Comic book heroes, gun-toting action stars, and a billion-dollar Barbie. For the actors who play them, their movies pull in hundreds of millions at the box office — but it wasn't always that way.
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00:00Comic book heroes, gun-toting action stars, and a billion-dollar Barbie.
00:05For the actors who play them, their movies pull in hundreds of millions at the box office.
00:09But it wasn't always that way.
00:11It's hard to believe now, but Robert Downey Jr. was once the textbook definition of box
00:15office poison.
00:17While Downey shot to fame quickly in his career, his celebrity status was more for his extracurricular
00:21activities than his acting chops.
00:23Sure, he was nominated for an Academy Award for the title role in 1992's Chaplin, but
00:28he was more notorious for antics like passing out inside his neighbor's house.
00:40But hey, bad behavior in Hollywood is usually excused if your movies make money.
00:44Downey's films, however, did not.
00:46For the first 25 years of his career, the actor didn't make one movie that grossed more
00:50than $100 million.
00:52It was so bad, he even brought big stars like Mel Gibson down with him.
00:56The two co-starred in 1990's Air America, which became one of the biggest bombs of Gibson's
01:01career.
01:02Downey's turnaround came in the new millennium, thanks to director Jon Favreau going to bat
01:05for him as Tony Stark.
01:07It worked pretty well.
01:08Downey's inaugural Iron Man film grossed $585 million worldwide, and launched the most successful
01:14franchise ever.
01:16Ryan Reynolds' smart-aleck charm made the Deadpool franchise a huge success, yet it
01:20was that same smugness that kept Reynolds from superstardom for the first 18 years of
01:25his career.
01:26Before Deadpool, Reynolds' biggest hits were as a supporting actor to major stars like
01:29Sandra Bullock in The Proposal and Denzel Washington in Safehouse.
01:33Whenever he went to bat by himself, he failed spectacularly, including the back-to-back
01:38flops Green Lantern and RIPD.
01:46Reynolds was well on his way to being a case of what could have been, until Deadpool shocked
01:51Hollywood with its $781 million global haul.
01:55But it's not just Deadpool, as Reynolds has parlayed that success to become a bankable
01:59draw on his own, with recent hits like Free Guy and Pokemon Detective Pikachu.
02:04Vin Diesel's first major role may have been in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan,
02:09but he followed that up with three misfires in a row.
02:12Diesel's career seemed to get into high gear with the one-two punch of 2001's The Fast
02:16and the Furious and 2002's Triple X, thus establishing him as a major action movie star.
02:22But apparently he didn't really want to do action movies, so he turned down sure-thing
02:26sequels to both films.
02:28Diesel did have one hit with the 2005 family flick The Pacifier, but otherwise starred
02:32in a string of duds like Babylon A.D.
02:39In 2009, however, he returned to the Fast franchise with Fast and Furious.
02:44Diesel has wisely stayed in the family as patriarch Dominic Toretto ever since, helping
02:48that series speed away with billions.
02:51He even returned to the Triple X franchise with 2017's Triple X Return of Xander Cage.
02:55Needless to say, Diesel is back to being bankable by staying in his lane as an action star.
03:01To his credit, Johnny Depp has gone down his own path for most of his career, resulting
03:05in iconic parts in Edward Scissorhands, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and What's Eating
03:09Gilbert Grape.
03:10Yet his pre-Pirates of the Caribbean career didn't make much money.
03:13His only film to make over $100 million during this period was Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow,
03:18which was released in 1999.
03:20In his less-than-remarkable run, casting Depp in a big-budget, would-be blockbuster
03:24about pirates seemed like a risk.
03:27Turns out, Depp was a discount.
03:29Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl, yo-ho-hoed its way to $654 million
03:35worldwide in 2003.
03:36It was a massive sum that was dwarfed by the 2006 sequel, Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead
03:40Man's Chest.
03:42Captain Jack steered Depp away from his days as box office poison, although his future
03:46with the Pirates franchise looks dead in the water after his recent personal scandals.
03:51Before Christopher Nolan cast him as the title character in 2005's Batman Begins, Christian
03:55Bale was about as far from a movie star as one could be.
