Taylor Lautner and 4 Other Actors Whose Career Was Killed by Fierce Criticism

Sometimes even one unsuccessful role leads to a storm of devastating reviews that can ruin an actor's career, reputation, or even life.

Even the fact that you have been on the best lists and won awards before does not help. So Hollywood actors take risks not only when they perform their own stunts, like Tom Cruise.

1. John Travolta

Quentin Tarantino is indeed great. Thanks to the immortal status of Pulp Fiction, we still haven't forgotten who John Travolta is. But we should have – because Battlefield Earth is one of the worst movies ever made.

When you were a kid playing with your first camera phone and making silly videos with your friends, they were probably a little better than Battlefield Earth.

John Travolta is a Scientologist, which means he believes in the religion created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. And Battlefield: Earth, released in 2000, is an adaptation of one of Hubbard's novels. In it, Travolta plays an alien with a funny head whose race controls the Earth, and gives perhaps the worst acting performance you'll ever see.

The critics panned the movie and pointed out Travolta's weak performance. After that, he didn't have any really successful projects.

2. Jake Lloyd

Poor Jake Lloyd's psyche was definitely not prepared for how Star Wars fans would perceive him as little Anakin Skywalker. At the time of filming Jake was only ten years old. How could a cute little boy upset the whole fanbase?

The weird dialog that was written for his character and the even worse scene where Anakin is fighting on a battleship did not help the fans to start to love him. But it didn’t even stop at a Golden Raspberry nomination and fan hatred.

Due to the endless bullying, and the endless attention to himself as a child, Jake could not stand it. In 2005, Lloyd retired, having appeared in only one movie after playing Anakin.

3. Hayden Christensen

Apparently, the role of Anakin is no less cursed than the role of the Joker – it ruins careers. Hayden Christensen's acting also did not please the fans, but he was not a child, so everyone openly criticized him.

The most offensive thing is that for the movie Revenge of the Sith Christensen improved his acting a lot. But the damage had already been done by The Clone Wars, where Anakin talked nonsense about sand. The actor could forget about the title of a new young Hollywood star.

Hayden tried to find another role to show his strong side, but he made a mistake again. In 2008, he starred in Doug Liman's sci-fi movie Jumper, and it was a big flop. Of course, critics immediately blamed Christensen's mediocre performance.

4. Freddie Prinze Jr.

Remember the funky live-action Scooby-Doo movie? It also killed some careers. Freddie Prinze Jr. is living proof of that.

In fact, Freddie had a career before Scooby-Doo, starring in several major films of the 1990s. For example, in the cult slasher movie I Know What You Did Last Summer. But something went wrong after Scooby-Doo.

The box office was decent and Freddie was signed to return as Fred in the sequel, but the critics destroyed Scooby-Doo and Prinze Jr. lost his reputation. He was disappointed in the industry and left Hollywood. Freddie later returned to movies, but in small roles.

5. Taylor Lautner

Twilight was one of the most popular teen franchises, but the actors who starred in it had a hard time after filming. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson were immediately labeled as bad actors, so they were forced to prove the opposite with good performances in good movies. And it all worked out. For these two, but not for Taylor Lautner.

After he played Jacob, the directors decided that Taylor was the next big action star. This is how the movie Abduction was made – a weak action movie that was destroyed by critics. In a normal situation no one would have noticed Abduction, but all the attention was focused on the then-popular Taylor Lautner. And he was the worst part of the movie.

The failure was so severe that Lautner completely dropped out of big projects. And after 2016, Lautner had a six-year break from acting.