10 Actors Who Clearly Didn't Learn Anything From Past Mistakes

9. Sylvester Stallone

With his endless regurgitation of tired action routines and disturbing refusal to acknowledge his now advanced age, Sly Stallone is probably this list's least surprising entry. Despite moments of affecting brilliance, Stallone's 40+ year career has largely amounted to that of a one-trick pony, chugging out one sluggish and pedantic actioner after another - from the cartoonish Rambo sequels, to the odious Get Carter and D-Tox, right up to last year's excruciating Bullet To The Head. Unlike his Austrian peer, Stallone has never grasped that the action star is the most interesting when viewed through a subversive lens. But how much can this now wizened bruiser really be blamed? After all Sly has periodically attempted to go against his action paradigm - with mixed to catastrophic results. Audiences didn't really flock to see him in the outlandish Rhinestone, a film that has to rank as an "odd couple" pairing of the most desperate kind. Even worse were his woeful misfires Oscar and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, two films were so damn bad that they probably turned audiences more than a tad suicidal. Yet, despite all of these professional stumbles, it's clear that Stallone can occasionally succeed when he makes unconventional choices. This is evident in his early, daring role in F.I.S.T, or in his more recent work like Antz, Shade and (most powerfully) Cop Land. Those films make Sly's continued reliance on cliched action (Escape Plan) and gimmicky premises (The Expendables Franchise, Grudge Match) all the more disheartening. For as indelible as his Rocky and Rambo creations were, four decades of rifting on the material has given the former champ a one-way ticket to palookaville.