Worst Female Film Performance Ever

Categories: Film

CindyCrawford1.jpg

I got this idea from DataLounge.com, some of whose nominees I'm including, while adding a few of my own, all based on extremely traumatizing experiences.

Your horrible choices are:


*Cindy Crawford, Fair Game

She played a lawyer with pert nipples. I'm the only one who saw this cinema classic, so you must believe me on this one.


*Lindsay Lohan, I Know Who Killed My Career

I mean I Know Who Killed Me


*Kim Novak, Jeanne Eagels

I like Kim, but playing one of the acting greats of all time was probably a bad idea. When she does a scene from Rain and is supposed to dazzle your socks off, it's sub-high-school level.


*Lucille Ball, Mame

A foghorn of a voice and a screen that went all Vaseliney whenever she appeared made it hard to love Lucy. It was more like Maim.


*Madonna, The Next Best Thing

Director John Schlesinger had a heart attack while filming this. He blamed it on Madonna! So did the critics!

My Voice Nation Help
84 comments
Kimdvs56
Kimdvs56

Anything with Keanu Reeves, she's awful

Velomecch
Velomecch

Trilogy of Terror.  Karen Black isn't one of the worst actresses of all time.  Often had a great authentic 60's and 70's vibe about her.

StarsUponThars
StarsUponThars

Did no one else but me watch Sofia Coppola stink up The Godfather III? Worst performance ever.

Pgigantino
Pgigantino

Come on guys,,,you can do better than this.  I think I'll go with some pop singers (excluding the usual suspects like Mariah Carey,,,)

1) Helen Reddy as a singing nun in "Airport '75"

2) Dionne Warwick in "Slaves"

3) Beyonce in anything

4) Faith Hill in "The Stepford Wives"

mjm
mjm

forgot :-Paris Hilton, Tara Reid, and Mischa Barton in anything-Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct 2 ('06) (i had to pick one)-Halle Berry in Catwoman ('04)-Sandra Bullock in All About Steve ('09)-Whitney Houston in The Preacher's Wife ('96)-Veronica Lake in her final film Flesh Feast ('70)-Charlize Theron and Courtney Love in Trapped ('02)-Ida Lupino as a hillbilly in The Food of the Gods ('76)-Joan Collins  in Empire of the Ants ('77)-Suzanne Somers in Nothing Personal ('80)-Farrah Fawcett in Saturn 3 ('80)-Bette Midler in Jinxed ('82)

Barkley
Barkley

The homely, unappealing Anne Hathaway, Amy Adams, Michelle Williams, Maggie Gylenhaal & Emma Stone. 

CMG
CMG

 Emma Stone had Zombieland and Easy A, Amy Adams had Junebug and The Fighter, Michelle Williams had a solid string of 90s comedies (I am not a fan of her serious actress roles in the Aughts like everybody else), Maggie G had Secretary, but yeah, I agree about Hathaway.  She is too Julia Roberts for my taste and her role in Rachel Getting Married was too uncomfortable for me to really really think of as quality.  But that whole movie was a headache.  I am still trying to accept her a Selina Kyle in the new Batman movie.  I know she is not supposed to be the sex on a stick of previous Catwomans but she also does not seem like an obvious strong female character in the vein of Linda Hamilton, Sigourney Weaver, or even Zoe Saldana. 

August23
August23

I always new Madonna couldn't act but it wasn't until "Evita" that I learned she can't even sing!  Place her voice up against LuPone's Broadway rendition and Patti wins without even trying!

CMG
CMG

Jennifer Lopez in The Back-Up Plan.  Even the way she ate food grossed me out. 

I am not a J-Lo hater, I have not seen a lot of her films but I thought she was great in Selena and Out of Sight but those roles are starting to look like flukes.  

Movielover
Movielover

Jlo can't act or sing.  She's ok dancer.  She's pretty!  That's her biggest talent.

steve
steve

Ali Mcgraw in Love Story...well Ali McGraw in anything really she sucks

Frank Miller
Frank Miller

If you're going to go after poor Kim Novak then get her at her weakest--Of Human Bondage.  She dropped her accent so often they should have called it Pygmalion.

Ill
Ill

She actually got better reviews than her costar, Laurence Harvey, who seemed to be sleepwalking through the whole thing. And he was mean to Kim all through filming, considering himself a real actor and her a joke.

