10 Actors Whose Career Has BOMBED After Their Biggest Hit

In the early 2000s, you couldn't not know who Orlando Bloom was: the handsome rising star was part of both the Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises, and also played a memorable part in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down.

But his career hit the sudden skids after the release of the final Lord of the Rings movie, The Return of the King, which not only grossed $1.14 billion worldwide but also won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture.

With his boyish good looks and solid acting chops, Bloom seemed destined for a prosperous career, and yet he spent the entire next decade appearing in critical flop after critical flop.

From Troy to Kingdom of Heaven, Elizabethtown, the first two Pirates sequels, and The Three Musketeers, Bloom just couldn't seem to find a comfortable niche for himself which satisfied both critics and general audiences.

Though Bloom did return to the blockbuster realm for two of the broadly acclaimed Hobbit sequels, he was really just a small cog in the franchise machine by that point, and his career has never returned to those prior heights.

He did, however, give a solid performance in the recent VOD war movie The Outpost, suggesting he's probably better-suited for a middle-aged career as a stoic character actor in smaller-scale movies rather than a swashbuckling lead.