Fame is a strange reward. An actor lands the role that changes everything, the one that fills theaters and fills their bank account, and somewhere along the way they start to resent the very thing that made them. It happens more often than Hollywood would like to admit.
Some of these cases are about a character that clashed with the actor’s values. Others are about being permanently trapped by a single image. The reasons vary, but the honesty is always striking. Here are nine actors who went on record about the roles they wish they could leave behind.
1. Robert Pattinson – Edward Cullen in Twilight
No one has been more vocal about despising a role than Robert Pattinson and Twilight. The man openly dissed the films every time he did a press tour, making everyone wonder why he took the role in the first place. Nobody was more outspoken about their hatred for the franchise; someone on YouTube even edited together all the clips of Pattinson hating on Edward Cullen and the series as a whole.
Among his more memorable remarks, he called the character “the most ridiculous person” and admitted that “the more I read the script, the more I hated this guy.” He reportedly felt a sense of relief when the final movie was completed so he could pursue different artistic paths. The Twilight era made him a global star, which is precisely why it took so long to escape.
2. Sean Connery – James Bond in the 007 Franchise
Sean Connery was the first actor to bring James Bond to life on the big screen, yet he eventually grew to despise the character and the intense media scrutiny that came with playing the British spy. He famously stated that he wanted to kill off the fictional agent to be free of the role for good. As early as a 1965 Playboy interview, the actor shared that he was “fed up to here with the whole Bond bit.”
The role brought Connery fame, escape, and the financial security he had always sought, though whether it brought him deep satisfaction is open to interpretation. By the time of Diamonds Are Forever, he was so fed up that he gave his entire fee to charity. He felt the public could no longer distinguish between him and the character he played in seven films, and he spent much of his later career trying to prove he was more than just a secret agent with gadgets.
3. Alec Guinness – Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars
Alec Guinness did not just dislike his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi – he despised it. As the films became popular, he was quickly disgusted by the fans’ obsession. He was not a fan of science fiction, which he made known to many people, and he considered the dialogue in the Star Wars film to be “fairy-tale rubbish.”
What hurt the most for Guinness was how he had spent years carefully building his career as a serious actor, only for all of that work to be brushed aside by the success of his role in Star Wars. He publicly expressed regret for taking the role because he had wanted to remain a relatively unknown character actor, and having a part in one of the most famous movies of all time made sure that hope was crushed.
4. Marlon Brando – Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire
Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire helped reframe the way actors honed their craft and is often considered his breakout role. Although his performance was nominated for an Oscar, Brando later relayed how much he hated the part. Brando claimed his character was “everything I’m against – totally insensitive, crude, cruel.”
In real life, Brando hated the fact that women found him sexy through the role, going so far as to say “I detest the character.” He was not a fan of his role in A Streetcar Named Desire, and apparently his co-stars were not fans of his while they were filming either. Brando didn’t want to play the part to begin with, so it’s easy to imagine that the filming experience was poor for everyone involved.
5. Christopher Plummer – Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music
One of his most memorable roles was that of Captain Georg von Trapp in the 1965 Academy Award-winning musical The Sound of Music. Yet for the better part of 50 years, Plummer despised his part in the film, maintaining that his character was a bore to play and that the role was “awful and sentimental and gooey.” He even refused to attend cast reunions.
In a 2010 interview with the Boston Globe, Plummer admitted that he was “a bit bored” with Captain von Trapp. As he explained, “Although we worked hard enough to make him interesting, it was a bit like flogging a dead horse. And the subject matter is not mine. It’s not my cup of tea.” However, in 2015 Plummer relented, admitting that “it’s a marvelous family movie” and that he “respects it.”
6. Kate Winslet – Rose in Titanic
Kate Winslet now regards her performance as Rose in Titanic as one of her worst. While she never outright admits to hating the role itself, she has remarked that her accent in the film is “awful” and that she has trouble listening to it. She goes on to say that there are multiple scenes she wishes she could redo.
Kate considers the role to be one of her worst performances and is unable to rewatch Titanic without harshly criticizing her acting. There is one memorable scene in particular that haunts her years later. Fans asking for her autograph on the portrait scene only adds to her discomfort about it. The irony, of course, is that Titanic remains one of the highest-grossing films in cinema history.
7. Halle Berry – Catwoman in Catwoman
When Halle Berry was awarded the Razzie for Worst Actress for her role in Catwoman, she accepted the award with open arms. She said that she agreed with the people who voted for her, claiming that the film is terrible, and she went on to thank Warner Bros. for giving her the opportunity to be a part of what she called a terrible movie.
Berry later revealed she had initially thought, “This is a great chance for a woman of color to be a superhero.” During production, she said the storyline “didn’t feel quite right” and recalled arguing that the character should save the world like Batman and Superman do rather than just saving women from a bad face cream. “But I was just the actor for hire,” she said. “I wasn’t the director. I had very little say over that.”
8. Katherine Heigl – Alison in Knocked Up
Katherine Heigl was already a household name thanks to Grey’s Anatomy, but she found new name recognition on the big screen with Knocked Up. Her name was then dragged through the mud just months after the film was released, when she called the film “a little sexist” for its tendency to portray “the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight.”
Heigl felt that her character was depicted in an unflattering and exaggerated way compared to the male leads. Her public comments caused a significant rift with the director and her fellow cast members. She later clarified, however, that she did not hate the film itself – just the way her character was written and presented.
9. Ryan Reynolds – Hal Jordan in Green Lantern
Ryan Reynolds never hid the fact that he hated both his role as Green Lantern and the overall movie. He hated it so much that he later called out the poor CGI effects during his performance in Deadpool. The Green Lantern is an iconic DC superhero, yet the movie flopped after its release, and Reynolds’ hatred for the film reportedly prevented him from even watching the finished product.
Reynolds turned the whole experience into one of the most self-aware running jokes in Hollywood, with Deadpool openly mocking the film for years afterward. That kind of public reckoning with a bad project takes a certain confidence, and it arguably helped rebuild his reputation more than a quiet distance ever could. In hindsight, Green Lantern ended up launching a career reinvention rather than ending one.