03:59He convincingly played a billionaire in that effort, but Bale's pre-Bruce Wayne filmography
04:03is a collection of underperformers and flops.
04:06There were a couple of hits, like his turn as Laurie in 1994's Little Women, or voicing
04:10Thomas in 1995's Pocahontas.
04:12But even his career-making role in American Psycho was a flop in theaters.
04:16Bale was so unbankable that he became the only child actor to bomb in a Steven Spielberg
04:21movie, 1987's Empire of the Sun.
04:24He even led the forgettable 1992 musical Newsies, one of the few misfires in Disney's renaissance
04:30era.
04:31Heck, even Batman Begins only opened to $48 million, a bland start for a would-be blockbuster
04:40franchise.
04:41Quality won out, though, as Batman Begins ultimately made $356 million worldwide, building
04:46a bigger audience for its billion-dollar sequels, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.
04:51Batman transformed Bale into a bankable A-lister whose name could get a movie greenlit.
04:56In the right role, he continues to be a reliable draw, starring in high-grossing movies like
05:00The Big Short, American Hustle, and Ford vs. Ferrari.
05:04Can you be a bankable movie star and box office poison at the same time?
05:08You can if you're Ben Affleck.
05:10Following the massive box office success of Good Will Hunting, Hollywood tried to
05:14make Affleck a movie star.
05:16Results were mixed.
05:17While he starred in the hugely successful blockbusters Armageddon and Pearl Harbor,
05:21his choice to appear in head-scratchers like Reindeer Games and Changing Lanes left us
05:25questioning Affleck's taste.
05:27The wheels finally came off with 2003's Gigli, which made just $7 million worldwide.
05:35Affleck found redemption in front of the camera by getting behind it, directing himself in
05:39some of his best movie roles to date.
05:41He directed his first big hit as a leading man in nearly a decade with 2010's The Town,
05:46then did it again with 2012's Argo.
05:48Argo went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, completing one of the biggest comeback stories
05:52in Hollywood history.
05:54So is Affleck back as a bankable movie star?
05:57Sort of.
05:58While his time as Batman yielded mixed results, his only non-Batman hits have been 2014's
06:02Gone Girl and 2016's The Accountant.
06:05Otherwise, Ben's had a lot of busts.
06:07Still, he's a long way from the dark days of Gigli, so there's that.
06:12Actor's careers don't start off much stronger than Ryan Gosling's.
06:15He made his big screen debut with a supporting role in 2000's Remember the Titans.
06:19By 2004, Gosling got above the title billing in romantic drama The Notebook, which made
06:24$115 million worldwide.
06:26The film's huge box office haul was enough to make Gosling a movie star, or so Hollywood
06:31thought.
06:32Despite acclaimed performances in films like Drive and The Nice Guys, Gosling's box office
06:37performances over the next 10 years were pretty so-so.
06:45There was 2016's La La Land, which earned $433 million.
06:49But there were also duds like Blade Runner 2049 and Only God Forgives.
06:53Basically, Gosling wasn't a movie star, but he convincingly played one.
06:58Gosling turned a corner with Barbie, which earned $1.4 billion worldwide.
07:02But he was back to his usual routine with 2023's The Fall Guy, which opened to a meager
07:07$27 million, although it eventually went on to earn more than $175 million.
07:13Like many modern movie stars, Gosling may not be the most bankable actor, but in the
07:17right role, he delivers.
07:19In Hollywood, being labeled as box office poison by critics can stick with you, whether
07:24it's fair or not.
07:25That's exactly what happened to Margot Robbie, with the New York Post calling her a phenomenal
07:29actress, who was drawn to box office flops like flies to rotting meat.
07:34The truth, however, is more complicated.
07:37There's no denying that Robbie's performance as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad was a big
07:41reason the film earned $745 million.
07:45The appeal was short-lived, however, as her next two films as Harley didn't earn half
07:49that.
07:50Meanwhile, she took the brunt of the blame for Babylon and Amsterdam totally tanking
07:53in 2022, despite being part of an ensemble.
07:56Still, all of that went out the window with a massively successful Barbie.
08:00Whatever her pre-Barbie results were, there's no denying that she's now a hugely bankable
08:06star.