10 Actors Whose Credibility Has Suffered The Most In 2017 (So Far)

For most actors, a career in Hollywood consists of an endless succession of ups and downs. Good films, bad films, awful films that do well at the box office, wonderful films that hardly make anything at all - you never know what's going to happen next when you're working in such an unpredictable industry, or how quickly your career can take an unexpected nosedive when you end up making the wrong decision.

Suddenly actors who were credible, viable performers just months ago can find themselves staring into the abyss at a moment's notice, wondering where it all went wrong - and how they went from the top to the bottom in such a short space of time.

Hey, it happens. Consider Jude Law in the early 2000s, who went from being one of the world's biggest movie stars to somebody everyone just got sick and tired of. He overexposed himself to such a point that he lost credibility. Leonardo DiCaprio, on the other hand, stays credible because he essentially makes just one motion picture each year, ensuring that his integrity remains firmly in tact.

So whether it's by way of an unusual, bizarre, or tone-deaf performance, or finding yourself in several box office flops in a row, there are plenty of ways an actor can lose their all-important credibility. In Hollywood, it appears as though nobody is safe...

Scarlett Johansson is one of the world's biggest film stars, with a pulling power that seems to eclipse most of her contemporaries. Only Johansson, with her kick-ass credentials and acting prowess could make a film like Lucy a success at the box office. $463 million on a budget of $40 million? That's insane!

At least, that's what Paramount thought when they cast Johansson in a remake of Ghost in the Shell, assuming that if Lucy - a relatively small sci-fi film based on a spec script - could make a load of money, then an adaptation of a cult hit (with Johansson playing a sexy cyborg cop in a dystopian future, no less) was bound for success. And yet Ghost in the Shell flopped, hard, barely making its budget back.

Whilst the film itself was agreeable but unnecessary, its failings at the box office went against the grain of a deep-seated Hollywood belief: that putting Scar-Jo in something guaranteed a hit. This unexpected failure, coupled with the negative reviews that have met her recent foray into comedy, Rough Night, makes 2017 the actor's worst cinematic year in recent memory.

So, yes, Johansson's credibility - not necessarily as a performer, but as a movie star, as somebody who knows how to pick projects and sell anything - has been thrown into question. What she needs now if she hopes to reaffirm her status as a Hollywood behemoth are a couple of big-hitters with her poised as the lead.