12 Actors Who Hated Their Own TV Characters

1. Mandy Patinkin - Jason Gideon (Criminal Minds)

Years before he endeared himself to a new generation of fans with his grizzled performance as Saul Berenson on Homeland, Mandy Patinkin had a reputation for being difficult to work with. This wasn't at all helped by his brief, confusing tenure in the first two seasons of hit police procedural Criminal Minds.

It seems that Patinkin didn't so much hate the personality of his character as much as he did the man's job, with his protagonist Jason Gideon working as one of the FBI's star behavioural analysts. Patinkin said:

"The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do Criminal Minds in the first place...I thought it was something very different. I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to my soul and my personality. After that, I didn't think I would get to work in television again."

Criticism of a character doesn't come much harsher than "it destroyed my soul", and though Patinkin did write personal apology letters to his fellow cast members for bailing from the show, his career stagnated for four years until he nabbed the Homeland gig.

What do you make of these actors trashing their own TV characters? Shout it out in the comments!