by for a bit part in the notorious $90 million comedy Town and Country, Hartnett moved on to play one corner of Pearl Harbor's anemic love triangle, opposite Ben Affleck (who finally lost his flop imperviousness with the career-killing Gigli) and Kate Beckinsale.

The long-delayed O, an updated Othello for teenagers, finally used Hartnett's enigmatic woodenness to decent effect, but he's proven himself incapable of carrying an entire movie - or, in the case, of the cop comedy Hollywood Homicide, half a movie - on his limited charisma.

Remarkably, 40 Days And 40 Nights kept the Hartnett dream alive even though nobody liked it, but subsequent star vehicles like Wicker Park and the unfortunately titled Lucky Number Slevin haven't succeeded. And then there's The Black Dahlia, which co-starred fellow list makers Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank, thus making it the Bermuda Triangle of flops its actors will survive.

The End

[* Coloring Buddy Mike counts 9 of the 18 movie stars listed for his Hollywood star coloring subjects.]

(ex: Harvey's Hollywood Star Coloring Pages Free)

1. Click Hollywood Star Coloring Pictures
2. Right Click Big Picture
3. Click Save Picture As...(Do Not Change File Name)
4. Save In: Coloring Desktop Folder

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