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In Hollywood, stardom is a fickle factor.
Even the perfect actors undergo fallow intervals – too typically, at present’s buzzy ingénue is tomorrow’s out-of-work has-been.
However typically, in the event that they’re fortunate, a mission comes alongside that may flip it throughout.
Robert Downey Jr is without doubt one of the most well-known actors to have pushed his appearing profession to the brink of extinction, solely to claw his means again to the very high. However there are numerous others – names akin to Keanu Reeves, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Brendan Fraser.
Generally, actors disappear from the display fully throughout their downturn, with Indiana Jonesstar Ke Huy Quan an instance of an individual whom the trade turned its again on for many years.
Different occasions, performers merely keep it up working by way of it, pumping their energies into inferior tasks that fail to utilize their appreciable skills.
Listed below are 19 actors whose careers went into freefall – and the films that saved them.
Lauren Bacall – Homicide on the Orient Categorical
A legend of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Bacall discovered her profession hampered in center age by numerous elements – together with a status for being tough to work with – and disappeared from the massive display fully for an eight-year interval between 1966 and 1974. It was Sidney Lumet’s Poirot adaptation Homicide on the Orient Categorical that gave Bacall a second wind, and she or he went on to renewed success, starring in acclaimed movies akin to Distress and Delivery late into her life.
Jamie Lee Curtis – Halloween
Curtis was one of many trade’s foremost “scream queens” all through the Seventies and Eighties, because of her roles in movies akin to Halloween and The Fog. Because the years glided by, nevertheless, the roles dried up, and Curtis even briefly retired from appearing within the Noughties. The 2018 legacy sequel Halloween, nevertheless, noticed the actor thrust again into the limelight, and put her on a mainstream trajectory that resulted in her Academy Award win for Every thing All over the place All at As soon as.
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Robert De Niro – Silver Linings Playbook
Extensively heralded as one of many all-time nice actors, De Niro lapsed right into a rut within the 2000s, together with his identify changing into nearly synonymous with low-quality, low-effort field workplace fare. A supporting flip reverse Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in David O Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook noticed him draw one of the best critiques he’d obtained in a long time, and earnt him his first Oscar nomination since 1992’s Cape Concern. Regardless of the odd clunker since, De Niro has gone on to even better heights, together with his work in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon rating alongside his absolute best performances.
Robert Downey Jr – Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Downey Jr’s struggles with habit and erratic on-set behaviour have been so infamous that, at the beginning of the 2000s, he was virtually uninsurable. Thanks largely to his position in Shane Black’s creative 2005 comedy, although, the newly sober star was capable of rebuild his status – and, together with his position within the Iron Man franchise, go on to grow to be one in all Hollywood’s greatest and most bankable performers.
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Colin Farrell – In Bruges
Colin Farrell loved success early in his profession, however struggled to persuade as a heavyweight actor, as a substitute constructing a status as a scandal-hit Hollywood heartthrob. This modified with the discharge of Martin McDonagh’s raucous crime comedy In Bruges, which noticed Farrell hit the kind of artistic heights he would make a behavior of within the years since. “In Bruges – personally, creatively, and all that jazz – was a giant turning level for me,” Farrell would later say.
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Brendan Fraser – The Whale
As soon as a bona fide main man, Fraser noticed his appearing profession decimated by miserable forces past his management, and was barely seen on display for the previous decade. However within the final couple of years, he’s launched a roundly celebrated comeback – together with his bodily transformational and Oscar-winning position in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale re-establishing him as a significant pressure on the scene.
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Hugh Grant – Paddington 2
Within the Nineties, Grant’s glittering profession survived a high-profile intercourse scandal and the ignominy of Mickey Blue Eyes. However because the years glided by, he wandered down a cul-de-sac of mediocrity, phoning in performances for by-the-numbers movies akin to The Rewrite, earlier than he started to rebuild his status as an erudite older star. The primary whisperings got here within the 2016 feelgood opera drama Florence Foster Jenkins, however it was his villainous position within the acclaimed youngsters’s charmer Paddington 2 that really relaunched his profession, and secured him a shock Bafta nomination in 2018.
Michael Keaton – Birdman
This audacious “one-take” movie solid Keaton as a spiraling actor with some uncanny parallels to himself – who takes on an formidable stage adaptation of a Raymond Carver story. The Greatest Image-winning movie kickstarted a renaissance in Keaton’s profession, with the previous Beetlejuice maverick occurring to star in all the pieces from big-money blockbusters (Spider-Man: Homecoming) to Emmy-winning reveals (Dopesick).