Mario Aguilar
Mario Aguilar

If I had to choose from the list above I'd say Lindsay Lohan, that film was so awful it was astonishing.

Mario Aguilar
Mario Aguilar

Halle Berry in Catwoman, Julia Roberts in Hook, Demi Moore in Nothing But Trouble, Kelly Preston in Battlefield Earth, Madonna in Body of Evidence, Uma Thurman in Batman & Robin, Britney Spears in Crossroads, Condoleeza Rice in Fahrenheit 9-11, Drew Barrymore in Freddy Got Fingered, Mariah Carey in Glitter, Rosie O'Donnell in The Flintstones, Kelly Clarkson in From Justin to Kelly, Paris Hilton in House of Wax, Katie Holmes in Batman Begins and also for Teaching Mrs. Tingle,  Kristy McNichol in The Pirate Movie, Heather Locklear in The Return of the Swamp Thing, and of course The Spice Girls in Spice World.

Tarzie
Tarzie

Andie MacDowell in anything

Movielover
Movielover

I even hate her hair dye commercial.  She's very ick.  Like having a bitchy look on her face is a talent.

Nicestdionysus
Nicestdionysus

Gene Tierney in THE LADY FROM SHANGHAICandace Bergen in T.R. BASKIN (SUCH a bad actress before she discovered comedy)Oh that Ali McGraw!Jennifer Connelly before she got training (Somewhere around HIGHER LEARNING, I think...love her now...if anything, she's underrated)Meg Ryan in IN THE CUT (See how not cute I am?  I've lowered my voice four octaves because I'm playing a normal person.)Linda Blair in anything other than THE EXORCISTAmy Adams in JULIE AND JULIA.

Gregorama
Gregorama

Gene Tierney wasn't in "Lady from Shanghai".  Did you mean Rita Hayworth?  I thought she was pretty good (especially considering she was being directed by Orson Welles in the last days of their tumultuous marriage).

Gregorama
Gregorama

No one....repeat:  NO ONE can compete with Elizabeth Berkeley and, "Showgirls, the homage to hideousness on every level.  Her performance is absolutely, VEHEMENTLY terrible.  And she gets extra bonus points for taking her own FATHER as her date for the big opening.....a film in which her own "big opening" is on appalling display in every other scene.

Siouxansayles
Siouxansayles

I think you win the prize.  Overwhelming AWFUL in so many ways.  And in her mind, she thought she hit the big time.

Tarzie
Tarzie

Yeah, but like Michael said upthread, it brings great joy. 

David
David

How about intentional worst performance--Bette Davis in "Beyond the Forest"

Movielover
Movielover

But she sure made a permanent splash in that movie by saying, "This place is a dump."

mjm
mjm

no, it's "WHAT A DUMP!!" every Bette fan should know that.

I'm adding Juliette Lewis doing her best Helen Keller meets Temple Grandin (I know it's that bad) in The Other Sister.

CMG
CMG

Yeah, talk about re-appropriating the original statement and making it your own.  Bette said it with a bit more morose, but our Liz brought out the camp in Albee's interpretation.  

Tony
Tony

Especially since Elizabeth Taylor spends the first five minutes of "...Virginia Woolf" quoting it and trying to come up with the name of the film, "some goddamned Warner Brothers epic."

Movielover
Movielover

You are right!  How could I not know that?!

Gregorama
Gregorama

Wrong.  She totally says, "What a dump!"  YouTube it....

Movielover
Movielover

No!  She never said What a dump!  Only people who imitate her say it.  She said, "This place is a dump.  She also never said, "Petah.  Give me the letter."  Though she was great in The Letter.  Poor Herbert Marshall, married to her again.  Like in The Little Foxes.

Foodiefanny
Foodiefanny

Why was it intentionally bad? I never saw that film.

Southern Dave
Southern Dave

 Her co-star was Fred Astaire, her director Vincente Minnelli and the Most Awful Film Performance?

Lucille Bremer in "Yolanda and the Thief."

The producer, Arthur Freed, was "sweet" on Bremer and the movie was supposed to make her a star.

At the preview in Pomona, Calif., where the few people who remained all turned in negative evaluation cards, Judy Garland told Freed, "Don't worry, Arthur, Pomona just isn't Lucille's town."

