Star-Derailing Role



The latest blockbuster which an A-List star has starred in has just hit the theaters nationwide. They've done the usual talk show circuit hyping the film. The studio's marketing department spared no expense advertising it. Then the numbers come in...

...and the film has completely and totally bombed.

As it turns out, the studio didn't allow advance screening of the film for critics, and for good reason. Very few of them are giving the movie a positive review. Word of mouth is even less favorable. And as they say in Hollywood, you're only as good as your last role. Perhaps the role wasn't the right fit, or maybe the person's lack of actual acting skill has finally caught up to them. Regardless, the star's time on the A-List (or possibly even the B-List) has very much come to an end. If they're lucky, they may find another Star-Making Role, but more often than not, the fallen star gets trapped in a permanent Never Live It Down and ends up fading into obscurity, never to reclaim the glory they once had. Of course objectively speaking Hype Backlash is also a likely culprit. Tabloid fodder could also cause the adoring media to turn against them, often dismissing their latest project out of hand. If they have an out-of-control private life it makes it worse for the actors in question. This can also be subverted if the actors are Critic Proof and/or have a Controversy-Proof Image.

Compare with Creator Killer for those behind the camera. Can sometimes coincide with Franchise Killer or even Genre Killer in the most extreme circumstances. Contrast with Star-Making Role and Career Resurrection.

Anime and Manga

 * Aya Hirano's career took a hit with the failure of Dragonaut: The Resonance and her own growing reputation as a "diva", forcing her managers to try to reel her in and limit her to supporting roles to save face. Hirano ultimately "left" the agency when she was caught in a scandal.

Film

 * Halle Berry both subverted this trope and later played it straight. Her role in Catwoman killed interest in the possible Die Another Day spinoff featuring her character, Jinx, and was a factor in killing the budding sub-genre of female-fronted superhero films. At the same time, Catwoman humbled her enough to graciously accept the Razzie award for Worst Actress in person, saving her career from a complete meltdown; she almost wasn't in X Men the Last Stand movie because she was demanding a higher salary and a bigger part. However, Perfect Stranger was the death knell for Halle as a leading lady, and her subsequent filmography has been a very small series of low-profile character dramas while lending her face to a glut of cosmetics endorsements.
 * Of course those paying attention might have seen the second fall coming... her "humble" acceptance of her Razzie also involved her waving around her Oscar and blaming everyone but herself for both the movie's suckage and her being in it.
 * Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls. The film pretty much derailed the career of director Paul Verhoeven, as well, though he would later recover somewhat with Starship Troopers.
 * Thora Birch in Dungeons and Dragons. On top of this, her father also contributed to her career's decline as he has cost her roles, and yet she refuses to dismiss him.
 * Matthew Broderick in the live action adaptation of Inspector Gadget. This movie, in addition to the American version of Godzilla, killed his career as a leading man in major motion pictures. He found more success in theater, most notably the stage version of The Producers.
 * Dana Carvey in The Master of Disguise, which was actually a botched comeback attempt.
 * Phoebe Cates in Drop Dead Fred. Before, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Gremlins. After, not much and retirement from acting in the mid-'90s.
 * Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight and Cutthroat Island. The latter also sank the studio, director Renny Harlin's career, her marriage (she was married to Harlin at that time), and the entire swashbuckling adventure genre. (Even now, the Pirates of the Caribbean films are the only such movies being produced.)
 * Cuba Gooding, Jr. in Boat Trip... and Snow Dogs... and Daddy Day Camp... Really, a lot of Cuba's post-Jerry Maguire output has been like this. He attributes this to the fact that the good roles stopped coming for him once Will Smith became Hollywood's new favorite black actor.
 * Cuba's films were the most-rented from Blockbuster at one time, till the film Radio, in which he played Inspirationally Disadvantaged. You could say that Radio Killed the Video Star.
