I rewatched Bowfinger recently for the first time since 1999, and two things struck me immediately. First: I’d completely forgotten how funny that movie is. Second: I usually can’t stand Eddie Murphy in multiple roles, but something about his performance as Jiff—the nerdy, eager-to-please stunt double—absolutely works. There’s a scene where Steve Martin’s desperate filmmaker Bobby Bowfinger convinces Jiff to sprint across a busy freeway for a shot, and even now, just thinking about Murphy’s dopey enthusiasm in that moment makes me laugh out loud.

But Bowfinger also got me wondering about something darker. Could that premise actually happen in real life?

For the uninitiated: Bowfinger follows a broke, scheming director who can’t afford to hire Hollywood’s biggest action star, Kit Ramsey (also Eddie Murphy). So instead, Bowfinger films his sci-fi epic Chubby Rain by secretly shooting Kit with hidden cameras, guerrilla-style, without Kit ever knowing he’s in a movie. It’s absurd. It’s illegal. And it works—at least in the movie.

Now, obviously, no one’s actually Bowfingering A-list actors today. The legal teams alone would end that before the second take. But here’s the thing: in the age of smartphones, Ring doorbells, and paparazzi drones, everyone has a camera in their pocket. Anyone can film anything from multiple angles at any moment. The concept of Bowfinger feels strangely more plausible now than it did in 1999, even if the execution remains pure fantasy.

But you know what does happen in real life? Oscar-winning, critically acclaimed, genuinely talented actors starring in movies so catastrophically bad that you wonder if someone slipped them a fake script, shot the movie while they were sleepwalking, or simply lied about what film they were making.

So let’s explore that. Let’s talk about the real-life Bowfinger question: How do great actors end up in truly terrible movies?

And more importantly: How many times has this happened?

Spoiler: A lot. Way more than you’d think.

The Hall of Shame: A Chronological Tour

Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)

Sean Connery

Let’s start with a legend. Sean Connery—James Bond, Oscar winner, knighted by the Queen—agreed to return for the sequel to Highlander, a cult classic about immortal warriors. Reasonable enough, right?

Except Highlander II retcons the entire premise. Suddenly, the immortals aren’t mystical warriors—they’re aliens from the planet Zeist. Yes. Aliens. The movie is so incomprehensibly bad that it essentially killed the franchise’s big-screen prospects and exists primarily as a cautionary tale.

Connery, to his credit, kept cashing checks and moved on. This would not be his last mistake.

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)

Marlon Brando (Two-time Oscar winner)

Marlon Brando is one of the greatest actors in cinematic history. The Godfather. A Streetcar Named Desire. On the Waterfront. The man rewrote the rules of screen acting.

He also wore an ice bucket on his head in The Island of Dr. Moreau.

The production was a legendary disaster—director fired, actors feuding, rewrites happening daily. Brando showed up, did whatever he wanted (including the bucket), collected his paycheck, and left. The behind-the-scenes documentary, Lost Soul, is infinitely more watchable than the actual movie.

But hey—Brando had already secured his legacy. At that point, why not wear an ice bucket?

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

Sean Connery (Oscar winner)

Sean Connery again. And this time, the movie was so bad that it made him retire from acting forever.

Let that sink in. A film so miserable, so creatively bankrupt, that one of the most iconic actors of all time said, “You know what? I’m done. I’m out.” And he never came back.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen had everything going for it on paper: a comic book adaptation, a ensemble cast, a steampunk aesthetic. In execution, it was a charmless, incomprehensible CGI mess. Connery reportedly clashed with the director, hated the experience, and decided his legacy didn’t need any more dents.

He was right.

Gigli (2003)

Ben Affleck (Oscar winner) and Jennifer Lopez

Gigli is less a movie and more a cultural punchline. It’s the Platonic ideal of a disaster—a romantic crime comedy that’s neither romantic, criminal, nor funny. Affleck and Lopez were Hollywood’s hottest couple at the time, and the studio clearly thought that would be enough.

It wasn’t.

