Click Here to Go Back to the Holiday Movie Guide
When Santa Claus makes his way over the skies of Hollywood in the early hours of Christmas Day, he’ll surely be leaving a lump of coal under the tree of these actors and directors whose questionable behavior landed them on our 2009 Hollywood.com Naughty List:
10. Will Ferrell
Ferrell’s lackluster slate of films in 2009 consisted of this summer’s biggest flop, Land of the Lost, and one of the year’s worst-reviewed films, The Goods. There is, fortunately, an upside to Ferrell’s diminishing stature: an Anchorman sequel is now all but certain. Hopefully Ferrell's still got enough funny in the tank to make it worthwhile.
9. Hilary Swank
The two-time Oscar winner’s precipitous post-Million Dollar Baby descent reached a new nadir in 2009 with Amelia, a shamelessly Oscar-baiting Amelia Earhart biopic that crashed and burned en route to a wretched 21% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. She might wish to consider a boyfriend with better taste in scripts.
8. Christian Bale
Never mind the infamous audio clip of Bale’s tantrum on the set of Terminator Salvation; it’s the alterations he reportedly mandated on the film’s script, expanding his own character’s story arc and mucking up the plot, that arguably doomed the sci-fi franchise reboot. You’d better not pull that diva s**t on Batman 3, pal.
7. Michael Bay
Creative freedom and a nearly limitless budget can be a dangerous combination. His leash loosened by the success of Transformers, Bay pissed all over the bloated, incoherent mess that was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a movie in which robots with testicles and gold teeth figured prominently. Then Avatar came and pissed all over his chances at a visual effects Oscar. He's still considered the frontrunner, however, for the Best Racist Caricature award.
6. Steve Martin
Keeping with the urine-centric theme, Martin relieved himself on the grave of the great Peter Sellers — again — with The Pink Panther 2, aka the Sequel That Nobody Wanted. The first film wasn’t exactly a runaway blockbuster — and it sucked — but some studio exec liked it enough to grant Martin another 90 minutes of cinematic sacrilege. Douche. If there's any justice, Dane Cook will remake The Jerk after Martin's passed on.
5. Steven Spielberg
A mammoth box office tally and charitable reviews from nostalgic, deferential critics obscured the massive letdown that was Spielberg’s much-hyped summer sequel, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He spent the rest of the year to pulling out of high-profile projects Oldboy and Harvey while signing on to a few more movies he’ll probably never make.
4. Megan Fox
Normally the word “naughty” assumes positive connotations when paired with Fox, but the sultry starlet’s reputation took a hit when crewmembers from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen branded her as “ungracious” and “dumb-as-a-rock” in an anonymous letter. Karma's justice was brutal and swift: Fox’s much-hyped horror flick, Jennifer’s Body, floundered badly at the box office.
3. Michael Moore
With anger over Wall Street bailouts raging, the moment was perfect for Moore to confront the corporate fatcats and government stooges who helped orchestrate the economic crisis. But even Moore’s most ardent sycophants largely shunned the pointless pranks and serial self-aggrandizement in Capitalism: A Love Story.
2. Eddie Murphy
Murphy’s seemingly endless string of flops continued apace in 2009, when his latest comedy, Imagine That, opened to customarily mediocre reviews and dismal box office receipts. Then he threatened to turn Beverly Hills Cop 4, perhaps the only project on his docket with a real chance of not sucking, into a kid's movie. Finally, as the year came a close, his 2004 comedy The Adventures of Pluto Nash was declared the decade’s biggest bomb.
1. Roman Polanski
Artists and moguls alike rallied in support of the world’s second most-famous fugitive (after some guy named bin Laden), who famously fled the U.S. in 1978 to avoid jail time stemming from his sexual assault of a thirteen-year-old, after he was arrested by Swiss authorities in September. They beat a hasty retreat, however, when the public became re-acquainted with the ugly details of the case and a nasty backlash ensued. Americans can be soooooo puritanical about kiddie rape.
Who do you think belongs on Santa's Naughty List? Drop us a comment below.