 * Lindsay Lohan in I Know Who Killed Me. Though her out-of-control personal life was largely responsible for the downfall of her career, this film bombed at the box-office and was ruthlessly savaged by critics and audiences alike, so it's a pretty safe bet to say that even if Lindsay's life hadn't gotten so out-of-control, it's still not too likely that her career and "it girl" status would've fared much better after the critical and box-office flop of this film.
 * Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck in Gigli. Eventually, their careers would recover (though their relationship didn't survive), but director Martin Brest wasn't as lucky (he later retired from filmmaking due to this film constantly suffering from Executive Meddling).
 * Madonna has had a couple of these throughout her acting career, at least one per decade. "Shanghai Surprise" killed her '80s film career, then "Body of Evidence" killed her film career in the '90s, and finally the 2002 remake of Swept Away (directed by then-husband Guy Ritchie) killed it for good. (Going behind the camera with W.E. didn't help her much either.)
 * Demi Moore in Striptease and G.I. Jane.
 * Mike Myers in the Live Action Adaptation of The Cat in the Hat, followed up by the finishing blow of The Love Guru. He was a comedy superstar in the '90s and early '00s, with Wayne's World, Austin Powers and Shrek becoming pop culture touchstones. Cat, however, outraged the Seuss estate with its raunchy humor, causing Audrey Geisel to vow never to approve any further live-action adaptations of Seuss' books, and critics ravaged it for the same reasons. Guru, meanwhile, flopped at the box office and "won" three Razzies. Myers' only non-VA role since Guru has been a supporting role in Inglourious Basterds.
 * Leelee Sobieski's first lead acting role, The Glass House, was a critical and commercial flop that also had the misfortune of opening the weekend after 9/11, a time when people really didn't feel like going to the movies, less so to a weak thriller involving children in danger. Once the next "It Girl", she has been reduced to working rubbish like 88 Minutes. Her TV debut in the swiftly-cancelled NYC 22 doesn't look likely to change much in her career direction, either...
 * Chris O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone in Batman and Robin. O'Donnell has since recovered with a leading role in NCIS: Los Angeles, albeit twelve years after Batman and Robin debuted in theaters.
 * A slight subversion with O'Donnell in that he said he had steady work offers, including work on major TV series, since Batman & Robin, but took some time off around the early aughts to raise his children. He also had the lead role in 2000's Vertical Limit, which, despite being ravaged by critics, recouped its budget and pulled in a respectable $69 million domestically in what was otherwise a terrible year for Columbia Pictures.
 * Excess Baggage, which came out the same year as Batman & Robin and was part of a major production deal that Silverstone had with Columbia, also didn't help her career.
 * It wasn't just O'Donnell and Silverstone who were hurt by this film. Arnold Schwarzenegger's drawing power went steadily downhill afterwards, and Uma Thurman's star fell for years until Quentin Tarantino pulled one of his trademark career resurrections with the Kill Bill films.
 * Staying Alive brought down John Travolta's career for quite a while before he got cast in Pulp Fiction (his only successful roles around that time were on the Look Who's Talking films). Since then, his star power has faded considerably, likely due to his involvement with films like Battlefield Earth.
 * A twofer: Staying Alive and Rocky IV killed Sylvester Stallone's career as a director for twenty years.
 * Tom Green starred in, wrote and directed Freddy Got Fingered, and hasn't been seen much in theaters since.
 * Pretty much everyone involved in the Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band movie with the sole exception of Steve Martin, who was so popular at the time even this stinker couldn't diminish his star. Same couldn't be said for George Burns or Aerosmith—who both suffered a brief career downturn, Aeorsmith in part thanks to drug problems, before returning to popularity in the mid-80's -- or Peter Frampton whose career took a big dip, and rumor has it that he was horrified to hear it was being released on DVD. The Bee Gees were also affected by this (in addition to the decline of disco), but they did well as songwriters, making U.S. chart-toppers, such as "Islands in the Stream" by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers and "Heartbreaker" by Dionne Warwick.
