Some Hollywood actors and actresses, bless their souls, just don't have what it takes to please a film critic.
On the silver screen, they laugh. They cry. They wince dramatically, as if detecting the far-off aroma of bacon. And when their performance is done, a stodgy man at the Chicago Tribune or a curmudgeonly woman at the New York Times deems it "mind-numbingly juvenile" or "less thrilling than an audit."
Often this criticism is well-deserved. For every golden nugget of talent in Hollywood, there are a dozen lumps of coal — some of whom manage to compress themselves into diamonds, befriend casting directors, and land starring roles in films.
We were curious: Who among these big-name actors and actresses most routinely appears in terribly reviewed movies? And who most frequently wins critics' praise?
How we made our ranking
Zachary Crockett / Vox
Earlier this week, we crawled through a bunch of data from Metacritic to determine which big-budget blockbusters got the worst reviews. Metacritic's methodology is pretty straightforward: It aggregates movie reviews from major news outlets, weights them based on a variety of factors (more on that here), then gives them a composite score on a 0–100 scale (0 = terrible, 100 = resounding acclaim).
This time we turned to Metacritic to determine the scores of actors and actresses based on the films they've been in. To limit our search to relatively well-known performers, we set a series of criteria:
- The actor/actress must have performed in at least 10 films (writing, directing, and producing credits were omitted).
- At least one of these films had to have grossed $30 million or more at the box office, adjusted for inflation.
- At least one of these films had to be within the past five years (we only wanted semi-active performers).
A note to our critics: This data isn't perfect or definitive. For one, our analysis is based on reviews of movie critics, whose opinions often differ greatly from the public's. The number of genuine reviews available for older films (pre-2000) is also somewhat limited on Metacritic.
Lastly, it should be said that a film review is not always indicative of an individual actor's ability or talent. There are many factors that go into creating a good (or bad) movie — the screenplay, the direction, the supporting cast — and a critic may pan a movie for any number of reasons, even if the leading man or woman turned in an excellent performance.
Nonetheless, analyzing film reviews gives us a pretty good sense of where today's stars sit with critics and who tends to stay marooned in a sludgy mire of crappy films.
The worst-reviewed actors and actresses in Hollywood
So let's start at the bottom: Who are the worst-reviewed actors in Hollywood?
Below, we've included a percentage breakdown of each actor's films (negative = 0-39; mixed = 40-60; positive = 61-100), as well as the average score of all films he's appeared in. When reviewing these numbers, keep in mind that the overall average for actors and actresses who met our criteria was 54/100.
You may recall Rob Schneider from classics like Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999) or The Hot Chick (2002). Thanks in part to these efforts, he is the worst critically rated actor in Hollywood.
