The days of serious actors and actresses dismissing superhero films are, for the most part, long gone. Today, being cast in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a point of pride. If you making it into these blockbusters, you're probably doing pretty well with your career. But nobody's career is perfect, and having roles you can be proud of doesn't preclude also taking some really embarrassing ones. You can blame these clunkers on bad judgment, or bad agents, or simply needing to take whatever's offered to you so you can eat. Whatever the case, you can't really avoid these embarrassments... unless you're Tilda Swinton.
In compiling this list of embarrassing roles of MCU actresses, it was impossible to find a true embarrassment for Tilda Swinton. Even on the rare occasions she's in a bad movie, they tend to be "respectable" bad movies, arthouse auteur films that tried and failed admirably, and her performances are always singled out as amazing (if anything, her MCU part as The Ancient One might be the most "embarrassing" if only for the whitewashing scandal). But Tilda Swinton aside, almost everyone has at least one embarrassing performance at some point. Here are 20 of the MCU actresses' big shames.
20 SCARLETT JOHANSSON - GHOST IN THE SHELL
As Black Widow, Scarlett Johansson is by far the most prominent actress in the MCU's first three phases (Brie Larson's Captain Marvel and potentially other female superheroes are expected to take bigger roles in Phase Four). She's the highest grossing actress of all time in the United States, and among the highest paid in Hollywood. In light of her superstardom, the live-action Ghost in the Shell movie is all the more embarrassing, surpassing pre-MCU embarrassments like The Spirit.
Scarlett Johansson should not be playing a Japanese woman named Motoko Kusanagi. The excuse the movie makes for her to play such a role only makes the whole situation worse (without going into spoilers, let's just say it's ironic this was in theaters at the same time as Get Out). The whitewashing controversy combined with bad reviews led to a spectacular flop. ScarJo should have known better.
19 ELIZABETH OLSEN - HOW THE WEST WAS FUN
Here's something you might not have realized: Scarlet Witch is the Olsen twins' younger sister. Unlike Mary-Kate and Ashley, who've retired from acting, Elizabeth Olsen's grown up to be a serious actress, making her lead debut in the film Martha Marcy May Marlene and continuing to act in acclaimed indies like Ingrid Goes West and Wind River alongside the Marvel and Godzilla films.
In the '90s, though, she was playing second fiddle to her more famous sisters. She played the very important dramatic role of "Girl in Car" in the TV movie How the West was Fun. She also appeared as herself in several of the Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley mystery video series. It must be said, all of these weird '90s relics are sadly lacking in the chaos magic department.
18 ZOE SALDANA - NINA
The controversy over the casting of Zoe Saldana as legendary singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone in the 2016 biopic Nina is a complicated one. It's not a typical "whitewashing" controversy; both Saldana and Simone are black. Saldana, however, has a much lighter skin tone than Simone did, which raised questions whether the casting was appropriate. Nina Simone's estate spoke out against the casting decision.
Ultimately the movie's problems went far beyond that topic of debate. Nina's release was delayed for four years because the studio knew the film was a stinker. It played an extremely limited release the same day it went to video-on-demand and has a mere 2% on Rotten Tomatoes. Certainly far from the Guardians of the Galaxy star's proudest moment.
17 TESSA THOMPSON - WHEN A STRANGER CALLS
Tessa Thompson's star is on the rise. From Creed to Westword to Annihilation, it increasingly seems like she's everywhere. She stole the show as Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok, giving a performance that was simultaneously funny and intense. Before all that, she was Scarlet in When a Stranger Calls.
When a Stranger Calls, the 2006 remake of the 1979 cult classic, is a horror film about a babysitter who receives threatening phone calls. Thompson was mostly on the sidelines for this one, as the babysitter's best friend. The critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes (Tomatometer Rating: 9%) for the movie reads, "Just hang up on this one." Thompson's not the only MCU star to partake in this embarrassing remake; Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson) plays the babysitter's dad!