 * Heartbeeps derailed Andy Kaufman's potential film career.
 * Peter Sellers in Casino Royale 1967; he was actually fired midway through the shoot when he proved too unreliable and uncooperative, and while the film was finished without him it was extremely messy. This left a black mark on his reputation (particularly with American studios), and most of his subsequent films through 1974 would turn out to be flops if they even made it to theaters. He experienced a Career Resurrection after that.
 * Sherilyn Fenn in Boxing Helena. Also a very near-miss for Kim Basinger, who decided to break her contract to avoid starring in the film and was sued into bankruptcy, but sustained no career damage, and won an Academy Award only a few years later.
 * Fair Game brought William Baldwin's career to a screeching halt and pretty much killed the film career of Cindy Crawford before it could even get started.
 * Cindy has made the odd film since then, like The Simian Line and the Italian comedy Bodyguards - Guardie del corpo (where she played herself).
 * The winner (Kelly Clarkson) and runner-up (Justin Guarini) of the first season of American Idol were forced to act in the tie-in movie From Justin To Kelly, which was a legendary critical and popular bomb. Clarkson's talent and appeal helped her withstand that disaster as she went on to sell 10 million albums and become one of the biggest music stars of the 2000s, but Guarini's potential career was totally derailed, and he became the most notorious laughingstock in the show's Top 10 until Sanjaya Malakar. This has since become something of an Old Shame of Kelly's.
 * Whoopi Goldberg's career as an A-list star faded into center square and moderator on The View gradually, but it can be argued that the catalyst was Theodore Rex. Before that, she starred in The Color Purple, Ghost, The Lion King, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Sister Act. And after it? Not a whole lot.
 * Whoopi only completed the movie because New Line Cinema threatened to sue her if she walked off the film—and after seeing Kim Basinger get sued into bankruptcy after the fiasco that was Boxing Helena, she decided she could live with the shame if it meant keeping the lights on. Theodore Rex was initially intended as a theatrical release but went straight to home video instead, making it the most expensive Direct to Video movie ever made. That's certainly something to keep in mind if you dare to watch it.
 * Eddie Murphy has quite the reputation for being a good actor who should really fire his agent. Originally a massive comedy star in the '80s (thanks, in no small part, to being a Saturday Night Live cast member and barely saving the show from disaster during its 1980-1981 season), Murphy's initial decline began with the 1989 vanity project Harlem Nights, after which the quality of his films took a nosedive. Roger Ebert, in his review of Harlem Nights, made an excellent point (which was, essentially, career advice) about not taking your fans for granted.
 * The remake of The Nutty Professor became a Career Resurrection for him in the late '90s, with many critics noting that the Buddy Love character was a giant Take That against what Murphy had been reduced to in the public eye (obnoxious and self-absorbed). Unfortunately, he quickly fell on the same track he was on before with another string of flops, the most notorious being The Adventures of Pluto Nash. His voice acting in the Shrek films kept him on the B-list, and his supporting role in Dreamgirls looked to be another Career Resurrection (with many going as far to peg him as the front runner for an Academy Award), but then he backflopped with Norbit (despite being a box office success, it was savaged by critics) and the two family films Meet Dave and Imagine That. Following the critical ravaging of those films, he has since declared his intention to go back to making mature comedies, starting with the Brett Ratner film Tower Heist. But even this may not save him, as his first (released) film after Tower Heist was the critically mauled bomb A Thousand Words, which despite having been on the shelf for four years previously was actually accompanied by a reasonably strong advertising campaign.
 * Warren Beatty, still riding high off of Bulworth, starred in the massively colossal flop Town and Country (total budget: $90 million; total worldwide gross: just over $10 million). To date, it's his last acting role of any kind.
 * Rachael Leigh Cook in Josie and The Pussycats. While the failure of that film was clearly the biggest blow to her career, she was unlucky enough to play supporting roles in two other flops (Anti Trust and Texas Rangers) the same year (Texas Rangers had actually been filmed back in 1999 but was only released in 2001). The only significant role she's had since then is being the voice of Tifa in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy.
