5. Meryl Streep - Music of the Heart (1999)
Even when Meryl Streep is being ignored by the public, she still winds up getting nominated for an Oscar. For her turn in the movie
Music of the Heart (which was, bizarrely, directed by horror maestro Wes Craven), the actress didn't settle for just learning a casual bit of violin in order to play real-life music teacher and violinist Roberta Guaspari, she decided to do it properly: Streep took up playing the violin for six hours a day for an entire month. Whether or not you're musically-inclined or not, I think we can all agree that that's a whole lotta violin. Anyway, despite the fact that she was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in
Heart (like I said, it's impossible for her not to be nominated if she decides to act in any given year), the public didn't really feel like going to see a movie about a music teacher, and it flopped at the box office, raking in barely half of its $28 million budget. The movie received mixed reviews overall, too, which didn't help Streep's case. The actress also apparently played her character as "normally" as possible, as to be make her realistic. People didn't like that.