Oftentimes, when an actor gets famous for a certain role , that’s mainly what they’re going to be known for. Which is great when the role was good . Though, not so great when the actor didn’t actually like their job.
Which was (mostly) the case for these actors, whose claims to fame definitely don’t top their most favorite roles lists.
Kirk Cameron: ‘Growing Pains.’
Cameron gained popularity as a teen star when he portrayed Mike Seaver in Growing Pains back in the ’80s. But around that time, he also found religion, and began living his life as a devout, ultra conservative Christian.
His newfound religious sense made being on set a lot more difficult.
He began asking for “immoral” storylines to be written out (without much success), and a rift between him and the rest of the cast began to form. Needless to say, he went down a vastly different path than the majority of his costars.
Katherine Heigl : ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’
Heigl rose to popularity when she joined Grey’s Anatomy as Dr. Izzie Stevens. After only a couple of seasons, she even won an Emmy for the role. And despite the fact that it propelled her into movie stardom, it seems that Heigl wasn’t happy with the material she was working with on the show.
To the point where she began withdrawing her name from Emmy consideration.
In Heigl’s eyes, she ” wasn’t given the material to warrant a nomination .” This caused a lot of contention between her and the rest of the cast and crew of the show, and she finally left after five years.
Amy Jo Johnson: ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.’
Best known as the Pink Power Ranger, Johnson, Johnson was just in her early 20s when she became a main character on the beloved ’90s show. And while she later came to view her time on set as a learning experience, there was also a lot not to love.
For starters, she was only getting paid $600 a week to be on the show.
But for Johnson, it was the adult portion of the fanbase that really put her off. “The kids who loved the show were awesome,” she said in an interview. “… But it also brought in a fanbase that wasn’t kids , like men. A lot of people in prison!”
John Cleese: ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus.’
Cleese is one of the founders of Monty Python, the comedy troupe behind a number of movies as well as the show, Monty Python’s Flying Circus . Decades later, the show and movies are still quoted often.
But for Cleese, love for the show didn’t last forever.
Cleese left the show after the third season (of four) for a few reasons. The biggest one, though, was the fact that he found the quality of the writing began to decline .
Evangeline Lilly: ‘Lost.’
Though not her first role by any means, Lilly’s portrayal of Kate Austen on Lost is definitely her breakout. But for Lilly, her character’s storylines on the show were a little too one-dimensional. Also, she didn’t care much for the overall plot.
For Lilly, filming ‘Lost’ was incredibly frustrating.
” I did throw scripts across rooms when I would because I would get very frustrated by the diminishing amount of autonomy that [Kate] had and the diminishing amount of her own story there was to play” she said in an interview.
Leslie Jones: ‘Saturday Night Live.’
Despite propelling dozens of comedians’ careers, the set of SNL is somewhat of a contentious place to be ( there’s even an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to incidents surrounding the show).
Leslie Jones is just one of the (many) actors who have spoken about disliking the show after leaving.
Though she’s found success later in her career because of ‘SNL,’ Jones “doesn’t miss it at all.”
For Jones, working on the show was incredibly time-consuming, and didn’t allow her much creative control. She said in an interview, “That job was hard, man. That job was like two jobs, and very restrictive too. I wasn’t very free there .”
Pierce Brosnan: ‘James Bond.’
Brosnan portrayed James Bond in four films between the mid ’90s and early 2000s. Despite these roles making him a household name, Brosnan doesn’t care for them all too much after the fact.
In fact, he won’t even watch his ‘James Bond’ movies.
He felt that his portrayal of 007 pales in comparison to those who came before. “I have no desire to watch myself as James Bond. ‘ Cause it’s just never good enough . It’s a horrible feeling,” he said.
Blake Lively: ‘Gossip Girl.’
Gossip Girl was full of drama, plot twists, and somewhat confusing (and oftentimes problematic) storylines. And at the center of (most of) the drama was Serena van der Woodsen, who was played by Lively. Unsurprisingly, Lively had some pretty mixed feelings about the role.
She once stated that she found the role “compromising.”
She also said, “I would not be proud to be the person who gave someone the cocaine that made them overdose, and then shot someone and slept with someone else’s boyfriend .” Yeah, makes sense.
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David Prowse: ‘Star Wars.’
The English actor may be best known for portraying Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. Not his voice (that was all James Earl Jones), but as the man actually inside the suit.
Years later, he began to resent the franchise.
Before his 2020 death, Prowse began to be snubbed from screenings of future Star Wars movies, and even said he has few happy memories from his time on set: “I’ve only got one favorite memory of filming Star Wars and that is when my very first check arrived .”
Zac Efron: ‘High School Musical.’
High School Musical was (without exaggeration) a cultural reset. But even when he was the next best teen star, Efron knew that he didn’t want to be typecast into that kind of role.
Though his work from recent years is vastly different from ‘HSM,’ Efron still has some resentment for that time of his life.
“I step back and look at myself and I still want to kick that guy’s ass sometimes,” he said about himself in an interview. “He’s done some kind of cool things with some cool people … but, I mean, he’s still just that [expletive] kid from [ High School Musical ].”