 * Sofia Coppola isn't an actress by trade to begin with, and was a last minute replacement for The Godfather Part III after Winona Ryder fell ill. However, her heavily criticized performance as Michael Corleone's daughter, as well as charges of Nepotism (since her father was the director), pretty much effectively ended Sofia's acting career. However, she has enjoyed much greater success following in her father's footsteps as a director in her own right.
 * Roberto Benigni followed his Oscar-winning film Life Is Beautiful with a live-action version of Pinocchio with himself playing the title character (keep in mind that Benigni was in his fifties at the time), which earned a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 0%. He has barely worked in film since then.
 * Steven Seagal in Half Past Dead. His career was already floundering after starring in a string of busts, but this is the film that dealt a huge blow to his career. Since then, he has starred in a series of low-budget Direct to Video films—he would not see the inside of a cinema again until Machete.
 * Mena Suvari in the 2008 Day of the Dead reboot. Prior to this, Suvari was an indie queen who made a name for herself by starring in a string of popular and well-regarded teen films (including American Pie and Sugar and Spice) and the critically-acclaimed American Beauty. She followed this up with several more teen films (including the 2001 flop The Musketeer), culminating in the aforementioned Day of the Dead, which went straight to DVD and flopped domestically. Aside from her work in the Kingdom Hearts series as Aerith (which she last performed in 2007), she's only appeared on bit parts in TV shows and DTV trash.
 * In the same vein, the supposed "American Pie curse" caused several of the film's lead and supporting actors to suffer from derailed careers as a result of box-office flops during the early '00s. Jason Biggs rode a wave of critical acclaim for his performance as teen nerd Jim—unfortunately, his choice of roles in 2001 and 2002 included the teen comedy flop Loser, as well as the adult comedy box-office disaster Saving Silverman, which ensured that he would never receive any leading roles again outside of the Pie franchise. The same goes for Chris Klein, whose first leading role (the 2002 remake of Rollerball) burned his career just before it could truly start. The only one who managed to avoid this was Alyson Hannigan, who stars on the popular Sitcom How I Met Your Mother—and that can probably be attributed to the fact that she already had a good deal of acclaim and popularity from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well.
 * The Pie curse extends to directors as well. Outside of the Weitz brothers, every director of the series has seen negative effects to their career. The second film's director didn't direct another film for eight years (which still hasn't received a release), the third film's director made one more film before disappearing, and the straight-to-DVD installments had directors with already dead careers. The directors of American Reunion should watch their asses.
 * Vince Vaughn in The Dilemma. In the early-mid '00s, he was one of Hollywood's top comedy actors thanks to films like Old School, Wedding Crashers and Dodgeball, which gave him enough clout to guarantee creative control on a film. His career was starting to slip with weaker films like Four Christmases, but on the set of The Dilemma, he suffered a major case of Small Name, Big Ego, forcing many rewrites, taking over creative control from director Ron Howard, and defending his character's homophobic comments. Consequently, audiences stayed away. Now, he's trying to repair the damage by taking smaller roles in dramatic fare.
 * Nearly everybody involved with Torque saw their careers destroyed, the only exceptions being Ice Cube (who did Are We There Yet? and became a popular family actor) and arguably Jamie Pressly (who had a major role on My Name Is Earl). Martin Henderson, the then-up-and-coming actor who played the lead role, saw his career reduced to bit parts, straight-to-video films, and a TV show that only lasted one season.
 * Jack Black and Michael Cera in Year One. Before this, Black was a top comedy actor and Cera was an up-and-comer with a few hits (Juno, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) to his name. Then critics destroyed the movie, audiences stayed away and many people complained that Black and Cera were playing the same characters in every movie. Since then, Black had another enormous flop with the 2010 version of Gulliver's Travels (although it did much better outside North America), while Cera starred in Youth in Revolt and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World which, despite both gaining critical plaudits, flopped at the box office (though both later found their audiences on home video) and has fallen out in favor with moviegoers, replaced by actors like Jesse Eisenberg.
