12 Actors Who Hated Playing Their Characters

For actors, sometimes their biggest breakout roles feel more like curses rather than blessings. There are an infinite number of reasons why an actor won't look back fondly on the time they spent playing a certain character. Some actors hated working with directors, but for others, the amount of effort they put into a role might've been too extreme to be at all enjoyable, which is certainly common among superhero movie actors that transform their bodies to play incredibly powerful individuals. 

For these actors, their hated roles vary from projects they wish they could forget to projects nobody ever will, spanning box office bombs and beloved blockbusters. In a lot of cases, the actors themselves might even like how the film ended up, even if they had a bad time making it. From performers who hated their breakout characters to stars that couldn't handle the pressure they were under, these roles are not any of these actors' favorites from their respective filmographies.

Here are 12 actors who hated playing certain characters in movies or TV shows.

In the year 1980, Robin Williams ruled the stand-up circuit and television airwaves with "Mork & Mindy." Though he was still on his way to becoming the star we know him as in the best Robin Williams movies, such as "Good Morning Vietnam" and "Hook," his first-ever leading role in a motion picture was "Popeye." Unfortunately, being cast as the titular sailor in a live-action adaptation of the famous comic strip and cartoon turned out to be a red herring for Williams' future movie career. 

To put it kindly, Williams had some regrets about his Popeye performance, mainly because trying to talk in the character's iconic speech pattern whilst having a pipe in his mouth proved troublesome during production. He ended up having to completely over-dub his scenes in the film twice over, telling Rolling Stone, "I sounded like a killer whale farting in a wind tunnel." That's all on top of the fact that Williams played the character with massive rubber arms to emulate Popeye's bulging muscles that were difficult to remove.

However, Williams' poor time on set was the least of the production's concerns, as the disastrous shoot was also over schedule and over budget. Barry Diller, former CEO of Paramount, even alleged that everyone on the set of "Popeye" was on cocaine, with production using film cans meant for sending back dailies to ship cocaine back and forth from Los Angeles. 

Many fans of James Cameron's magnum opus, "Titanic," would rightfully claim that Kate Winslet's performance as Rose is what makes the movie work. Although Winslet would later go on to earn an Oscar for "The Reader" and Emmys for her roles in "Mildred Pierce" and "Mare of Easttown," "Titanic" was the film that catapulted her into mainstream success, but it wasn't all roses (no pun intended). 

Even though she campaigned hard for the role after reading the script, the actual filming of the project left Winslet filled with self-doubt and criticism aimed at herself. Of all of Winslet's performances, she finds "Titanic" the hardest to revisit, as she's not proud of her own American accent used for the character of Rose. On top of that internal struggle, Cameron is a notoriously tough director to work with, with Winslet telling Rolling Stone, "There were days when you'd just think, 'Oh, my God, I've got my period, and I can't get in that freezing-cold water today.'" We can't blame Kate for having to sometimes... well... do her business in a 17-gallon tank of water instead of stop filming to get taken out of her dress and corset. 

Winslet still admits to being heartbroken to let go of Rose (pun intended) after filming concluded, but she quickly soured towards "Titanic" after experiencing the horrors of celebrity that comes from starring in a massive blockbuster. Rose may remain Winslet's biggest role, but she's got plenty of great performances to be proud of instead.  

Jim Carrey is one of the few big movie stars who's been incredibly candid about the grossness of Hollywood, resulting in him essentially retiring from acting (aside from the "Sonic the Hedgehog" movies). It's not exactly surprising to hear it from Carrey, knowing what the comedy actor endured while filming Ron Howard's 2000 film "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," based on the iconic children's book by Dr. Seuss. In fact, Carrey had such an unpleasant time making "Grinch" that his behavior sent a brilliant make-up artist into therapy. 

Lest you think he was pulling a "Man on the Moon" and method-acting as the Whoville curmudgeon, Carrey had more realistic reasons for being such a real-life Grinch. To put Carrey into the practical, full-body prosthetics to play the character required eight-and-a-half-hours that the actor compared to being buried alive, and eventually producer Brian Grazer brought in an expert in training CIA operatives to endure torture to help Carrey get through the makeup process. 

Although Carrey was as miserable as you could be, the reason he made it through was reminding himself that the film was going to be for children. Surprisingly, Carrey has one condition to return as the Grinch, should there ever be an offer to reprise the role: use motion capture, which Carrey has plenty of experience with after playing the Grinch's Dickensian counterpart, Ebenezer Scrooge, in Robert Zemeckis' 2009 unfortunate animated adaptation of "A Christmas Carol." 

There's an obvious, more recent example of a film Blake Lively  allegedly had a bad time filming, but the actress also had a lot of opposition to the role that made her a household name. Though it's hard to remember a time when Lively wasn't a household name, Serena van der Woodsen's reputation as the "It girl of Manhattan" in "Gossip Girl" bled into Lively's real-life reputation. 

