ACTORS WHOSE CAREERS TOOK A BAD TURN

There are quite a few actors that have seemingly disappeared from the limelight. After setting the bar high earlier on in their careers, it must've been hard for these actors to live up to the expectations. It's funny to think just how many former Hollywood A-listers have made their way to the acting B-list. And although it's unfortunate, the shift in their acceptance can usually be pinned down to one movie mistake they've made in their career. So without further ado, here are 10 actors whose careers took a turn for the worse.

Cuba Gooding Jr.

uba Gooding Jr. has some great movies under his belt, including his iconic role in Jerry Maguire and Men of Honor. But his days as a leading man are over, although he has popped up in a good amount of movies over the past few years, including the well-received Selma. Still, we can't picture him in a leading role any longer, and we haven't looked at him the same since Rat Race.

Adam Sandler

Adam Sandler started off with a few funny movies, and we were all laughing. Movies like Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, and just about everything up to Anger Management were good for more than a few laughs. He was great in a couple serious flicks like Reign Over Me and Punch Drunk Love, but once he released You Don't Mess With The Zohan his career tanked. He began releasing bad movie after bad movie with not-so-gems like Jack and Jill, That's My Boy, and The Cobbler. He's attempting to revive his career with the Pixels movie, but we don't see it happening.

Eddie Murphy

Early on in his career, Eddie Murphy was one of the funniest actors on screen. His standup was hilarious, and his movies were generally well-received. His last movie worth the watch was Shrek, and before that, his last good movie was 1999's Life opposite Martin Lawrence. His most recent movie release holds a Metascore of 26/100, and it's not even worth naming because you won't have heard of it anyway. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Jim Carrey

Jim Carrey is a far throw away from the actor that he used to be. His latest box office fare was Dumb and Dumber To, which wasn't even close to how great the original movie was. His role as Colonel Stars and Stripes in Kick-Ass 2 was good enough, but before that his last good movie was 2003's Bruce Almighty. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone wasn't even remotely funny, Mr. Popper's Penguins was a major flop, and Yes Man was also not as funny as it should've been. It's clear that the older Jim Carrey gets, the less hilarious he is.

Mel Gibson

We can pretty much attribute the fall of Mel Gibson to his epic meltdown in 2010, but that doesn't excuse him from this list. His latest movies include Blood Father, The Expendables 3, Machete Kills, Get the Gringo, The Beaver, and Edge of Darkness. All of those movies should be skipped over. His last good starring role was in 2002's Signs, but all movies that followed aren't even worthy of an evening on Netflix.

Tim Robbins

Tim Robbins was once a household name, from 1988's Bull Durham all the way up through 2003's Mystic River. He had some great movies in between, including The Shawshank Redemption, Nothing to Lose, and Jacob's Ladder. But he's pretty much irrelevant nowadays, starring in Welcome to Me and Life of Crime.

Catherine Zeta-Jones

Catherine Zeta-Jones was also once a household name back in the late 1990s/early 2000s after starring in such great movies as Entrapment, Chicago, Ocean's Twelve, and High Fidelity. Her success continued on with The Legend of Zorro and then No Reservations in 2007, but the movies that followed are widely considered to be travesties. She hasn't been in a lot of movies since 2007, and hasn't had a new film since RED 2 in 2013. But, the films that were released with her in a starring role over the past 5 years have been quite awful.

Hilary Swank

Oh, Hilary Swank...what happened!? Hilary's breakout performance in Million Dollar Baby showed that she could hold her own in a leading role, and she followed it up with a stellar performance in Freedom Writers, the story about a young teacher who inspires her class of at-risk students. Since her success with 2007's P.S. I Love You, she hasn't starred in anything notable. Her most recent movie was last year's highly-rated but hardly-seen-by-anyone You're Not You (don't worry, no one else has heard of it, either). And, before that, it was The Homesman opposite Tommy Lee Jones (and no one saw that one either, as the film grossed just $2.4M in its entire run).

Macaulay Culkin

Macaulay Culkin is a prime example of a successful child star who couldn't make it as an adult. He was in a plethora of great movies as a kid, including Uncle Buck (with John Candy) and Home Alone. In 1991, he starred in My Girl, but things started going downhill for Macaulay in 1994 when he was a part of the poorly received animated movie The Pagemaster with Christopher Lloyd. The Pagemaster grossed just $12M on its $27M budget. Following the animated bomb, Culkin starred in Richie Rich, which also bombed miserably. And that was pretty much the last big movie release we'd see from the kid, although he's appeared in numerous episodes of Robot Chicken. Also, just do yourself a favor right now and Google recent images of Macaulay Culkin. Yikes.

Nicolas Cage

Say what you want about Nicolas Cage now, but he had a ton of great movies earlier on in his career. Okay, maybe not EARLY early in his career, but skip ahead to It Could Happen to You, and that's when you'll find the good Nicolas Cage. But the actor was at his best between 1996's The Rock and 2005's Lord of War, with a string of great movies in between. Con Air was an impressive performance, Face/Off opposite John Travolta was an impressive performance, and City of Angels and Gone in Sixty Seconds were both great. Snake Eyes and 8MM were also pretty awesome. But things started to go downhill for Cage with 2006's The Wicker Man, which was followed up by Ghost Rider to pretty much seal the deal for Cage. His most recent film, Dying of the Light, holds a whopping 4.3 out of 10 on IMDB.

Looner