Celebs who almost ruined their careers due to one bad interview

Some aspects of being famous seem quite nice to me. Now, we don't really have celebs in the Netherlands at the level of Jennifer Lawrence or Beyoncé, because that seems quite intense to me. But still: it must have its fun sides, right? You get to go to the best parties, where you always get beautifully made up and your hair done, you meet your childhood heroes (and childhood crushes, hi Leo DiCaprio), you get to wear the most beautiful outfits and also receive a lot of free stuff in the mail. Okay, sure: you do give up quite a bit of privacy for it, but that doesn't seem like the worst to me.

No, what seems worse to me are the thousands of interviews you have to do. Always being ‘on’. When you promote a series, a movie, or music, everyone expects you to be cheerful, polite, witty, and intelligent every second, and that seems like a hell of a job to me. I can barely manage to keep that up for the length of a job interview, let alone mess it up once and have De Telegraaf cover it the next day. ‘Wieke made a fool of herself again in a job interview for a position she will never get.’ Great.

That happens to celebs too, having an off-day. And yes, the next day it’s everywhere online. Especially if you’re a big celeb. Now, in 2021, we have a tough cancel culture, but even before that, the media (and we as a people) could be merciless. These celebs gave an interview that didn’t go very well, and as a result, their careers were pretty much over.

Katherine Heigl

After six seasons, Heigl asked the creators to write her out of the series, despite the fact that the ratings were really sky-high. The reason? She wasn't really satisfied with the writers and the script plus storylines her character Izzie received. She made this even clearer by removing her name from the list of Emmy Award nominations because she felt she hadn’t been able to prove herself enough – thanks to the writers.

That was already a bit awkward, because now she got the label ‘difficult to work with’. When she finally landed a role again (in the comedy film Knocked Up with Seth Rogen), she gave an interview to Vanity Fair in 2008 where she discussed the film. And she was, to say the least, not very positive.

‘It was a bit sexist. The film portrays women as witches, humorless and difficult, while the men come across as sweet, funny, nice guys. All the characters were a caricature of themselves, and I had a hard time with it on some days. I played such a bitch: why is she such a sour person? Why is this how you want to portray women? 99 percent of the time it was a fun experience, but it was hard for me to love the film.’

And that was the death knell for her career. Even though her criticism might have been justified: don’t bite the hand that feeds you and definitely don’t do that twice. After that, the biggest roles she managed to get were the lead in commercials. For dog food. Until the series Suits gave her another chance. Who knows, she might make a comeback now that she is also seen in the Netflix series Firefly Lane.

Miles Teller

This guy has kind of overplayed his hand, I fear. He was seen in the film Whiplash in 2014, received rave reviews, and was seen as the next big thing. Then he took a significant role in the Divergent trilogy, which I personally have never seen so I have no idea if it was any good, but it was a medium success. Good enough. Unfortunately, his roles after that didn’t turn out as well and he faded a bit from the spotlight. And then this interview from 2014 came to light, in which he said:

‘I feel like a lot of actors from my generation are not good actors. I want to escape from that whole group of actors in their early 20s and really put in work so they see that I take it seriously.’

That’s a nice ambition, but maybe it’s not really necessary to bring down your ‘colleagues’ from the same world. But did he learn from this? Not really. In 2015, journalist Anna Peele had an unpleasant experience with him. He was arrogant, rude, and made inappropriate jokes to the waitress who served them. And that didn’t go unnoticed, because Peele wrote in her piece: ‘So yeah, he’s kind of a dick.’

Teller is now 34 and is starring in the upcoming Top Gun remake, so who knows, there might still be something to save.

Megan Fox

That she was canceled by the media I find really scandalous. And I firmly believe that if this were to happen now, it would go very differently. This was the case: she starred in the series Transformers, directed by Michael Bay. At fifteen, she was given the assignment by Bay to dance in a bikini under a shower, because she was too young to stand in a bar but was pretty enough to be on screen. Uh, pretty creepy? When she told this to Jimmy Kimmel, everyone just laughed hard: no one found it a bit problematic at the time. That would be different now.

Okay, and she compared Michael Bay to Hitler; that might not have been very smart of her.

Shia LaBeouf

This is already a bit of a problematic actor, so I’m not really surprised that he has made striking statements in interviews. For example, in 2008, when he discussed the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which Spielberg directed and he starred alongside Harrison Ford — not the least of names.

‘I think the audience is quite intelligent. I think they know when you’ve made something bad… I’ll probably get called out for this, but Spielberg needs to hear this.’

Aiiii. But it didn’t stop there, because he went further:

‘You arrive there and realize that you’re not meeting the Spielberg you’ve always dreamed of, but you’re meeting a different Spielberg who is in a different phase of his career. He’s less a director and just a f*cking company.’

Was he allowed to return in the Indiana Jones film that followed? Neuh.

Wilder Valderrama

Also a bit of a problematic actor, who maybe should have kept his mouth shut a bit more often. I can keep this short: in 2006 he gave an interview with Howard Stern (not the most sympathetic guy either, and he’s known for bringing up embarrassing topics), in which he proclaimed to have deflowered Mandy Moore (who was then 16 or 17). Not very classy to do, but he also said: ‘The sex with Mandy was good, but it wasn’t like a warm apple pie.’ Okeeeee.

Moore was not very happy with his statements, but according to Valderrama, he apologized; he mentioned this in an interview in 2010.

Minnie Driver

Well, sometimes it’s better to just keep your mouth shut. Especially when you’re going to talk about others and especially when you’re an Englishwoman and decide to criticize none other than Dame Judi Dench, one of England’s most beloved actresses.

‘In England, with all due respect, we have some of the plainest actresses in the whole world that we see as the best. Maybe it’s because theater is England’s greatest love, but here you can have Judi Dench, a very small, round, elderly, sweet, motherly type, playing Cleopatra.’

Big no-no, and this statement was certainly not taken kindly. We now know that the British press can be really merciless: she got the label ‘toxic’.

Later she spoke about the consequences these statements had on her life:

‘It’s like terrorism. It’s when people make it personal, which I can’t stop them from doing, but I also won’t let them stop me from doing what I want to do. But I can tell you: it never gets easier.’