10 Disastrous Movies That Actors And Directors Still Haven't Recovered From

Sometimes one disaster is all it takes to put the brakes on a successful career.

By Scott Campbell /

Trying to establish longevity in Hollywood is a tricky game, and requires a delicate balancing act to pull it off.

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Some actors do it by remaining firmly inside their wheelhouse and refusing to change knowing that their personal brand is a safe and marketable one, while others hop from genre to genre to build a reputation as a versatile talent that keeps the work coming in.

On the other side of the camera, there are very few directors afforded the ability to pick and choose their projects as they see fit, meaning that a lot of them operate on a 'one for me, one for you' basis, and will happily sign on to tackle a formulaic and uninspired blockbuster so long as they get the chance to work on something that gets their creative juices flowing as a result.

Life is full of bad decisions, and while a lot of things in the movie business are quickly swept under the rug and soon forgotten, there have been movies so disastrous that the actors or directors involved are still yet to recover from their failures.

10. Eddie Murphy - Norbit

Eddie Murphy might finally be on the comeback trail following his tour-de-force performance in the phenomenal Dolemite Is My Name, but he's still got a long way to go to recapture his former standing in the industry.

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No stranger to either terrible movies or box office bombs, the actor had suffered his fair share over the years, but it was Norbit that marked his rapid decline into obscurity. The movie was so awful that many believed that it torpedoed his chance of winning an Oscar for his supporting role in Dreamgirls, which had been released just weeks earlier.

For some reason Norbit may have been a hit, and his voice role in Shrek kept him in the public consciousness, but his next three star vehicles Meet Dave, Imagine That and A Thousand Words all tanked at the box office and were savaged by critics, reducing him to just two big screen appearances in the last eight years.

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