Not all celebs are scandalous! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most notable written-off actors who had huge comebacks with acclaimed performances.
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00:00 "Dr. Oppenheimer."
00:02 "An honor, Mr. Strauss."
00:04 "It's pronounced Strauss."
00:06 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most notable written-off actors who had huge comebacks with acclaimed performances.
00:13 "It was January the 3rd, 1995, my daughter's birthday. I remember."
00:20 Number 10, Robert Pattinson.
00:23 "Severance without pay? Severance without pay!"
00:30 "Are you trying to ruin me?"
00:32 Those Twilight kids really grew up, didn't they?
00:34 Despite being widely lambasted for her performance, Kristen Stewart is now an Oscar-nominated actress, and Robert Pattinson is the leading man in a new Batman franchise.
00:43 Pattinson turned his career around in the mid-2010s, shedding the Cedric Diggory and Edward Cullen hard-throw persona and turning to more gritty, independent fare.
00:51 "I think you're better than me."
00:52 "I am better than you."
00:54 This was a risky but rewarding career choice, and he has since earned widespread acclaim for movies like Good Time and The Lighthouse.
01:00 Of course, he also has ventured into more mainstream fare and is now the official face of Batman, having earned the public's collective approval in the 2022 reboot.
01:08 "He was alive when it was cut off. Echemiosis. Around the wound."
01:15 Number 9, Sandra Bullock.
01:17 "Would you please put your hands on top, marry me?"
01:22 "Okay. I don't appreciate the sarcasm, but I'll do it."
01:25 It was clear from the get-go that Sandra Bullock was a talented actress, but she seemed to be squandering her talent on mediocre films.
01:31 Yes, some were guilty pleasures, but others were just guilty of wasting Bullock's time and effort.
01:35 The 2000s were a pretty rough time for the actress, although at least it ended in style.
01:39 "You're right."
01:41 "Excuse me? You're right? How'd those words taste coming out of your mouth?"
01:47 "Like vinegar."
01:48 Bullock finally unleashed her prowess in 2009's The Blind Side, and while the movie itself received a somewhat mixed response, her lead performance earned widespread acclaim.
01:56 She earned her first Oscar and received another nod just four years later with Gravity.
02:00 The talents were finally unleashed, and we were all here for it.
02:03 "Honey, you're changing that boy's life."
02:06 "No. He's changing mine."
02:10 Number 8, Joaquin Phoenix.
02:12 "Gary, you know, the whole family's coming over tonight. There's a big surprise. Grandma and Grandpa are gonna be here, and Uncle Gil and Aunt Karen, they're bringing their kids. Aunt Susie's gonna be here, and Uncle Nathan."
02:22 The problem with having a famous older brother is that everyone compares you to him.
02:26 For a long time there, Joaquin Phoenix was regarded as little more than River's younger brother.
02:31 In fact, Phoenix believed that he wasn't getting any respect, not to mention work, and briefly quit acting in the early '90s to travel with his father.
02:38 "I guess a boy Gary's age really needs a mannerist."
02:41 But River insisted that he get back into it, and he did so with incredible finesse.
02:45 His star steadily rose throughout the '90s following River's tragic death, and he finally earned his sought-after respect in Ridley Scott's Gladiator.
02:52 The role earned Phoenix his first Oscar nomination, and there were many more to come.
02:56 "And what's with the black? It's depressing."
02:59 "Looks like you're going to a funeral."
03:02 "Maybe I am."
03:04 Number 7, Lindsay Lohan.
03:06 "You're, like, really pretty."
03:08 "Thank you."
03:09 "So you agree?"
03:10 "You think you're really pretty."
03:11 Certain events defined the entertainment landscape of the 2000s, and the downfall of Lindsay Lohan was one of them.
03:17 People were glued to the tabloids as they watched Lohan's demise, with the once acclaimed child actress finding herself in increasing legal trouble and falling victim to various personal struggles.
03:26 "Lindsay Lohan spent her first night in jail Tuesday on charges of parole violation relating to a 2007 DUI conviction."
03:33 But Lohan is on the upswing. She seems to be turning herself around, judging the mass singer Australia, and starring in Netflix's Falling for Christmas, which some major outlets have called one of the best Christmas films of recent memory.
03:44 She's also finding stability in her personal life, having married a financer named Bader Shamus and giving birth to a son in 2023.
03:51 "So, fetch. What is fetch?"
03:53 "Oh, it's like slang. From England."
03:56 Number 6, Ben Affleck.
03:58 "I'm not the bad guy."
04:00 "I'm not."
04:06 The good thing about Ben Affleck is that he never really had a rough period. That said, there were a couple of years in the early 2000s when the star was beginning to dim.
04:14 2003 was an especially tough one, containing both his failed attempt at Daredevil and the cinematic travesty that is Gigli.
04:21 Jokes were even made at Affleck's expense, with many arguing that he was carried by Matt Damon.
04:25 "Hey, uh, you think we could put both our names on that?"
04:28 "What? You've done nothing but eat briars and smoke pot for the last six months."
04:32 "Oh, that's ridiculous. Come on, I... I help."
04:35 That reputation turned with Gone Baby Gone, which proved Affleck's inarguable talent as a filmmaker.