Jonster
Jonster

"Don't worry, Arthur, Pomona just isn't Lucille's town."

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA !!!  Fabulous.

Siouxie
Siouxie

Or how about Madonna in "Swept Away?"  

Tarzie
Tarzie

Madonna in anything, really, except Desperately Seeking Susan which only asked for what little bit she can give. Watching a movie like Body of Evidence makes you appreciate what so many unknowns do so believably all the time in everything from movies to television ads. I honestly believe that Madonna is worse than any person you might pluck of the street, which is weird because musicians on the whole seem to adapt pretty well to acting.

Foodiefanny
Foodiefanny

How about Anna Sten in Tonight We Live or whatever the fuck it was called.

Paul
Paul

Anything with Karen Black.

mjm
mjm

excepting Easy Rider, Nashville, Family Plot, and Five Easy Pieces?

other than that, anything she's in sucks.

I forgot to put Cher and Christina Aguilera in Burlesque or Showgirls 2: Electric Boogaloo on my list.

Movielover
Movielover

She was also good in Day of the Locusts, Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean and the Great Gatsby!

Brett in NY
Brett in NY

Also memorable in "You're a Big Boy Now."

CMG
CMG

That much is true.  It was at least a postcard movie.  

Movielover
Movielover

It was a great-looking movie, though.  Karen's poor dopey husband was good too (he kilt Robert Redford in the swimming pool!).

CMG
CMG

Gatsby was a mess of a movie but she seemed like the only person in a different movie.  Mia Farrow was annoying and Redford was practically on barbiturates, never feeling comfortable saying 'Old Sport'.  Aside from Sam Waterson's Nick and the woman who played Myrtle, she was the standout of the movie who if the MacGraw-Brando version actually happened, Black would be the only person I would not have re-casted. 

Mark
Mark

C'mon, Michael, I admit Lucy was miscast in MAME but to put her performance among the five all-time worst?!?  That's pretty crummy.  (And on the week of the centennial of her birth, yet!  Have you no shame?)  There are many other choices that could have been made.  MAME was a disaster anyway, and not just because of the Ball miscasting.  Angela couldn't have saved it, either. 

Days
Days

Just cuz the bat is 100 doesn't mean she can act.

Movielover
Movielover

Angela would have been a smash!  A classic movie.  Instead with Lucy it's an all-time shit storm.  Some people may have loved Lucy, but she didn't have class, wit or chic, all of which Mame is supposed to have (and Angela has!).  The ONLY good thing in the Lucy version was Bea Arthur. 

mjm
mjm

-Brooke Shields, Demi Moore, Jennifer Lopez, Kirstie Alley, Pia Zadora, Pam Anderson, Lohan, Kelly Preston, Loni Anderson, Jada Pinkett-Smith, or Kristen Stewart in anything-Britney Spears in Crossroads ('02)-Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls ('95)-Cybill Shepherd in At Long Last Love ('75) -Julie Andrews in Tooth Fairy ('10), because I'm curious why she lowered her standards to do tripe like that-Barbra Streisand in Little Fockers ('10) see Julie-Ann Margret in Old Dogs ('09) see Julie-Lil Kim as a high schooler in She's All That ('99)-Oprah in Native Son ('86)-Uma Thurman in The Producers ('05)-Liz Taylor, Ava Gardner, Jane Fonda, and Cicely Tyson in The Blue Bird ('76)-Whoopi Goldberg making jurassic love in Theodore Rex ('95)-Joan Crawford as Sonja Henie in Ice Follies of 1939 ('39)-Rosalind Russell in Mrs. Pollifax - Spy ('71)-Bette Davis as a hippie in Bunny O'Hare ('71)-Lana Turner on acid in The Big Cube ('69)-Liza Minnelli in Lucky Lady ('75)

Nelson Bakunawa
Nelson Bakunawa

Yes... you have to add Faye Dunway. In everything she did.

Movielover
Movielover

You are correct on everything I've seen that you list!  They were stanky.

©2013 Village Voice, LLC, All rights reserved.
Browse Voice Nation
  • Voice Places New York

    Voice Places

    Find everything you're looking for in your city

  • Happy Hour App

    Happy Hour App

    Find the best happy hour deals in your city

  • Daily Deals

    Daily Deals

    Get today's exclusive deals at savings of anywhere from 50-90%

  • Best Of

    Best Of...

    Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city