For a career that takes years to build, it can be downright devastating when it’s gone in a flash.
If anyone knows about bad reputations, it’s Taylor Swift … and these 6+ celebrities who had their careers ruined over leaked footage.
RELATED STORIES
Mel Gibson
The actor may have had a long career in Hollywood — his most notable films include Braveheart , Lethal Weapon , and The Passion of the Christ — but it was pretty much over in a flash.
That’s because Gibson said a slew of anti-semitic things when he was arrested for an alleged DUI in 2006.
According to TMZ , he said: “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” as well as asking one officer, “Are you a Jew?”
While Gibson ended up apologizing, saying that he was “deeply ashamed,” the damage was done.
Things only got worse when audio was leaked in 2010 of the actor using racist language to his ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child, Oksana Grigorieva.
Solange Knowles
With Beyoncé as your sister, it’s not enough to not feel like you’re living in the shadows.
But she certainly didn’t make things better for her career when she was caught on tape fighting with Jay-Z.
The highly-viewed footage went down in an elevator after a 2014 Met Gala after-party.
While Solange eventually said that the “family and I are all good,” you can’t think “Solange” without thinking “elevator.”
Just watch for yourself.
Alec Baldwin
The 30 Rock actor certainly wasn’t in the running for “Father of the Year” when a voicemail to his daughter leaked of him infamously calling her a ” pig .”
At the time in 2007, he had been dealing with custody issues with his ex-wife, Kim Basinger.
So when Ireland (who was 11 at the time) missed his scheduled call, he lost his temper.
Thankfully, the family can laugh about it now.
Ireland even used it as material during a recent Comedy Central roast of her dad!
Christian Bale
Bale became the least liked person on the Terminator Salvation set when he went on a rant against the film’s director of photography.
He’s since apologized for the incident, saying that, “I acted like a punk … I make no excuses for it.”
While the actor is still acting in Hollywood, these incidents have cast a shadow on his reputation.
The DP had accidentally walked into a scene.
Audio was leaked of Bale yelling, “I want you off the [expletive] set, you [expletive]! … What the [expletive] are you doing?”
Billy Bush
The TV host was caught in the crossfire of the drama that was the 2016 presidential election when an old recording was released.
It showed Donald Trump saying some pretty obscene things about women while Bush joked along with him.
“When you’re a star … you can do anything … Whatever you want.” Trump infamously said. “Grab ’em by the [expletive] — you can do anything.”
Bush ended up laughing and saying, “Yeah, those legs. All I can see is the legs.”
As a result, he was fired from the Today show and stayed away from the spotlight for three years.
David Hasselhoff
Being filmed while drunk and eating a cheeseburger may not seem like such a big deal to some, but for this Baywatch star, who’s a recovering alcoholic , it was.
Instead of the video dying down, it’s ended up following the actor for most of his career.
“I thought [the video] was like, really funny. I thought it would go away,” he told Inside Edition . ” It didn’t go away. It got bigger and bigger and bigger … but I never played into it.”
Shia LaBeouf
He hasn’t acted much in Hollywood since the Transformers movies, but the actor certainly didn’t make a Hollywood comeback any easier when he was filmed swearing at a police officer in 2017.
He had been arrested for disorderly conduct and public intoxication.
While he ended up spending 10 weeks in rehab, LaBeouf has kept a careful distance from Hollywood ever since.
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift dedicated a whole album to the way her reputation was ruined by Kim Kardashian and Kayne West.
The feud began over a controversial lyric regarding Taylor in Kayne’s song, “Famous.”
Kanye claimed that he asked Taylor’s permission to use the lyrics “I made that [expletive] famous.”
She even mentioned the whole situation during her acceptance speech at the Grammys, where she lowkey called out Kayne as someone who tries to “undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame.”
Wifey Kim ended up standing by her man when she released this recording where Taylor approves one of the lyrics Kanye pitches, but not the one about making her famous.
The whole situation led to people flooding Taylor’s social media with snake emojis.
In the end, though, she turned life into art when she dropped her “Reputation” album. She’s also since shed her “snakeskin” with the new butterfly-filled era of her latest album, “Lover.”
Donald Sterling
The former owner of the Los Angelos Clippers lost pretty much everything when his alleged mistress, V. Stiviano, recorded him telling her not to broadcast images of her with black people on social media.
“It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast … that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?”
Later in the clip, he says: “You can sleep with [black men]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games.”
The world did not take lightly to his comments.
Sponsors began dropping the Clippers and his players wanted nothing to do with him.
During warmups, the players took off their shirts and threw them down as a verbal protest.
They also wore their shirts inside out to hide the team’s logo.
Even Barack Obama had some words for Sterling back when he was president.
“When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk. And that’s what happened here,” he said .
“I have confidence that NBA commissioner Adam Silver — a good man — will address this.”
And address it they did, as Sterling was banned for life from the NBA and was forced to sell the team.
Tiger Woods
Both his career and marriage went off course when the golf superstar was involved in a mega scandal in 2009.
It all began when his wife discovered that he’d been cheating.
She ended up chasing him out of the house with a golf club, which led Tiger to leave this voicemail message for one of the women he had been seeing.
It soon came to light that Woods had had affairs with around 120 women. He later entered rehab for sex addiction.
Soon, his wife divorced him and he kept losing major endorsement deals left and right.
Monica Lewinsky
Unfortunately, the former White House intern has never really been able to escape the huge sex scandal she was part of in 1998 for having an affair with then-President Bill Clinton.
A former friend had given secret recordings between her and Monica to the FBI.
In the tapes, Lewinsky talked about her affair with Clinton.
While Lewinsky has done different things in the media, such as hosting a reality TV dating show and repping for Jenny Craig, her career never really recovered.