It wasn't just in the media that Lively became synonymous with the secretive and manipulative Serena, as the character ended up influencing how the actress dresses in real life, for better or worse. Nevertheless, the show's popularity didn't dissuade Lively from feeling like playing Serena was "morally compromising," telling Allure, "I would not be proud to be the person who gave someone the cocaine that made them overdose and then shot someone and slept with someone else's boyfriend," (via Cosmopolitan). 

Additionally, Lively also had a real-life romance with her on-screen love interest, Penn Badgley, who played Dan on "Gossip Girl," though their relationship ended in 2010, two years before the show itself ending. Her attempt to keep her private life separate from work only fueled rumors about her and Badgley's relationship, even though it somewhat made the show, like Serena herself, all the more popular thanks to the gossip. 

There are two types of people in this world: those who knew Robert Pattinson from "Vanity Fair" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and everyone else who discovered him through the "Twilight" movies. Although Pattinson has seemingly redeemed his reputation with films like "The Lighthouse," "Good Time," and "The Batman," back in the early 2010s, "Twilight" dominated pop culture, much to the actor's chagrin based on how he looks back on the film franchise retrospectively.

Pattinson was not only forthcoming about how he felt the films' stories were very weird and not at all romantic, but it was even worse than that. Despite Pattinson's attempts to take the role seriously, he was actually told by his managers to do the exact opposite or else he'd be fired. Talking to GQ, Pattinson reflected on his younger attitude on set, "It just seems so ridiculous talking about it now, cause I was literally [enraged] ... it's definitely something about being 21 as well." 

Pattinson's dislike for the movies got worse as the films went on, citing one scene in "Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 2" where Edward... erm, assists with Bella giving birth to their daughter as a difficult moment to wrap his head around. At least he's not alone, as Kristen Stewart also expressed her confusion at many of the plot points in the saga, as well as how the film marred both of their reputations as actors. 

Playing a comic book character is always rough, but it's worse when you're stepping into a role that has already been made iconic by a previous actor. For Jennifer Lawrence, that was Mystique, the supervillain played by Rebecca Romijn in Fox's original "X-Men" movies. Lawrence joined the Marvel universe in 2011's "X-Men: First Class," fresh off of her Oscar nomination for 2010's "Winter's Bone."

Not dissimilar to Jim Carrey's work as the Grinch, playing a character like Mystique, whose entire body is blue and scaly, required extensive prosthetics that proved harmful to Lawrence's skin. For her first go-around as the character in "X-Men: First Class," the makeup process took roughly seven to eight hours and gave the actress rashes and blisters. By the time she returned for "X-Men: Days of Future Past," they re-engineered the character's design to utilize a body suit rather than irritating makeup, cutting the process down to only three or four hours and using CGI to digitally edit out the zipper and add in scales to Lawrence's face. 

Once 2019's "Dark Phoenix" rolled around, Lawrence was ready to cut down her time in the makeup chair to 0 hours. By that point, the Oscar winner sought a break from movie stardom as a whole, not just the "X-Men" universe. 

On the surface, "Big Little Lies" seems like an easy enough series to shoot for any actor. However, for Zoë Kravitz, the exact opposite was unfortunately true. The HBO series is set in Monterey, California, following the lives of five women who become unexpectedly involved in a local homicide, with Kravitz's Bonnie being the new, young wife of Madeline's (Reese Witherspoon) ex-husband.

While the cast of Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Nicole Kidman, Kravitz, and Shailene Woodley formed a kind of sisterhood off-screen, Kravitz has also expressed her discomfort with shooting the series on-location in Monterey, telling The Observer, "There were a few moments where I felt a little uncomfortable because it is such a white area ... Just weird racist people in bars and things like that," (via Variety). Though some criticized the show's lack of effort in highlighting Bonnie's experiences as a biracial woman, the fact that the role was originally written for a white actress was one of the things Kravitz initially found appealing about the project.

Thankfully, all these things can be addressed now that "Big Little Lies" is getting a third season, according to Witherspoon and Kidman. If Kravitz ends up returning, ideally she can have a better experience filming in Monterey without having to interact with locals who are rude or bigoted towards her. Who knows? After "The Batman," maybe they'll be bothersome by wanting a selfie with her.

You might assume that, for an Englishman, getting cast as James Bond is a dream come true. Sadly, Daniel Craig had the opposite experience playing the iconic spy for 15 years starting with 2006's "Casino Royale," the best James Bond movie according to many fans of the franchise. The filming of "Casino Royale" had its times when Craig had to fight for one of the movie's most powerful moments, but the subsequent films took a toll on the actor. 

In addition to injuries he sustained while playing the character, "Quantum of Solace" in 2008 was particularly a pain in the butt for Craig, since they had to shoot it without a script as a result of the 2007-08 Writer's Guild of America strikes. After 2015's "Spectre," Craig told The Guardian he'd "rather slash [his] wrists" than do another Bond film, elaborating, "I'm over it at the moment. We're done. All I want to do is move on."

