10 Unspeakably Awful Films Made By Oscar Winners

One of the strangest phenomenons in Hollywood is the frequency with which critically acclaimed actors end up taking on terrible roles. Specifically, actors who have recently won an Academy Award going on to star in several unequivocally bad films.

Why does this happen? Are they so inundated with scripts after they have an Oscar sitting on the mantel that it becomes such a chore to actually read them that they just start signing on the dotted line everywhere in a panicked frenzy?

Is it the fault of their agents, who see that shining 10% commission and encourage their actors to strike while the iron is hot and agree to a number of questionable projects while they're having a moment? It's a mystery.

That's one part of the equation, but equally interesting are the actors who star in complete garbage early on in their careers, then are somehow able to transform themselves and transition into the sort of prestige films that get Oscar attention.

These are the more forgivable variety, because they can look back at their first days in Hollywood and cringe, but the world can still reflect on how far they were able to come. Still, this always involves a certain amount of schadenfreude.

Celebrities: they're just like us, and sometimes they exhibit terrible decision-making skills!

OK, so this one might not be entirely fair to include on the list. After all, it was Leonardo DiCaprio's first ever film appearance, and he was only about 16 when it was made, so he's hardly to blame for how terrible it is. But still...yeesh.

Critters 3, as you may guess, is the third film in the Critters franchise, a series that just did not need to exist. The Critters themselves were basically a poor man's Gremlins, although Critters director Stephen Herek says that the script for the first Critters movie was written before Gremlins came out, so any similarities were unintentional.

Still, it's clear which of the two franchises captured the hearts and minds of audiences, and it was not these guys.

DiCaprio, for his part, plays the stepson of a local landlord who is told by the main character Charlie about the Critters invasion (which is honestly just as ridiculous as it sounds) and manages to escape with the rest of the ensemble. His performance is fairly innocuous, but The Revenant it is not.