 * Grease 2 derailed the then-promising career of Maxwell Caulfield, who is on record as saying that it took him ten years to recover when no one would hire him after the movie. Michelle Pfeiffer's career wasn't so damaged, but it did take a beating (Brian De Palma initially refused to consider her for Scarface because of it).
 * Amber Tamblyn in The Grudge 2, which also derailed the career of director Takashi Shimizu.
 * Stephen Baldwin was an up-and-coming actor with roles in films such as Last Exit To Brooklyn, Threesome, 8 Seconds and The Usual Suspects who was looking to become a successful sibling act to his brother Alec. Then he starred in Bio-Dome, which irreparably destroyed his career and possibly his sanity (seeing his later work and behavior).
 * His Bio-Dome co-star, Pauly Shore, didn't fare much better. This film's critical thrashing, along with the premature cancellation of his self-titled FOX sitcom Pauly, turned Shore into a running joke for most of the late '90s.
 * Linda Fiorentino in Dogma... or rather, in Kevin Smith's DVD commentary for Dogma. She made her breakthrough in the 1994 neo-noir The Last Seduction, to the point where critics said that she deserved an Academy Award nomination. Fiorentino received further fame for playing the female lead in Men in Black. However, her diva antics on the set of Dogma wound up making it into Kevin Smith's DVD commentary for the film, where he said that he would've given the lead role to Janeane Garofalo had he known how big a bitch Fiorentino would be. Virtually overnight, Fiorentino went from Hollywood stardom to not eating in that town again—her last theatrically released film was the 2000 heist film Where the Money Is. Following the 2002 thriller Liberty Stands Still, she didn't appear in another movie for seven years.
 * Between them, Leonard Part 6 and Ghost Dad convinced pretty much everyone that Bill Cosby doesn't belong on a screen that can't fit in your living room.
 * To quote Michael Beck: "The Warriors opened a lot of [acting] doors for me, which Xanadu then closed."
 * Megan Fox became the latest in a long line of "it girl" sex symbols due to her role in the Transformers franchise. 20th Century Fox decided to put this to the test by marketing an entire movie around her hotness and newfound fame, the teen horror flick Jennifer's Body. Not only did it disappoint at the box office and with the critics, but her performance was singled out as one of the film's bigger problems. After that, she invoked Godwin's Law in her criticism of Transformers director Michael Bay, resulting in Steven Spielberg asking she be fired from the third film, and her follow-ups Jonah Hex and Passion Play were disasters.
 * The failure of Jennifer's Body also badly damaged the Hollywood career of its writer, Diablo Cody. See Creator Killer for more.
 * Cody tried to bounce back with her screenplay for Young Adult but despite critical acclaim, hardly anyone saw the film (possibly due to ongoing Cody backlash) and it became director Jason Reitman's lowest grossing film.
 * Fox's co-star Amanda Seyfried emerged from the film largely unscathed, despite having played the protagonist, but she seems to be doing her absolute best to derail her own career at the moment, most notably with Gone, which was slaughtered by critics, lost nearly half of its $22 million budget and generated questions about her own ability to headline movies.
 * The Prodigal was intended to solidify Edmund Purdom's stature as a Hollywood leading man. Instead, it tanked at the box office, and Purdom spent the rest of his career in Europe.
 * The much-maligned performance of Denise Richards in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough pretty much derailed her rising career; her biggest role since this film was two years later as a middle-billed cast member in the slasher film Valentine.
 * Her role in Starship Troopers was of equal quality.
 * Dan Fogler, a Broadway award-winner who was tapped by Hollywood executives to headline several major comedy films, including School For Scoundrels and Balls of Fury. The final straw, however, came with Good Luck Chuck, which bombed and mostly killed his film career before he could go anywhere with it. The only films he appeared in after this were the financially-unsuccessful Fanboys and Take Me Home Tonight, both of which were shot years before he broke into Hollywood, and Mars Needs Moms, which just put the coffin in the ground.
 * Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in New York Minute. The Olsen twins, sharing the role of Michelle on Full House, sounded somewhat stiff when they got old enough to have actual lines. Now they were very young at the time, but it went on to dog their later work as well, and was a major contributing factor in the complete failure of their one and only "adult" theatrical outing (they had done some theatrical films as kids). New York Minute only grossed $14 million during its whole box office run. Both twins, now adults, have turned to other careers.
 * However, their merchandising empire was still strong despite their failure on the big screen... until Hannah Montana debuted a couple of years after that film and ransacked their tween fanbase.
 * Michael Chiklis starred as John Belushi in the 1989 biopic Wired, which was universally panned by critics and bombed at the box office. He didn't work again for almost two years, and his career didn't fully recover until he landed the role of Vic Mackey in The Shield, 13 years later. And he only got that role thanks to a complete image overhaul, courtesy of his wife.
 * Nick Swardson's career as a leading man began and ended with the disastrous Bucky Larson: Born To Be Star.
 * Emile Hirsch and Christina Ricci's careers were damaged with the high-budgeted flop Speed Racer. Hirsch, who had been in a number of acclaimed films before it, has mostly disappeared in supporting roles since (not doing another lead role until the 2011 flop The Darkest Hour) while Ricci's been mostly appearing in low-budget indies, with the exception of the aforementioned Bucky Larson, which fortunately didn't affect Ricci due to her indie cred.
 * What's truly unfortunate is that neither of them were particularly bad, nor was Speed Racer itself—it just hit confused viewers, who saw "Directed by The Wachowski Brothers" on it and assumed they were in for Mind Screwy philosophical ramblings but got cotton-candy exuberance instead. Ninja Assassin had the same problem to a lesser extent.
 * Jon Heder's star rose with Napoleon Dynamite and fell not long after with School For Scoundrels (which also brought down co-stars Billy Bob Thornton and Jacinda Barrett and nearly killed director Todd Phillips' career). Most of his later projects have been barely released (Mamas Boy, Moving McAllister) or bypassed theatres (Woke Up Dead).
 * Christopher Reeve in Switching Channels. In his autobiography, Still Me, Reeve claims that this film's failure, along with Superman IV, The Aviator, and Street Smart (which he in part agreed to do Superman IV under the condition that he was allowed to star in this long time "pet project" of his), knocked him off the A-list in Hollywood and he would have to audition for major roles for the rest of his career. Reeve also expressed regret in making Switching Channels (Reeve took on the role because he felt that making a comedy would be a good distraction from the depression steaming from his split with his long time girlfriend, Gae Exton), believing that he had "made a fool of himself" (Reeve played decidedly against type as Kathleen Turner's hapless fiancé) and had to act as a referee for constantly feuding costars Turner and Burt Reynolds. Reeve during his career, also turned down the lead roles in American Gigolo, The World According to Garp, Splash, Fatal Attraction, Pretty Woman, Romancing the Stone, Lethal Weapon and Body Heat. Reeve even turned down the lead role in a remake of Mutiny on the Bounty titled The Bounty after Katharine Hepburn recommended him to the director, Roger Donaldson, who ultimately went with his second choice, Mel Gibson.
 * Meg Ryan had a brief moment where her career was derailed after making Against the Ropes in 2004, having not appeared in a theatrically released film until 2007's In the Land of Women.
 * The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was notable for not only being the final film Sean Connery starred in before retiring, but bombing hard enough to kill the careers of most of the starring cast. The film also killed Stephen Norrington's directing career - to date, he hasn't helmed another film.
 * Prince's acting career was derailed by his second film, the critical and box-office flop Under the Cherry Moon.
 * Although not a box office failure, there's an apocryphal account here that the mockery Jake Lloyd received for his performance as the young Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace caused him to retire from acting at the age of ten.