16 POM KLEMENTIEF - LES KAÏRA
Before she moved to Hollywood and joined the Guardians of the Galaxy as the alien empath Mantis, Pom Klementieff was acting in movies in her home country of France. Not all of these films were masterpieces. Case in point: Les Kaïra, a film whose English title we aren't even allowed to type on CBR (you can Google it if you're curious).
This raunchy comedy actually made a lot of money in France, becoming the most profitable French film of 2012. But did people actually like it? IMDb lists the user rating as a mediocre 5.4 out of 10. The review in Variety reads, "the material is wildly underdeveloped, and rather than feeling transgressive, the film often seems like an infantile, ADD-fueled take on 18-plus material (though in France, the film has been rated suitable for all ages)."
15 GWYNETH PALTROW - GLEE
If this list were going into embarrassments outside of film and TV roles, Gwyneth Paltrow's work as the CEO of the controversial new age company Goop would easily be her biggest embarrassment. It's certainly a far cry from the more serious science-based work of her Marvel character Pepper Potts. But this is about embarrassing acting roles, and for that let's look at Paltrow's role as Holly Holliday on Glee's second and fifth season.
Paltrow actually got some serious acclaim for her performance, earning an Emmy nomination for the role. However, after its fun first season, Glee quickly became an embarrassment for all involved. The Holliday character both made light of bipolar disorder, prompting criticism from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, AND performed a song by convicted child molester Gary Glitter. Latter seasons of Glee were kind of mess of bad ideas like that.
14 NATALIE PORTMAN - THE STAR WARS PREQUELS
Natalie Portman has earned three Oscar nominations and one win. Yet for a long time it could take some serious effort to convince people the Thor co-star was a good actress. She's been doing great work for a while now, but sadly her most iconic film role is also her lousiest: Padme Amadala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
Let's be clear: the prequels sucked all the charisma out of every American actor involved (Scottish thespians Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid somehow managed to survive with their dignity intact). Even Samuel L. Jackson was boring in them! There was no way for Portman to make her awful romantic dialogue sound the least bit convincing. She clearly has a sense of humor about these awful movies; as she raps in her 2018 Saturday Night Live appearance, "Say something 'bout the [CENSORED] prequels, [CENSORED]!"
13 LINDA CARDELLINI - THE GOODE FAMILY
Linda Cardelini, former Freaks and Geeks star and Hawkeye's wife Laura Barton in the Avengers movies, has a lot of voice acting credits. She's done voices for hit cartoons like Regular Show, Gravity Falls, and Robot Chicken, to name a few. Not all of the cartoons she's been in have been so successful; one of the most embarassing failures was The Goode Family.
It's possible to imagine a good version of The Goode Family, Mike Judge's attempt to do for hyper-liberal hippies what he did to conservative Texans in King of the Hill. However, where King of the Hill lasted 13 years thanks to its ability to both mock and sympathize with its subjects, The Good Family was too mean-spirited, its characters portrayed too unsympathetically, to last beyond one season.
12 DANAI GURIRA - TINKER BELL AND THE LEGEND OF THE NEVERBEAST
OK, a paycheck's a paycheck and sometimes you want to do something you can show kids between your zombie-killing sessions on The Walking Dead. The Tinker Bell movies look harmless and are probably a better way for DisneyToon Studios to spend their time than making nonstop mediocre sequels like they did in the early 2000s. This was far from the worst gig the Black Panther actress could have taken.
Alas, there seems to be a creepier side to the whole Tinker Bell franchise. John Lasseter, the Pixar founder recently ousted for inappropriate conduct, had something of an unhealthy obsession with the actresses hired for these direct-to-video movies. One former Pixar executive speaking anonymously told Deadline, "He was inappropriate with the fairies." One hopes Danai Gurira was able to stand up for herself against Lasseter's creepiness.
