10 Once Great Actors

Firstly, a disclaimer: there are great movies and there are great actors. Yet no matter how great an actor is, there will be the occasional floating log of film turd that will be skipped over on their resume if they are lucky enough. Bruce Willis had his Hudson Hawk, Tom Hanks plopped one out in The Ladykillers, but, hey, they still command our respect. Hell, even Al Pacino showed up in the giant Adam Sandler turd Jack and Jill, which scored extremely well with people of low intellect and Republican teenagers.

Once upon a time, these 10 actors could only poop box-office gold, but something happened. One turd beget another and another and another. Now these former greats simply are shallow imitations of their past glories, struggling to find that right script that’ll put them back on top, a 'John Travolta' if you will. But let's be clear, none of these have signed on to be a talking baby. There's still hope. Saying that, here’s is a list of 10 still actors that we once idolized who have fallen from grace.

10. Val Kilmer

Val Kilmer had the California surfer good looks when he broke into the scene in the Zuckerfest comedy Top Secret!. He was Ice Man in Top Gun, Doc Holliday in Wyatt Earp, Mad Martigan in Willow and even took a turn as Batman. He got to hang with the heavyweights in Heat alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. He was so good as Jim Morrison in the Doors – both in looks and talent – it appeared he was destined for a long life of top billing… even if it was only for a Doors Tribute Band.

So what happened?

Val’s a bit of an enigma. His career started to take a downturn after his divorce in 1995, shortly after appearing as Bruce Wayne in Batman Forever and the widely panned remake of The Saint. Rumors persisted that he was difficult to work with from early on his career, including nearly getting in a fist fight with Tom Cruise on Top Gun and not wishing to work with Joel Schumacker again after Batman, resulting in George Clooney driving the final nail in the coffin of the ’90s franchise. He has had some critical acclaim in smaller roles such as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and even was the voice of KITT in the short-lived remake of Knight Rider. So there’s that.

9. Jean Claude Van Damme

Once there was a time when all audiences wanted to see was Chuck Norris giving a spinning roundhouse kick to some guy in the face. Then audiences evolved so that we wanted to see a guy do the splits and kick two guys in the face simultaneously. Jean Claude Van Damme did that (JCVD to his friends) to a great extent in the late eighties and early nineties. Taking the less talk/more action route of such action luminaries before him as Schwarzenegger and Stallone, he broke out in 1988′s Bloodsport, followed that by Kickboxer (aka Bloodsport 2) then a series of action movies that involved mullets, kicking people in the face and co-starring with himself. Much like the attempts to explain his Belgian accent as the product of the Louisiana bayou or French-Canadian parents became tired, so too did the audience.

So what happened?

Sometime in the mid-nineties, after the creative peak of the cult Time Cop and his guest role as himself in Friends in 1996, he fell into a pile of cocaine and failed to find his way out until years later. Rumors abounded of his $10,000 a week cocaine habit in ’96. It was so bad he co-starred with Dennis Rodman in Double Team (a sports reference, not a porn one).

A short-lived stay in rehab did nothing and although he has managed to continue a steady string of straight-to-video movies and the critically acclaimed JCVD in 2008, he is steadily trying to build a path back towards respectability. Despite bowing out of The Expendables in 2009, he signed on for the sequel finally giving us all a chance to see JCVD and Sly fist to face. However, roles will remain scarce as long as he avoids joining the Screen Actors Guild, regulating him to Gerald Depardieu status.

8. Mike Myers

There is something about Hollywood that sucks the spark out of those comedians that make it on the big screen. They explode into the stratosphere making us question how we were able to even live our boring lives before they came along. Such was the case with Mike Myers.  Honing his comedic skills on Saturday Night Live, he made the jump with the bitching Wayne’s World, followed that up with the nice-guy So I Married An Axe Murderer and then exploded the Internet with everyone’s favorite Millennium costume and impersonation, Austin Powers.

So what happened?

Shrek came along and Mike discovered he would never need to go into a make up trailer again. Doing voice-over work has been such a great steady gig for him that he really has no need to try and create new lovable characters. His last attempt, The Love Guru, stank so bad it even beat out The Happening for the 2008 Razzie award as Worst Film of the Year. When your comedy is considered worse than a M. Night movie about killer plants, you know you’ve hit rock bottom. Fortunately, it’s not like Mike is in financial trouble. He’s just hit his creative plateau. For now.