 * Broadway actress (and Tony award nominee) Alyson Reed was set to become a major Hollywood star with the release of the film adaptation of A Chorus Line in 1985, in which she played the female lead, Cassie. When the movie tanked with only lukewarm critical reception, she found herself abruptly unbooked for talk shows and ignored by studios and casting directors.
 * The Exorcist is proof that a movie doesn’t have to be bad to fit this Trope, as it certainly was to Linda Blair. While that role got Blair a nomination for an Academy Award and two Golden Globes (winning one of the latter), the well-known horror film made her a victim of typecasting, and she found it hard to find serious work as an actress afterwards, staring in a lot of B-movies and horror parodies since then, most of them pretty bad; she was nominated for Worst Actress by the Golden Raspberry Awards for three of them. Worse, she has, to this day, gotten a lot of hate mail from fans who actually think she is some demon who has possessed an innocent girl. Despite this, Blair has never had any regrets.
 * Another example of a great movie that killed the star's career, Dracula. While Bela Lugosi became famous for the iconic role, he was also sadly typecast and became unable to find work playing any other role. He spent the rest of his career staring in B-movies, and worse, was often paired with Boris Karloff, always getting second billing. After portraying Dracula for the final time in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein the rest of his career was spent making low-budget trash like Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. Whether he ever regretted doing Dracula is hard to say; while he was eventually buried wearing one of the "Dracula" cape costumes, it was not by his own request, contrary to popular belief, but rather that of his wife and son.

Live-Action TV

 * Emeril Lagasse in Emeril. After this sitcom tanked, he went from being one of the hottest chefs in the country to being just another face in the TV chef crowd. (It also has the misfortune of being Robert Urich's last series.)
 * Bette Midler in Bette, the spectacular failure of which effectively ended her acting career. She now usually gets work performing her hits on various shows.
 * Michael Richards in The Michael Richards Show, the first post-Seinfeld project that established the "Seinfeld curse". Since it flopped in 2000, he's only done voice-over work (including in his old co-star's Bee Movie) and played himself in Curb Your Enthusiasm.
 * Then his career got buried in 2006 by deciding to deal with a heckler at one of his stand-up comedy shows by using the n-word.
 * Although Geena Davis was still stinging from her film disasters above, her The Geena Davis Show didn't help matters. One telling clue: usually when a show is named after its star, they keep that name in the show (Emeril played "Emeril" in Emeril and Bette played "Bette" in Bette, for example.) Despite being The Geena Davis Show, Geena Davis's character was named "Teddie".
 * The Paul Reiser Show promptly bombed as soon as it aired, and NBC cancelled it after two episodes. Considering he has done nothing noteworthy since Mad About You came to an end over a decade ago, this likely signals the end of Paul Reiser's on-screen career.
 * Lucille Ball, the star of I Love Lucy, conceived of the idea for, produced and acted in another primetime comedy series, Life With Lucy (no relation to Ball's Star-Making Role) on ABC in the 80's. Ball was given complete creative control over the series - which meant that she tried to replicate I Love Lucy's success in the 50's for an 80's crowd. Suffice to say, the attempt didn't work, and the resulting series (about a widow who goes to work at a hardware store) was painfully unfunny and cringe-inducing to watch (at least partially because Lucy was trying to duplicate her famous slapstick comedy, which didn't work nearly as well for her as it did when she was younger). The show flopped on arrival, and its failure made Ball stop working on any more projects.
 * Dan Fogler's attempt to jump into TV after his film career died was the maligned ABC "men in trouble" "comedy" Man Up! It lasted for eight episodes, and there was no word of Fogler landing on a new pilot in the subsequent development season.
 * Wanda Sykes's once-strong career as a comedienne and actress fell apart after the failure of her talk show The Wanda Sykes Show. It was said that her openness about her lesbianism and her inability to appeal to Middle America blackballed her from ever heading a major production again. Her post-cancellation work has been mostly in smaller theatrical projects in recent years.