The movie bombed so spectacularly that “gigli” became shorthand for failure. Affleck has since resurrected his career multiple times over (thank you, Argo and Batman), but Gigli lingers like a bad tattoo.

To his credit, Affleck has embraced the joke. He’s self-aware enough to know that sometimes you make Gone Girl, and sometimes you make Gigli. The key is surviving the latter.

Catwoman (2004)

Halle Berry (Oscar winner, Monster’s Ball)

Halle Berry became the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2002. Two years later, she starred in Catwoman, a movie so aggressively bad that it spawned its own subgenre of terrible superhero films.

The plot is incoherent. The CGI is embarrassing. The basketball scene—oh, the basketball scene—is a crime against sports and cinema alike.

But here’s the twist: Berry showed up to the Razzie Awards in person to accept her Worst Actress prize. She brought her Oscar with her, gave a hilarious speech mocking herself, and somehow came out cooler for it.

She played the hand she was dealt. Respect.

The Happening (2008)

Mark Wahlberg (Oscar nominee)

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening is a masterclass in unintentional comedy. Mark Wahlberg—an actor capable of great work—spends the entire movie looking confused, talking to plants, and delivering the line “What? No!” in a way that became an instant meme.

The premise: the wind makes people kill themselves. I’m not joking.

Wahlberg later admitted he didn’t understand the script and that the movie “was a really bad movie.” He’s not wrong. But he also took the paycheck, so here we are.

The Love Guru (2008)

Ben Kingsley (Oscar winner, Gandhi)

Ben Kingsley. Gandhi. Schindler’s List. Sexy Beast.

Also: The Love Guru, a Mike Myers comedy so brutally unfunny that it effectively ended Myers’ career as a leading man.

Kingsley plays a guru who trains other gurus, and the whole thing feels like a fever dream someone had after eating bad curry. It’s baffling. It’s uncomfortable. And Kingsley committed fully to the bit, which somehow makes it worse.

This might be the single most inexplicable casting choice of the 2000s.

Jack and Jill (2011)

Al Pacino (Oscar winner)

Al Pacino. The Godfather. Scarface. Dog Day Afternoon.

Also: “Dunkaccino.”

In Adam Sandler’s Jack and Jill, Pacino plays himself falling in love with Sandler in drag. The movie’s crowning achievement is a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial where Pacino raps about cappuccinos.

I can’t explain it. No one can. It exists, and we all have to live with that.

Michael Caine once said about Jaws: The Revenge, “I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.” That might be the only honest explanation for Jack and Jill. Pacino got paid. The end.

Battleship (2012)

Liam Neeson (Oscar nominee, Schindler’s List)

Battleship is based on the Hasbro board game. That should tell you everything.

Liam Neeson—one of the most dignified actors alive—shows up for maybe 15 minutes, barks some commands, and collects his check. He looks like he wandered onto the wrong set and just decided to commit to the bit.

The movie is loud, dumb, and features aliens fighting the U.S. Navy using tactics vaguely reminiscent of the board game. Neeson survives with his dignity mostly intact, probably because he’s barely in it.

After Earth (2013)

Will Smith (Oscar winner, King Richard)

Will Smith is one of the most charismatic actors on the planet. After Earth actively suppresses that charisma.

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan (again!) and designed as a vanity project for Smith’s son Jaden, After Earth is a joyless, plodding sci-fi slog. Will Smith spends the movie sitting in a chair, speaking in a bizarre monotone accent, while Jaden runs through CGI forests.

It feels like a movie written by a GPS. “Turn left. Avoid danger. Proceed to the beacon.”

Smith has since acknowledged the film’s failure, but at the time, his star power couldn’t save it. Not even close.

Movie 43 (2013)

Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Halle Berry, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone, Richard Gere, and literally everyone else

And now, the centerpiece.

Movie 43 is the closest thing we have to a real-life Bowfinger.

It’s an anthology comedy featuring A-list actors in grotesque, unfunny sketches. Hugh Jackman has prosthetic testicles on his neck. Kate Winslet tries to have a normal date with him. Halle Berry (again!) appears in a sketch so tasteless I won’t describe it here.