11 EVANGELINE LILLY - LIZZIE MCGUIRE/FREDDIE VS. JASON/WHITE CHICKS
Evangeline Lilly, now The Wasp in the Ant-Man movies, broke out big in 2004 as Kate Austen on Lost. Before that break-out part, however, she was an extra in a number of terrible films. Today, it's funny to go back and spot this Marvel superhero actress in the crowds of these stinkers.
In her early career, she enjoyed such dignified roles in such legendary movies as "School Student Next to Locker" in Freddy vs. Jason (pictured above; that's her in the green jacket next to, as you'd expect, the locker), "Police Officer" in The Lizzie McGuire Movie and "Party Goer" in White Chicks. Hey, if you want to break into acting, you have to take a LOT of nothing roles in mostly awful movies like these ones.
10 ANGELA BASSETT - KINDERGARTEN COP
Speaking of embarrassing early career bit parts, how about Angela Bassett playing an airline stewardess in Kindergarten Cop? Twenty eight years before she was Queen of Wakanda and mother of the Black Panther, Bassett got to Arnold Schwarzenegger, "Is your wife OK, sir?" Arnold replies to this question with the punchline, "Compared to what?"
As far as stupid movies go, Kindergarten Cop is far from the worst you could have on your resume. You could even go so far to say that IT'S NOT A TUMAH (...sorry)! Honestly, leading Ah-nold into awful puns must be a lot of fun. Still, this is the sort of role you look back on and just laugh, impressed with how far this Academy Award nominee has come since these tiny roles in ridiculous films.
9 MARISA TOMEI - WILD HOGS
Oscar winner and young hot Aunt May, Marisa Tomei has enjoyed a long career in film, TV and theatre. As one would expect with such a lengthy career, her resume has ups and downs. The 2007 Disney biker comedy Wild Hogs is one of her filmography's commercial high points, but also one of its artistic low points.
It's almost unthinkable today to imagine that Wild Hogs was such a blockbuster when it was in theaters. This is a movie which thinks guys freaking out over the possibility of being seen as gay is the height of comedy. Needless to say, it hasn't aged well, and critics hated it even at the time. As for Tomei's role, the Christian Science Monitor's review reads, "Marisa Tomei has so little to work with that she might as well be a stand-in. You could see her thinking, 'For this I won an Oscar?'"
8 COBIE SMULDERS - SAFE HAVEN
How I Met Your Mother star Cobie Smulders has made her mark in the superhero genre. In addition to playing Maria Hill in the MCU, she was Joss Whedon's first choice to play Wonder Woman in his proposed adaptation and voiced LEGO Wonder Woman in The Lego Movie. She was also the next-door neighbor of the main character in Safe Haven.
Safe Haven is a 2013 adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel by the once-prestigious now-schlock peddling director Lasse Hallström. That tells you basically what you need to know about it. Even in the canon of Nicholas Sparks adaptations, this ain't The Notebook; nobody talks about this movie. It has a pathetic score of 12% on Rotten Tomatoes. Rolling Stone's review says of the film, "It's a terrible thing to do to your Valentine."
7 KAT DENNINGS - BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE 2
Kat Dennings' comic relief role as Darcy Lewis in the first two Thor movies is controversial, with some enjoying the character and others finding her annoying. Still, no matter what you think of the part, it's almost certainly an improvement for Dennings over playing Molly Fuller in Big Momma's House 2. Of course, almost any movie role would be.
The first Big Momma's House wasn't exactly a classic, but it's the attempt at a family-friendly sequel that's gone down in bad movie history. The pointless follow-up has only a 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a steep drop from the original's already weak 30%. The Razzies nominated it for "Worst Prequel or Sequel." The Onion wrote of the movie, "Passengers Bravely Take Down Plane Showing Big Momma's House 2."
6 RENE RUSSO - THE ADVENTURES OF ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE
Does admitting your own embarassment onscreen reduce the degree of embarassment? Rene Russo, Frigga in the Thor movies, does just that as Natasha in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, when she tells Boris, "Let's face it dollink, we suck." If you're feeling charitable, that self-aware acknowledgment of the movie's own shoddiness can be considered a solid recreation of the original Jay Ward cartoon's self-mocking humor.
