The turkeys that almost stuffed their stars
Some films are so desperately bad that they can do serious damage to acting careers. Tim Robey rounds up the worst offenders
Paz de la Huerta’s $55 million lawsuit against the makers of Nurse 3D, which she claims ruined her career, may be unprecedented. But Hollywood is littered with ill-fated projects that did grievous damage to their stars, either derailing their A-list status for good or dictating an urgent comeback. We’ve compiled the costliest and bloodiest examples of When Turkeys Attack.
Showgirls (1995)
Elizabeth Berkley
No one came away from Paul
Verhoeven’s skin-baring Vegas folly unscathed, but the worst victim was its leading lady, former Saved by the
Bell starlet Berkley, who auditioned for Nomi Malone as her first film role and found, on winning it, that the chalice was well and truly poisoned. Her aggressively bitchy, all-thrusting, pole-loving performance caught a lion’s share of flak even by the standards of everything else the reviewers took to task. When the film flopped, poor Berkley retreated into supporting roles in the likes of The
First Wives Club, and the walk-on part of a hooker in Oliver Stone’s Any Given
Sunday. These days, she works quite regularly in television, but acting agencies probably use her brave self-exposure and immediate burnout as a cautionary tale.
Heaven’s Gate (1980)
Kris Kristofferson
It was the epochal turkey of its day, which nearly quadrupled its original production budget, bankrupted United Artists and wrecked director Michael Cimino’s reputation at a stroke. Kristofferson, its rugged leading man, had trouble recovering, too. The country singer’s star as a film actor had risen through the Seventies, thanks to roles for Martin Scorsese ( Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore) and Sam Peckinpah ( Pat Garrett and Billy
the Kid), and opposite Barbra Streisand in the remake of A Star Is Born. Bad enough in itself, Gate- gate also coincided with the worst year of Kristofferson’s life: his wife Rita Coolidge left him, his agent died, and he lost his recording contract with PolyGram. After this perfect storm, his screen career hit the doldums until 1996, when John Sayles offered him the comeback role of a racist Texan sheriff in the superlative Lone Star.
The Postman (1997)
Kevin Costner
Even before this exorbitant near-future adventure made him Hollywood’s least bankable leading man, Costner had faced some close brushes with disaster. His first directing project, Dances with Wolves, had been dubbed “Kevin’s Gate” during the shoot, but survived the negative publicity to become a surprise Oscar-winner; and then
Waterworld, widely tipped to bellyflop before release, just about broke even. You’d have thought Costner might have been tempted to steer clear of expensive post-apocalyptic sci-fi after that, but he showed no such caution and even signed on to direct. With its mawkish parable of American pluck,
The Postman was a last-chance saloon that blew up in his face. Costner would never be treated like Hollywood royalty again.
Queen Kelly (1929)
Gloria Swanson
Swanson was the Queen of the Silents, and this collaboration with Erich von Stroheim, full of mad sex and melodrama, should have capped her career before the talkies came in. Instead, the two bitterly clashed, the budget ballooned, and production was shut down. Swanson’s then lover, producer Joseph P Kennedy, fired von Stroheim and hired Edmund Goulding to “disinfect” the script, but the film was never satisfactorily finished, even after Swanson shot an alternative ending and released it to dismal returns in 1931. This debacle dealt a severe blow to the star’s career, and she would effectively retire in a matter of years. Wonderfully, her 1950 comeback as Norma Desmond, the reclusive silent screen legend in
Sunset Boulevard, features clips from this very film unspooling in her private cinema.
Killing Me Softly (2002) Joseph Fiennes and Heather Graham
For his debut as an Anglophone filmmaker, Chinese master Chen Kaige must have lacked sage counsel from anyone in the English-speaking world. He reached for that least safe or respectable of genres, the dodgy erotic thriller, and for two then-popular stars whose above-the-title days promptly disappeared in a puff of smoke. It might have been the 50 Shades- type scene when Fiennes trusses up Graham in a silk-scarf arrangement before they collapse on to a shagpile. It might have been the insane set piece wherein Fiennes chases a mugger down the street, beats him half to death, and the couple celebrate with a passionate clinch. Whatever moment you choose, the film’s point-and-laugh reception made this the last chance you’ll have had to watch Fiennes and Graham as romantic leads, opposite each other or indeed anybody.
A Sound of Thunder (2005)
Edward Burns
You probably haven’t heard of A Sound
of Thunder, let alone seen it. There are excellent reasons. This would-be epic adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story was meant to have been directed by Renny Harlin, starred Pierce Brosnan, and cost $80 million. Then Harlin left because of a disagreement with Bradbury, Burns replaced Brosnan, and the production company went broke in mid-production. Remaining backers only had $30 million to chip in, which is why the time-travel effects look shonky beyond belief. This surreally awful film grossed less than $2 million in the US. The only ripple created in the space-time continuum was its effect on the leading-man career of Burns, who has never since been hired to shoulder a major genre movie, but continues to work on lower budgets as a writer-director-star.
Hudson Hawk (1991)
Bruce Willis
Everyone wanted a bit of Bruce after
Die Hard, which spawned a sequel and some very unfortunate choices in the early Nineties. Hudson Hawk, the most crazily expensive of his star vehicles at that time, was also the one whose failure Willis was least able to squirm out of, since he co-wrote the script. It was a risky mélange of slapstick caper movie, conspiracy thriller and musical farce, with Willis and co-star Danny Aiello synchronising their cat burglaries by crooning mid-heist. Critics weren’t kind and audiences ran a mile, sending the Willis brand into a tail-spin. It took Quentin Tarantino to revive his credibility with Pulp Fiction, and the smash hit of The Sixth Sense to make him top dog again.
She auditioned for ‘Showgirls’ as her first film role, and found, on winning it, that the chalice was well and truly poisoned