7. Eddie Murphy  

Mike Myer’s donkey sidekick in Shrek, Eddie continues to be an enigma to those that remember him when he was making us pee our pants in his red leather suit from laughing so hard. To this day he is one of the all-time biggest money makers according to Boxofficemojo.com. However 4 of his top 5 money making roles are for his voice over work in Shrek. Beverly Hills Cop, the movie that made Eddie Murphy Eddie Murphy is his only live action role. Yet his early success in movies such as Trading Places, 48 Hours, and family friendly fare such as the remakes of the Nutty Professor and Dr. Dolittle made him box office certainty.

So what happened?

Eddie hates co-stars. He leads the league in dual/triple/multiple role-playing themed movies. And the problem with that is when you are acting against yourself, you aren’t being challenged. It’s like playing with the cheat codes on. There’s really no challenge and without the challenge, there’s no reason to try to exceed your limitations. Eddie seems to know his limitations and instead of being called out on it (ie by starring with others of similar or stronger talents) he is content to follow Mike into the sound booth, act like a donkey and collect his paycheques.

6. Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson was a force to be reckoned with in the ’80s and ’90s. Bursting out of Australia with the Mad Max trilogy and the highly successful Lethal Weapon series, he was the inaugural People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive. He rose to the top with the Game of Thrones-lite Braveheart, where he won best director and best picture. He was such a great actor that Hollywood picked him to be the epitome of Americana by casting him and fellow Australian Heath Ledger as the heart of the father-son combo in The Patriot. He went from Road Warrior to Maverick to Braveheart without missing a beat. He was the Swiss Army Knife of Acting.

So what happened?

Basically M. Night Shyamalan and Signs. This is the apex of his career; where America stopped relating to Mel and his wacky American Dad ways. Follow this by his own drunken real-life conspiracy rant, the soft-core torture porn of Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, his last dent in the acting world was him taking 2nd billing to a talking beaver.

5. Christian Slater

Another late 80′s-early 90′s wonderkid, Christian Slater gained respectability co-starring with the legendary Sean Connery in The Name of the Rose. He followed that up with roles in rebellious youth fare movies as Heathers and Pump Up The Volume. He had the smarmy looks and demeanor of Jack Nicholson. He became the ‘Outsider’ of the Hollywood hunks of the day, captivated by his role as Arkansas Dave Rutabagh in Young Guns 2 and Clarence in True Romance.  he even shared billing with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in Interview With the Vampire, giving him the bronze medal for hunkiness in 1994.

So what happened?

For me, the beginning of the end came when he hosted Saturday Night Live in either one of the best or worst episodes in SNL history, depending on if you think spending the week partying with Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider helped or hindered his future acting career. He has since gone down in cult comedy culture with the infamous Saturday Night Live skit ‘You Put Your Weed In There’, one of the few non-turds pooped out by Rob Schneider. Still being blocked on the internet by Lorne Michaels, SNL changed the image we had of Slater. Since the mid-nineties, Slater has been steadily popping out turds as quick as the editing room can deliver them, most going straight to video with a few returns to form such as in Very Bad Things or the short-lived TV series Breaking In 10 years later.

4. Robin Williams

Robin Williams is a god. He is comedy royalty. He changed the face of comedy into something more than just pie-in the-face, although he was still good for a pie-in-the face laugh. Robin Williams, the comedian, is an icon.

He also seems to have created the “comedy actors career trajectory path.”. This path leads from struggling stand-up comedian to TV success to movie success to curious movie choices (usually heavy dramatic fare) to attempts to reclaim the funny but never rising again to the top, leaving said actor stuck in a purgatory of sorts between past comedy fame and drama. He suffered from audience and bipolar. He wanted to make movies that touched upon the human soul and condition and succeeded in tugging at the heartstrings in Mrs. Doubtfire, Awakenings and Patch Adams. Williams won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Good Will Hunting. However, we also wanted the explosive verbal diarrhea Robin Williams, as in Aladdin or Good Morning Vietnam. So he decided to provide us neither ever again.

So what happened?

