Celebrities feel like gods to most people nowadays. Their stars are so bright that their diehard fans mistake them for literally residing in the heavens. The reality is that these celebrities were just like us common folk at a time. The only way to achieve success is through one’s own grit and will. Even if one were to be born into a celebrity family there is no guarantee for success (looking at you, After Earth’s Jaden Smith). Once these actors achieve this success they are only s🤡een in empowered roles that never show them as less than perfect. Even if they are seen in peasant like roles they are still the focus of🥃 the film.
In the Marvel universe, these actors are superheroes and achieve fea🃏ts no normal human could ever do.🌟 Once you’ve seen them onscreen showcasing these amazing abilities you can only see them in that light. In actuality, these stars have had a whole lot of low moments in their career. When they were nobodies in the film industry, they were required to play parts that are hilarious to watch, even without the benefit of hindsight. Most of the time the actors have a funny bone and find amusement in their embarrassing earlier roles, but at no point will you see them shouting aloud of their involvement in these films.
Here are 23 Roles Marvel Act꧂ors Would Rather Weও Forgot.
23 Mark Ruffalo𝔍 : Clearasil Commercial ♈
Who knew the guy who would come to be associated with anger management problems would be part of a commercial that was so chill? Because Mark Ruffalo brought the ‘Cool’ in ‘Coolness’ for his advertisement of Clearasil clear pads. In the 1980s, when, let’s face 𒊎it, commercials used to be so much more fun than the🧜y are now, Mark auditioned, and got the part, for a young hunk in this Clearasil commercial. As a young lad having just entered his twenties, Mark had his youth as an advantage as the pretty boy nabbed the role for the commercial.
Banner’s secret is he’s always angry, but Mark’s secret is he always ‘Double Zaps.’
You’ll get that joke when you inevitably check out the Clearasil commercial. The advertisement was played again to an older Mark a couple years ago, much to his embarrassment, on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. He admitted the director of the commercial only took him in thanks to his good look and the fact that he looked like a guy who had just walked off the street for the job. To add insult t🉐o injury, Mark was also told his advantage was that he didn’t know how to act at all which helped give off a normal boy vibe for the commercial.
22 Chris Evan𒅌s: No꧋t Another Teen Movie
In the 80s and 90s, the teen comedy genre was a beast of its own. You could fill multiple lists by naming them. Some of the more famous ones included Pretty in Pink, 10 Things I Hate About You, Can’t Hardly Wait, The Breakfast Club, She’s All That, and Clueless. There came a point when making a teen movie wasn’t original in the slightest and instead we got a bunch of movies that parodied such films. The most popular ones would be Scary Movie and American Pie. Then there was Not Another Teen Movie. This film saw the first leading role by Chris Evans, who was only 19 years-old when it was filmed. Joining him is Chyler Leigh (of Grey’s Anatomy fame) as the stereotypical high scho🦄ol boy and girl.
Now that Chris has established himself as the ultra straight man Captain America, it would be huge shock to those who watch Not Another Teen Movie and witness the uncomfortable whipped cream scene where he has covered portions of his body with cream and left everything else off. The film is largely a grown-up comedy whose only purpose now is to bring much embarrassment to its cast. Chris has ventured in dramatic movies like Gifted and just finished a run on Broadway, and so a film as slapstick like Not Another Teen Movie wouldn’t look great on his acting resume.
21 Brie Larson: The Tonight Show ✨
She has not been seen onscreen in a Marvel movie yet, but Brie Larson is officially part of the Marvel family due to her upcoming starring role in Captain Marvel. The film will also be the first outright female led Marvel Cinematic Universe film (Ant-Man and the Wasp doesn’t count) making Brie a pioneer of sorts. But let’s not let it be forgotten that the Captain herself found her first acting jobs in fake commercials on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in 1997. Jay Leno was known for making many skits as part o🌃f his show and these would cast children when required.
Enter Brie Larson into her first claim to fame, well sort of.
In 2017, when she had already won an Oscar for the film Room, Brie was shown one of the several clips she had fil🌊med when she 8 years old. The skit was absurd, featuring two little girls who made pastries out of a ferret they had run over using an Easy Bake Oven. It might sound gross but the clip didn’t actually show the baking part. It wasn’t all that funny either except for displaying Brie’s reaction at having taken part in a ridiculous skit such as that.
20 Elizabeth Olsen: How Th🌱e West Was Fun
In the 90s and early 2000s, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were the go to child stars for a number of studios. Their fame was born from Full House and th♚e fact that they were twins contributed to a number of movies based ꩲon their chemistry and likability. It was in 90s, when Mary-Kate and Ashley themselves appeared as little more than toddlers, that their younger sister Elizabeth Olsen made her first film appearance. A TV movie, with a child friendly moral behind it, the film will appear extremely cheesy to even the kids today, let alone those who were children in the 90s.
Elizabeth didn’t even have a sizable role in the movie. She is credited as ‘Girl in the Car’ among the cast and the whole point of adding her in was ꦆto complete the sibling set in the film. More than two decades later,🙈 she is popular for playing Scarlet Witch. Her sisters have both given up acting, which means Elizabeth is the only one to continue the Olsen name in film. She will want people to remember her for more meatier roles than ‘Girl in the Car’ when all is said and done.
19 🎃 ও Emma Stone: The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody
Emma Stone is relatable to the public due to her personality being relatable. In her interviews she has been candid about her multiple failures in auditions, providing proof that the experiences of her character in La La Land hit close to the bone. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress at only 28, by which point she had already starred in The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Both th෴ose movies kind of sucked but Emma and Andrew Garfield were the few positives to take from the films.