04:40 The movie earned widespread acclaim, and he followed it up with equally loved dramas like The Town and Argo, the latter of which earned an Oscar for Best Picture.
04:48 The doubters were permanently silenced with that one.
04:50 "So you want to come to Hollywood and act like a big shot?"
04:53 "Yeah." "Without actually doing anything?" "No." "You'll fit right in."
04:56 Number 5 – Kei Hui Kwan
04:58 "One-eyed Willie and his bunch were down there for five, six years, and they were digging all these tunnels and caves, setting booty traps."
05:06 "Booty traps."
05:07 Everyone loves a good comeback story. Enter Kei Hui Kwan, who everyone pretty much forgot about between 1985 and 2022.
05:15 Kwan was an enormously successful child actor in the 1980s, starring in The Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
05:21 "Short, brown, symphonic."
05:24 "Doggy doggy, Dr. Jones, hold on to your potatoes!"
05:26 But the roles quickly dried up, and Kwan quit acting to pursue other interests.
05:30 He went to school and started working behind the scenes on various action films, holding a second-degree black belt in Taekwondo.
05:36 The work was steady, but to the public, he was a bygone product of the '80s.
05:40 Enter Everything Everywhere All at Once, the mega-hit of 2022 that catapulted Kwan back onto the A-list and earned him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
05:48 Now that's how you come back in style.
05:50 "If there's a next life, I'll still choose to be with you, to be with you, to be with you, to be with you, to be with you, to be with you."
05:58 Number 4. Matthew McConaughey
06:00 "You live with your parents?"
06:02 "Is that a problem?"
06:03 If you went back to 2006 and told everyone that Matthew McConaughey would soon become a world-renowned actor, you'd get more than a few raised eyebrows.
06:10 McConaughey shares a similar story with Sandra Bullock.
06:13 He was obviously talented and enjoyed a strong breakthrough, but he quickly fell into easy roles in crappy comedies.
06:18 Movies like Failure to Launch and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past were certainly paying the bills, but they weren't doing his professional reputation any favors.
06:25 "As someone who's felt a lot of both, trust me, pain beats regret every day of the week and twice on Sunday."
06:35 Then came Dallas Buyers Club.
06:37 Winning the Academy Award for Best Actor, it catapulted McConaughey to the tippy-top of the A-list, and he earned further acclaim starring in The Wolf of Wall Street and True Detective.
06:46 "Alright, alright, alright!"
06:49 Number 3 – Keanu Reeves
06:51 "You got the gift, but it looks like you're waiting for something."
06:57 Very few actors have a career wavelength like Keanu Reeves.
07:00 He was one of the biggest actors in the world in the 1990s, but several bad projects and some personal difficulties caused his career to spiral.
07:07 Despite starring in some all-time movies, no one really respected him as an actor, and he was nominated for several Razzies between 1994 and 2002.
07:15 "Count, the way he looked at Mina's picture fills me with dread, as if I have a part to play in a story that is not known to me."
07:23 He was also a literal meme in the early 2010s, seen as, well, a bit of a sad sack.
07:28 Enter John Wick, which not only revitalized his career, but turned him into the biggest action star of modern times.
07:35 When John proudly declares that he's back, we have to imagine that Reeves was channeling his own personal experience.
07:40 "But now, yeah, I'm thinking I'm back!"
07:44 Number 2 – Brendan Fraser
07:46 "I sold my soul."
07:48 "Hope you got something good for it."
07:50 "As a matter of fact, I got nothing for it."
07:52 "Well, that's a really bad deal, if you ask me."
07:55 Despite being in some of the biggest films of the '90s and 2000s, Fraser never earned himself a ton of critical respect.
08:01 He was often accused of playing the same smart, alicky character in most of his movies, which also tended to be mindless comedy and action flicks.
08:08 "Any last requests, Pete?"
08:10 "Yeah, loosen the knot and let me go."
08:13 And when he disappeared in the 2010s, Fraser became just another cultural object of '90s nostalgia.
08:18 But then, he staged a magnificent comeback in 2022, starring under pounds of prosthetics in Darren Aronofsky's The Whale.
08:25 It finally earned Fraser some critical respect, not to mention an Oscar. We knew he had it in him.
08:30 "I need to know that I have done one thing right with my life."
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08:51 The comeback to end all comebacks belongs to RDJ.
09:07 The '90s were a rough time, and absolutely nothing was going right for the poor guy.
09:11 His personal life was intensely scrutinized, having fallen into the depths of substance use and facing numerous legal problems.
09:17 He was completely uninsurable, facing getting fired from various projects, including Ally McBeal.
09:22 "You really think that I could never beat you?"
09:24 "Never? No, just not...ever."
09:29 No one took him seriously, and no one wanted him. No one, that is, except Mel Gibson.
09:33 Gibson personally paid down his insurance so he could work on The Singing Detective, which helped inspire his stellar comeback.
09:39 He starred as Iron Man in 2008, and the rest is cinematic history.
09:43 He eventually earned an Oscar nom for Tropic Thunder and went on to win for Oppenheimer.
09:48 "Do we still have enough votes, or is the crowning moment of my career about to become the most public humiliation of my life?"
09:54 Are there any other actors who had huge comebacks? Let us know in the comments below.
09:58 "People keep asking if I'm back, and I haven't really had an answer."
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10:12 [outro music]