How did this happen?

Reportedly, the producers spent years tricking, cajoling, and contractually obligating actors into participating. Some actors allegedly owed the producers favors. Others thought they were doing a friend a solid. A few were reportedly told the project was something else entirely.

It’s a cinematic crime scene. Roger Ebert called it “the Citizen Kane of awful.”

The cast list reads like the guest list at the Oscars. And yet, the movie is unwatchable. It’s the ultimate proof that talent alone can’t save a project if the material is fundamentally rotten.

If Bobby Bowfinger had unlimited resources and a Rolodex full of favors, Movie 43 is what he’d make.

The Counselor (2013)

Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz (Two-time Oscar nominee)

This one should have worked. Written by Cormac McCarthy. Directed by Ridley Scott. A cast of genuinely great actors.

Instead, The Counselor is a deeply unpleasant, incoherent mess featuring one of the strangest car-related scenes ever filmed (if you know, you know).

The script is dense, overwrought, and lacks McCarthy’s usual narrative clarity. The actors look confused. The audience is confused. Everyone is confused.

It’s proof that even a murderer’s row of talent can’t overcome a fundamentally broken script.

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Eddie Redmayne (Oscar winner)

Eddie Redmayne won an Oscar for The Theory of Everything. The next year, he starred in Jupiter Ascending, where he whisper-screams every line like he’s auditioning for Dune on NyQuil.

The movie cost $175 million and still feels unfinished. The plot is incomprehensible. Mila Kunis is a janitor who’s also space royalty. Channing Tatum is a wolf-man with gravity roller skates.

Redmayne swings for the fences with his bonkers performance, and I respect the effort. But the movie is still a disaster.

The Snowman (2017)

Michael Fassbender (Two-time Oscar nominee)

The Snowman is infamous for one reason: they didn’t finish filming the script.

Director Tomas Alfredson later admitted that 10-15% of the screenplay was never shot due to production issues. As a result, the movie is filled with plot holes, missing scenes, and narrative gaps.

Fassbender does his best, but you can’t act your way out of a movie that’s literally incomplete. It’s a serial killer thriller where entire subplots just… vanish.

Dolittle (2020)

Robert Downey Jr. (Two-time Oscar nominee)

Robert Downey Jr. left the MCU on top of the world. He could do anything. He had all the clout in Hollywood.

He chose Dolittle.

The accent alone deserves its own IMDb page. The movie is a chaotic, expensive mess that feels like it was assembled from spare parts. Downey commits fully, which is admirable, but the movie is beyond saving.

Sometimes even Iron Man makes terrible choices.

Why Does This Keep Happening?

So what’s the real answer? Why do great actors keep ending up in terrible movies?

A few reasons:

Contracts. Actors owe studios films. Sometimes those films turn out to be Battleship.

Script bait. Early drafts can be genuinely great. Then rewrites happen. Directors change. Studios interfere. By the time shooting starts, the script is unrecognizable.

Director trust. “They made that amazing movie five years ago, so this one will be great too.” Except it isn’t.

Money. Michael Caine said it best. Sometimes a bad movie pays for a good house. Or a passion project. Or retirement.

Ego and experimentation. Sometimes actors want to swing big. They miss. Hard.

And occasionally? Everyone involved just makes the wrong choice at the same time. There’s no conspiracy. No hidden cameras. Just a perfect storm of bad decisions.

The Bowfinger Question

So could Bowfinger happen in real life?

Not literally. But conceptually? We’re already living in it. Actors sign onto projects based on scripts, promises, and reputations—and sometimes, the final product is nothing like what they thought they were making.

They’re not tricked in the Bowfinger sense. But they are often surprised by what they end up in.

And honestly? That might be even funnier.

Because at the end of the day, these actors are grown adults who made choices. They read scripts (or didn’t). They trusted directors (or shouldn’t have). They took the money.

And now we get to watch Dunkaccino.

So here’s to the Oscar winners in terrible movies. May they enjoy their houses, their paychecks, and the knowledge that even legends make mistakes.

Just maybe not as many as Al Pacino.