Craig was not in fact done, as he played Bond once more for 2021's "No Time to Die," by which point he regretted having committed to doing his own stunts for the entire franchise. We can't blame him; if you're married to Rachel Weisz, it's probably preferable to spend as much time at home as possible. 

Everyone has an opinion, good or bad, about the "Star Wars" sequel trilogy, but no one has a more valid reason to hate them than John Boyega. Years before "Star Wars," Boyega made his film debut in sci-fi cult classic "Attack the Block," but it was "The Force Awakens" that turned him into a household name overnight for playing Finn, a stormtrooper who defects to the Rebel Alliance and befriends pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and Jedi scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley). 

Although Boyega's "Star Wars" career seemed promising with "The Force Awakens," as the years went on, he began to feel that his race exposed him to some uglier sides of the industry — and not just from meaningless casting backlash. As Boyega candidly told GQ about his experience making the subsequent films, "What I would say to Disney is do not bring out a black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side. It's not good."

Boyega's not an outlier in the franchise, either, as his poor experience was shared by co-stars like Kelly Marie Tran and Oscar Isaac. It's definitely evident to anybody who watches the sequel trilogy that all the interesting character development promised for Finn in the first movie is moved to the B-plot in "The Last Jedi" and outright background noise in "The Rise of Skywalker." 

One day, none of us knew who Florence Pugh was, but seemingly overnight, she was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. If there's any one film that made people start paying attention to the English actress, it was Ari Aster's 2019 horror film "Midsommar," in which Pugh plays one half of a couple who find themselves participating in the deadly seasonal rituals of a Swedish cult. Despite being considered one of Florence Pugh's best movies, what she went through while filming it was quite harrowing. 

It's no surprise that "Midsommar" required Pugh to go to some dark places, considering her character is grappling with pretty heinous trauma at the very start of the film. She's categorized the level of acting she did as abuse, telling the "Reign with Josh Smith" podcast that even though she's proud of the finished product, "the nature of figuring these things out is you need to go, 'Alright, well, I can't do that again 'cause that was too much.'"

Thankfully, she felt very taken care of by Aster as a director, but between her own mental health playing a character like Dani to filming in the scorching summer heat of Hungary for two and a half months, it's a miracle that Pugh, or anyone on the cast and crew, made it out alive. Pugh even seemed more excited to jump off a building in "Thunderbolts*" than watch someone jump off a cliff in "Midsommar." 

Cillian Murphy deserved his Oscar and then some for playing the titular role in "Oppenheimer," but it's unfair that he was never even nominated for an Emmy after playing Tommy Shelby in "Peaky Blinders." Shelby is one of television's best anti-heroes, and although he clearly likes the character enough to reprise his role in the official movie for Netflix, there's one aspect of his preparation for "Peaky Blinders" that Murphy hates. 

To play a character as physically strong and intimidating as Shelby, Murphy has to exercise and bulk up in order to change his naturally slim figure, but beyond that, Murphy's not even a fan of Shelby's haircut. According to Emily Blunt, his co-star in "A Quiet Place: Part II" and "Oppenheimer," Murphy doesn't even like to go out when he's sporting the Shelby hair, for fear of being recognized as his morally deplorable character. 

Thankfully, it's the writing from showrunner Steven Knight that keeps Murphy coming back, even as he told Entertainment Weekly that it was always a struggle, saying, "It wasn't just putting on a cap. It's always a process getting back in ... [and] the accent's not an easy accent, so I'd always have to refresh the accent every year. It's not one of those ones you can get out of the car and you're ready. It's a lot of work."

Anya Taylor-Joy has played some messy characters, from her debut role in "The Witch" to a drug-addicted chess savant in "The Queen's Gambit." However, George Miller's "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" was the dirtiest and bloodiest Taylor-Joy has ever been in a movie, featuring some of the most intense action sequences she's ever filmed and the hardest stunts a young actress like herself can be expected to do. 

Taylor-Joy inherited the role of young Furiosa from Charlize Theron, who originated the character in Miller's 2015 epic "Mad Max: Fury Road," but to fully embody this feral creature of a woman, Taylor-Joy had to give it her all. As she bluntly told The New York Times, "I've never been more alone than making that movie ... I don't want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard." As impressive as it was to co-stars like Chris Hemsworth, the way Taylor-Joy talks about the grueling production makes it sound like she too lost an arm. 

Fortunately, the end result is that Furiosa is easily Anya Taylor-Joy's best role, even though the actress doesn't even show up on screen until over an hour in. On top of that, Taylor-Joy's Furiosa only has 30 lines of dialogue, meaning for a lot of her time on set, the actress was completely mute. Maybe one day she'll divulge all the challenges of making "Furiosa," because a great performance certainly came out of it.