If you're feeling less charitable, it's just a sad cry for help from one of the many big-name stars stuck in a movie without much reason for being. Russo's won multiple awards for high quality acting in other films, but stuck with such weak material, she found herself nominated at the Razzies for the "award" of Worst Supporting Actress.
5 MICHELLE YEOH - THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR
Michelle Yeoh's cameo as Aleta Ogord at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 excited a certain section of viewers. Yeoh's acting chops as demonstrated in films like Tomorrow Never Dies and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon make her a promising addition to the MCU. It's certainly a smarter franchise for her to join than The Mummy.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, in which Yeoh plays the sorceress Zi Yuan, was the sort of sequel nobody was asking for. It came out seven years after the previous entry in the series, The Mummy Returns, and nobody was sure why this was made. Rachel Weisz refused to reprise her role, citing "problems with the script." Both critics and audiences would have similar problems with the movie.
4 CATE BLANCHETT - ROBIN HOOD
Honestly, as far as "embarrassments" go, this one is pretty mild. Ridley Scott's 2010 Robin Hood movie was a poorly reviewed bomb, to be sure, which is always going to be embarrassing. Still, as bombs go, this was one from a respected director with an A-list cast, and she at least got to threaten to castrate Russell Crowe, so it's not like it was a total waste of time.
Yeah, Cate Blanchett has done an excellent job choosing movie roles, including her villainous turn as Hela in Thor: Ragnarok. Even when a movie of hers gets bad reviews like Elizabeth: The Golden Age her performance still gets an Oscar nomination. You can argue the Hobbit movies deserve a reputation as embarrassments, but those are ignorable as simple footnotes to her Lord of the Rings work.
3 ELIZABETH DEBICKI - PETER RABBIT
Some might argue The Cloverfield Paradox is Elizabeth Debicki's big embarrassment of 2018, but this article won't make that argument. The Cloverfield Paradox was a mess but one with many positive qualities, Debicki's performance among them. The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 actress has another February 2018 release, however, and that one is Peter Rabbit, in which she voices the character of Mopsy.
Turning a whimsical children's classic into a melange of Poochie-style forced hipness and ugly computer animation is just a bad idea. Even the surprisingly high number of "fresh" reviews (58% on RT) mostly read as "not as unbearable as expected." The filmmakers have already apologized for an all-too-imitatable scene where Peter subjects Mr. McGregor to a violent allergic reaction.
2 BRIE LARSON - BASMATI BLUES
In 2016, Brie Larson deservedly won the Best Actress Oscar for her harrowing performance as a kidnapping survivor in Room. In 2019, she's taking on the role of Captain Marvel, the MCU's first female superhero to carry her own movie. Between those two career landmarks, there's Basmati Blues.
OK, technically production on Basmati Blues started before Room, but it was only on February 9, 2018 that this stinker of a movie finally got released. From the trailers alone, it looked like a cringe-fest, and yet another cheesy and insensitive "white savior" narrative. Critics who've seen the film say it's not as offensive as the trailers made it look, but it's still an embarrassingly bad film that Larson probably wants swept under the rug at this point.
1 MILEY CYRUS - HANNAH MONTANA
Did you even know Miley Cyrus was part of the MCU? She does the voice of Mainframe, one of the members of Yondu's original team who appears in one of the mid-credits scenes in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Of course, she's much better known for her time as a Disney Channel star and her subsequent attends to distance herself from that past.
Cyrus has spoken out about being uncomfortable with the limitations placed upon her to maintain the wholesome Hannah Montana image as a teenager. As an adult, she rebelled against that old image in a major way. That rebellion, though, came with its own embarrassments; after a while she started to feel uncomfortable being so hyper-sexualized. Will her career continue to be a series of future embarrassments in reaction to past embarrassments, or has she finally found happiness now?