Emma has always given a committed performance, even as a literal dog in the Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
It’s true. The Oscar winner didn’t appear in person on the Disney Channel hit show. Instead, she voiced the dog Ivana, belonging to London Tipton. At the end credits her name is listed for her contribution to the part as ‘Emily Stone,’ which is her real name. Emma had earlier auditioned for another child-centric show, All That, but had failed to land a role. Perhaps🌄, at the time this was the best she could get but as this isn’t an animated movie role that required her to play a Dog, this short one-time role as Ivana the Dog won’t be part of her best performances.
18 👍 Robert Downey Jr.🍬: Saturday Night Live
The undisputed king of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This ergo makes him the king of all Marvel related franchises there have ever been. Robert Downey Jr’s lead role in Iron Man in 2008 began his resurgence after a number of years of highly publicized scandals. In the early 2000s, he had won a Golden Globe Award for Ally McBeal but his frequent trouble with the law meant he had been fired from the show. And yet, even this isn’t the lowest he has gotten to in his professional life. That time period would fall in the mid-1980s. Robert was a mere 20 when he was cast as a regular on Saturday Night Live and remains one of the youngest 💃signings ever on the🦄 show’s history.
This honor is the only one he will ever receive from the show as he is considered to be one of the worst cast members to have been featured on it. In fact, more thꦏan half of the cast members of the season Robert was on were fired before the next season commenced. Since his departure, he has only returned once in 1996, and was absent from the star-studded 40th Anniversary. Safe to say, thi🌄s is one gig he would like to forget.
17 Ryan Reynolds: Sabrina The Tee♚nage Witch ꦜ
Who’s that guy with the blonde hair? Well, it’s our very own Deadpool. You might not recognize him without the mask or the fact that he looks extremely silly. But back in 1996, a 20-year-old Ryan Reynolds sported this very look for the teen movie Sabrina the Teenage Witch. The show of the same name is known as Melissa Joan Hart’s claim to fame but everyone tends to forget🦄 the show was commissioned because of the success of this film.
Before he was the Merc with a Mouth, he was Blondie with that Hair.
Ryan has retained the youthful look all his life🐲 and into 2018 when he is to turn 42, and the only difference between the Ryan of now and then is that atrocious hair, a style he will never be wiling to try on again. In the follow-up series, the cast saw a revamp except for Sabrina herself. Ryan didn’t make the cut for Sabrina’s real love interest of Harvey eitဣher, playing a guy called Seth–although in the film Seth is her main love interest instead of Harvey. An interesting factoid is that Melissa Joan Hart has claimed they were both with one another on set but a romance did not blossom due to her existing relationship at the time. What might have been, right?
16 Li♓nda Cardellini: Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed ဣ
When Scooby-Doo arrived in theaters in 2002, there was a mixed sentiment surrounding what we would expect from it. Earlier scripts–written by none other than Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn–had a crazy setting where all the child-friendly themes from the cartoon were disposed of in favor of showing the Scooby Gang as a bunch of misfits. This was erased once the more child-oriented final product was confirmed. It still didn’t do any favors for the cast who suffered from the series’🧔 ridiculous premise. Linda Cardellini played Velma Dinkley in both films and is still fondly remembered by kids who have grown up now. It was her first big budget film.
But the sequel’s lackluster performance made the cast, and Linda, appear as subpar actors.
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed received similarly bad reviews as the first one but it didn’t have box office receipts in support either this time and the series was shelved. Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar never really recovered from it while Matthew Lillard took on the role of Shaggy on a full-time basis. Linda seemingly disappeared from the mainstream eye for a number of years before showing up in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Her performance as Hawkeye’s supporting wife was a departure from Velma’s ill-fated attempt at being attractive in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.
15 Paul Rudd: Gen-Y🐭 Cops 🌳
Paul Rudd was already 31 when he starred in the Hong Kong movie Gen-Y Cops but in the year 2000 he had only a handful of film credits to his name. What was originally his most embarrassing film role was the lead in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers but Paul stated in 2007 that the embarrassment has subsided and he is now proud to have been in the Halloween franchise. This leads us to Gen-Y Cops. The movie is as over the top as one might expect by checking outs its official trailer, which has no dialogue just a bunch of people jumping around with Paul trying his hardest to look🔜 serious.
His reason to be there was more or less to be the Token White Guy. In Asian films, this is a sought after role that requires the actor look as Westernized as possible. A good example would be checking out Bollywood films featuring westerners. Getting back to the Rudd, his appearance is as stereotype White Guy as possible, dressed in a suit and sporting a blonde hairdo to boot. The craziest part of it all, though, is that Paul seems to be having some genuine fun in the film. Still, it’s not exactly a legit superhero role as Ant-Man.
14 Idris Elba: Space Precinct 🐟
The clip for this one is a definite requirement. There’s no chance you won’t bawl with laughter when watching Idris Elba play the part of a Pizza Delivery Man in an episode of Space Precinct. The whole thing is bizarre to begin with, even before Idris shows up a couple of strange people talk in an absurd conversation, which is interrupted by Idris’ character. He sounds nothing like 🥀the real Idris Elba as the developers wanted someone with an actual American accent.
Funny thing is, the person dubbing over Idris’ Pizza Delivery Man doesn’t sound American in the slightest.
It’s an augmented voice of a person who’s trying too hard to sound like an American. Not helping matters is that Idris was seen onscreen for hardly 8 s🌳econds before he is cut short both times. For some reason, his role is reduced to a man of with an extremely short physical stature as well. It's like something out a "Pinch me, I'm dreaming" scenario. What’s amazing to realize is that Idris was only 22 when he recorded this bit role but he looks exactly the same in 2018. Mind you, this episodeও aired in 1994! 24 years later, it’s still coming back to haunt him.