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Matthew McConaughey – The Lincoln Lawyer
Few actors have undergone so drastic a reinvention as Matthew McConaughey, the broadly disparaged romcom star who pivoted to “respectable” appearing in a interval dubbed the “McConnaissance”. Earlier than tasks akin to Dallas Patrons Membership and Interstellar, although, there was The Lincoln Lawyer, an honest authorized thriller that affirmed McConaughey’s chops as a reputable dramatic lead.
Leslie Nielsen – Airplane!
The Zucker brothers’ anarchic 1980 comedy Airplane! didn’t a lot save Nielsen’s profession as fully reinvent it: up till then, the actor had been a veteran of dramas, even starring within the po-faced catastrophe film The Poseidon Journey. What Airplane! did was recognise his preternatural aptitude for deadpan, and a profession as a comedy maven was born.
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Ke Huy Quan – Every thing All over the place All at As soon as
One among Hollywood’s actual “forgotten males”, Quan noticed his profession dissolve after discovering fame as a baby star in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, pivoting to stunt choreography after struggling to keep up his on-camera profile. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s genre-bending awards darling catapulted him again into the body in 2022, and bagged Quan an Oscar for Greatest Supporting Actor. Within the brief time since that movie’s launch, he’s landed a number of large tasks, together with a primary position on the collection American Born Chinese language and a supporting flip in Marvel’s Loki.
Keanu Reeves – John Wick
Regardless of starring in a few of the most enduring movies of the Nineties – The Matrix, Pace and Level Break – Reeves noticed his inventory plummet within the 2000s because of a string of economic failures. The actor, whose line supply was typically the topic of unfair derision, clawed his means again to the highest with a task within the slick 2014 thriller John Wick. Three sequels later, Reeves is now one of many trade’s greatest and most revered onscreen skills.
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Ryan Reynolds – Deadpool
For years, Hollywood appeared intent on attempting to make Ryan Reynolds occur, to no avail. In blockbuster squibs akin to Inexperienced Lantern and RIPD, the Canadian actor didn’t impress. His luck circled when he was solid because the foul-mouthed, puerile Deadpool in Marvel’s R-rated 2016 adaptation; it was a task that instantly reworked the actor into one in all mainstream cinema’s go-to main males for quippy standard movies.
Edward G Robinson – A Gap within the Head
The McCarthyist blacklisting of the Nineteen Fifties torpedoed the careers of many nice actors, together with Outdated Hollywood legend Edward G Robinson. After a interval within the wilderness, taking over minor roles in eclectic tasks, Robinson finally made his means again into the fray, with the 1959 comedy A Gap within the Head kickstarting a brand new period for the diminutive actor.
Mickey Rourke – Sin Metropolis
As soon as a roughish main man, Rourke noticed his stardom wane within the Nineties and early 2000s, earlier than a task within the stylised comedian adaptation Sin Metropolis resuscitated it. Inside two years, his profession was flying excessive once more, with a layered, Oscar-winning flip in The Wrestler. Regardless that his profile has receded once more since, his profession revival was one thing to behold.
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Winona Ryder – Black Swan
A charming display presence, Ryder noticed the shine of her Nineties hits – Edward Scissorhands, Actuality Bites, The Age of Innocence and extra – fizzle within the early Twenty first-century, thanks partially to adverse tabloid protection. A blistering supporting flip at nighttime ballet drama Black Swan helped flip issues round, nevertheless, with a subsequent position in Netflix’s Stranger Issues placing Ryder firmly again on the map.
John Travolta – Pulp Fiction
The singing, dancing star of Grease had watched his profession flatline all through the Eighties – that’s till Quentin Tarantino advised him “you’re the one which I need” and solid him in his sophomore characteristic Pulp Fiction. Travolta’s flip, because the shambling gangster Vincent Vega, reinvigorated his profession, and noticed him obtain a shock Oscar nomination.
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Reese Witherspoon – Wild
To some extent, Witherspoon was sure to dip in some unspecified time in the future: the Legally Blonde star received large whereas nonetheless younger, and had gained an Academy Award whereas nonetheless in her twenties (for 2005’s Stroll the Line). After her Oscar win, although, issues simply weren’t occurring, and the actor skilled a string of flops. That’s till the 2014 Oscar contender Wild, a transferring return-to-nature drama that noticed Witherspoon draw a few of the greatest critiques of her profession. Since then, it’s been a unique story, and Witherspoon sits atop her personal media empire with a web price of over $400m.
Renée Zellweger – Bridget Jones’ Child
Within the early Noughties, Zellweger was on high of the world: Bridget Jones’s Diary and Chicago helped make her a family identify, whereas Chilly Mountain bagged her her first Oscar. However a downturn in prospects led to an entire hiatus beginning in 2010. It was the third Bridget Jones movie that introduced her profession out of hibernation; the welcome return to her best-known position received the ball rolling for numerous different robust tasks, together with 2019’s Judy, for which she gained an Academy Award for Greatest Actor.
