10 Celebrities Who Accepted Movie Roles They Disliked Just for the Cash
Here Are 10 Celebs Who Did Movie Roles They Hated For (Lots Of) Money
Despite the benefits of taking on challenging and compelling parts, acting can occasionally boil down to business. For a variety of different reasons, actors may grow to dislike the character they are cast in. Sometimes, the writing or the production team they work with presents more of a challenge than the character. Sometimes, the line in the middle of an actor's cheque is all they have to remember. For the sake of finances, some celebrities were forced to choose roles in films that they would never have thought to undertake.
1. Channing Tatum, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Tatum admits, in the Vanity Fair lie detector test, how much he hated playing G.I. Joe's commanding soldier Duke. Tatum's character, Duke, had a cameo in G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the 2009 film's sequel, as well. Tatum says he attempted to turn down the movie "seven times," but Paramount had a contractual obligation to cast him, "they had an option on me and I had to do the movie. So the second one, I obviously just didn’t want to do that one either," as per Variety. Drafts of the script for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra were leaked during the pre-production stage, which led to criticism. Critics deemed the movie to be "silly" and "cartoonish," this prompted changes by comic book writer Larry Hama.
2. Michael Caine, Jaws: The Revenge
Jaws 3 was a "terrible" movie, according to Caine, who also claimed that he hated participating in it, as per Medium. "However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific." Caine once said, "First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don’t come, I choose the ones that pay the rent." He has never hesitated to admit that he chose certain roles only for the money.
3. Marlon Brando, Superman: The Movie
Richard Donner had not made many feature films at the time he was chosen to make Superman. Even though Brando had a dramatic comeback to fame after his Academy Award–winning performance in The Godfather, by 1978, his reputation in Hollywood still preceded him. With little to no prior knowledge of Superman, Brando agreed to play the comic book character in the movie for a fee of $3.7 million, plus an additional $20 million from roughly 12% of the box office earnings. Brando was so uninterested in the part, even with the big payoff, that he even tried to persuade the producers to recast the character as a floating bagel or a green suitcase so he would just need to provide a voice.
4. Harrison Ford, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Expendables III
Ford eventually agreed to play the part for the full trilogy, although his doubts about the role lingered. He saw Han as shallow and one-note, at best a supporting role in Luke Skywalker's narrative rather than a three-dimensional figure of his own. Ford stated, "He's got no mama, he's got no papa, he's got no future. He has no story responsibilities at this point," as per Fandom Wire. One example would be Ford's triumphant comeback to the Star Wars universe after almost 30 years, for which he has no sentimental whimsies and says to Jimmy Fallon, "No, I got paid."
5. Edward Norton, The Italian Job
Upon securing a three-picture deal with Paramount following his breakthrough role in Primal Fear, the actor made the choice to take on a role in Fight Club, a Fox production. This move empowered Paramount to insist that Norton also feature in The Italian Job, under threat of facing a substantial, potentially devastating lawsuit. The actor declined to promote the movie despite doing his part and receiving praise for his professionalism on set, saying in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, "My contract with Paramount explicitly forbids me from discussing the film or the nature of my employment without their permission."
6. Dustin Hoffman, Little Fockers
According to Screen Rant reports, Universal Studios was so unhappy with Little Fockers that they tried to get Hoffman, who turned down the threequel, back for four sequences that would be incorporated into the final product in an effort to "funny up" the Christmas release. After being originally written out of the movie due to a compensation disagreement early in the film's infamously problematic production, the actor received nearly the same salary for his costarring part in Meet the Fockers, which consisted of four brief scenes shot after principal photography had already wrapped.
7. Whoopi Goldberg, Theodore Rex
A highly criticized direct-to-video movie with a budget of over $33 million and an approval rating of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, Goldberg only agreed to do this awful hell of a movie after verbally agreeing to do it years earlier; when she tried to back out, producer Richard Gilbert Abramson threatened to sue her for $20 million. Even though Goldberg eventually consented to work on the movie for an alleged $7 million salary—much more than she was initially paid—she still lists Theodore Rex as the only movie she wishes she had never made.
8. Alec Guinness, Star Wars: A New Hope
Even before he set foot on the set of Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope, Guinness had a distinguished career. He felt that the film's space jargon and traditional plot were beneath his skill level and had even privately admitted to friends that he thought the movie was "fairy tale rubbish," as per Business Insider. Reluctantly, he agreed to return for an even lesser role in The Empire Strikes Back after his profit participation in the first film was $7 million (adjusted to $33 million today). He had accepted the part for significantly more than his customary wage, which was reportedly $762,000, adjusted for inflation.
9. Emily Blunt, Gulliver’s Travels
After her role in The Devil Wears Prada put her on the map, Blunt was ultimately indebted to 20th Century Fox for two additional movies, one of which ended up being Gulliver's Travels, with the studio forcing her into the role in light of her picky nature in regards to her roles, as per IMDB. Even if the film garnered her a major payday and ultimately provided her with a pleasant on-set experience, her contractual obligation to Gulliver's Travels ended up costing her an offer to play Natasha Romanoff (aka Black Widow) in Iron Man II, a fact that still irks her during press rounds to this day.
10. Nicolas Cage, Various Roles
He told Deadline that he had to take roles in "crummy" movies to make up for lost real estate investments, even though he maintains that he "never phoned it in." In addition to his public battles with the IRS, Cage never discloses which of his direct-to-video projects he did solely for financial gain (though you can probably infer from his impressive resume). Nevertheless, he makes a point of praising the movies from this period that he is proud of, such as Joe, Pig, and Mandy.
