Film critics, and now anybody with internet access, can be fairly ruthless. Once an actor or an actress has turned off someone with their performance once, it can linger in the mind of a person forever. This naturally leads to a question that many of us are wondering: what actors and actresses have been in the most “bad” movies? Thankfully, the fine folks at Vox have attempted to solve this riddle.
Vox scoured Metacritic and looked into the actors starring in poorly-received movies. They had criteria: First, films had to gross $30 million or more at the box office (in order to prevent the list from entirely being filled with actors from lousy Christian films). Actors and actresses had to have appeared in at least 10 films and one of the films had to be from the last five years.
So what did this search unearth?
Based on Metacritics scoring range, zero being eye-gougingly terrible and 100 being the next Citizen Kane (50-74 being mixed/meh) your “top” three actors that have appeared in the most terrible movies are:
1. Rob Schneider (average score 30)
2. Adam Sandler (average score 36)
3. Ashton Kutcher (average score 37)
I’d put Adam Sandler on top of this list for Eight Crazy Nights alone, but Schneider makes sense. Sandler actually was a decently-rated actor in the late 90’s, but since the new millennium his average score plummeted from 52 to 36. Yikes. Not surprising with the way those two actors are linked that they’re both the top of this terrible food chain.
Now onto actresses:
1. Jennifer Love Hewitt (average score 32)
2. Jessica Alba (average score 38)
3. Katherine Heigl (average score 39)
Both actors and actresses who end up on these lists appear mainly in terrible comedies. In fact 80 percent of the women on the “worst” chart appeared predominantly in rom-coms or action films. Coincidence or not, many of the women on the list were once chosen as one of the sexiest women on the planet.
Now that we’ve seen the worst, who are the actors that can be counted on to star in quality movies?
1. Daniel Day-Lewis (average score 73)
2. Michael Fassbender (average score 69)
3. John C. Reilly (average score 69)
And for the actresses:
1. Carey Mulligan (average score 69)
2. Tilda Swinton (average score 68)
3. Marion Cotillard (average score 68)
Dive into the rest of the article for more interesting analysis, including the revelation that reviewers are often harder on comedies and action movies than they are on dramas and musicals, which might help to explain why it’s so hard to be a respected actor and resepcted comedian in cinema.
[Vox]