The 2002 ‘Stalker Trilogy’. Although he received critic points for again stepping out of his acting zone, audiences were luke-warm to the lone killer in Insomnia, the weird Photo booth guy in One Hour Photo and murderous kid’s show host in Death to Smoochy. After 9/11, America needed a good laugh and their once go-to guy for laughter was coming off as a bit of a creepy perv.
After that, nobody has ever looked at Robin Williams as the guy who once played a grown-up Peter Pan or shook the foundations of prep school establishment in Dead Poet’s Society. Now, he’s just the guy who  plays an animated yet subdued Teddy Roosevelt in Night at The Museum and according to your parents was quite funny at one time.

1. Robert De Niro

Yes, it’s true. C’mon, admit it. Robert De Niro. The man who gave us Travis Bickle, Jake La Motta, Al Capone, Paul Vitti etc etc was what every actor strived to be for over two decades. He made so many great movies that it was easy to overlook the not-so-great ones. He commanded respect and a good salary and he got it. His name alone guaranteed ticket sales and still does. He is a living legend and will go down as such… however, name one good movie he’s carried in the last decade. He’s been in nearly 2 dozen of them and all that we can muster is to think, “Hey, it’s Robert De Niro,” when he appears on screen.

So what happened?

The year 2000 was an especially bad one for Bob. It was the last time he seriously worked his acting chops as Fearless Leader in the Rocky And Bullwinkle Movie. Then he mailed in the asshole racist Navy trainer in Men of Honor, sharing billing with Cuba Gooding Jr.. Sharing! Then to finish his trilogy of Shame (patent pending) he capped it all with the sadly humorous Meet the Parents where he played a caricature of himself. At the time we all thought it was brilliant and we laughed and said “Look, Robert De Niro has a sense of humor!”

He did it so well that now, whenever we look at him we will always see Robert De Niro. Not Jake La Motta, not the Creature from Frankenstein or the freaky psycho in Cape Fear. Just Robert De Niro playing Robert De Niro. Thankfully, his recent collaboration with David O. Russell has allayed those end of career fears somewhat. 

2. Jim Carrey

It’s possible to do an entire list just on comedic actors that no longer make us laugh mainly because they tried to follow the Robin Williams Career Trajector. Jim Carrey exploded onto the scene with Ace Ventura and the Mask, killing it in the box office and cheap Halloween party costumes. You couldn’t go anywhere without someone doing a poor imitation of an Ace Ventura skit, most likely the one talking out of their ass. He bumped Robin Williams from contention as the Riddler in the Batman franchise and then teamed up with Jeff Daniels to rock the nineties forever with Dumb and Dumber. He was given the previously unheard-of sum of $20 million to star in Ben Stiller’s black comedy, The Cable Guy, alongside the all-around nice guy Mathew Broderick. The future looked very, very good.

So what happened?

Critics butchered The Cable Guy. They convinced the masses that nobody wanted a dark Jim Carrey, they wanted a crazy Jim Carrey. Despite standing the test of time, Jim Carrey didn’t. He bumped Robin Williams out of contention for the prized role of the Riddler in Tim Burton’s Batman 3, where his method acting wasn’t approved of by the Harvey Dent-playing Tommy Lee Jones. Then he decided to reinvent himself as the next Tom Hanks, taking on the Majestic and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Man. He tried to return to form in a series of near-unidentifiable caricatures of himself in the Grinch, Andy Koffman, Lemony Snickets… and lastly a desperate return to his animal-like charms in Mr. Popper’s Penguins.

1. Adam Sandler

In the nineties, Adam could do no wrong; he starred in Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy, The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy and Billy Madison. He was friends with Chris Farley and cast his best friends in his movies. He made date movies that weren’t date movies and most important, his characters were ones we felt we could identify with in some way, especially if we felt we were slightly inbred. He even co-starred beside Jack Nicholson in Anger Management.

What so happened?

He broke up with Tim Herlihy; his ex-college roommate and writing partner that helped pen all the above movies. Without him, Sandler has basically shit out turd after turd since early 2000, living the actor’s life of multiple personalities. He drifts between roles that are all glimmers of parts seen in his earlier movies. It’s like he is unable to decide if he wants to be ‘angry funny’ like in Anger Management, or the ‘sad funny’ like in Punchline or the ‘rom-com guy’ like in  50 First Dates. He also ventured into Dramatic Robin Williams leading man territory with Reign Over Me which looks to be the same movie as William’s The Fisher King. His most recent turds, Jack and Jill, Grown Ups 2 and That’s My Boy seem targeted mainly towards 13 year old boys with parent issues.