10 Actors Who Distanced Themselves From What Made Them Great

Actors spend years trying to break into an industry that is infamously quite impenetrable and even when they do manage to get that all important crack at the big time, there's no guaranteeing that the project they're attached to will be a hit.

So, when the stars actually do align and an actor finds themselves in a film or series that attracts not just a casual audience, but critical success too, you'd expect them to bask in that acclaim.

Yet more often than not, those actors who find themselves stapled to roles - long after their final scene in the feature has been shot - can begin to resent ever taking the job in the first place.

You can never truly know what character is going to catapult you into the realm of greatness and most casual fans don't mean any harm when they call out 'WOLVERINE' at an unsuspecting Hugh Jackman in the middle of his Sunday grocery shop.

However, this unbreakable connection to a part can drive many actors into denouncing the projects or figures that made fans put them on a platform in the first place.

No one enjoys being pigeon-holed and this lot would rather you remember them for something other than their most notable roles.

Back in 2002, when Tobey Maguire first span onto our screens as the famous web-slinger in Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man film, fans were obviously quite pleased with the result and the movie went on to earn over $800 million at the box office - which was pretty much unheard of for a superhero movie at the time.

Maguire would impress again in the sequel and though the third film wasn't exactly a classic, the titular star still managed to become an unlikely meme sensation through his infamous emo-Parker dance moves.

However, after the supposed fourth installment fell through, Maguire chose to distance himself from all things action hero and took on more dramatic projects in the vein of Brothers (2009), The Great Gatsby (2013) and Pawn Sacrifice (2014).

Maguire hasn't actively burnt any bridges with the superhero genre and has even gone on record saying that he doesn't have a 'would or wouldn't do' mindset when thinking about that type of movie.

Yet, his filmography since the end of the Spidey trilogy definitely says otherwise and you'd have to imagine that it would take a pretty special project to persuade him to step back into a world that he has worked so hard to leave behind.

It also appears that Maguire was never a big fan of the spotlight that came with being the face of one of Marvel's most beloved heroes and he's now found another passion in producing movies, with films such as 2012's Rock of Ages and 2016's The 5th Wave both having his fingerprints all over them.