ONTD

Sometimes Hollywood turns unknown actors into movie icons by matching them up with roles that allow them to show off their natural talents and use their finely honed skills to reveal the complexities of their characters. And sometimes, Hollywood botches the job so badly that the casting sinks the entire movie. These are some of the worst examples of Hollywood casting in cinema history.



This, by the way, is Keanu Reeves, whom some casting director bizarrely decided was the perfect person to play Siddhartha Gautama, who later became known as the Buddha. Yes, that Buddha. Reeves, best remembered as the guy from The Matrix and Ted "Theodore" Logan of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, portrayed the founder of one of the world's major religions in 1993's Little Buddha. Totally bogus, dude.




Shia LaBeouf as Indiana Jones's Kid
Reports that Shia LaBeouf was going to play a major role in the long-awaited fourth Indiana Jones movie were met with howls of disbelief by fans, and when the Transformers star did indeed figure into the picture as a Brandoesque rebel without a clue (and Harrison Ford's onscreen son, "Mutt" Jones), many cited it as just more proof that the franchise had finally "nuked the fridge." On the upside, however, George Lucas definitely quashed troubling rumors that LaBeouf was to inherit Indy's fedora and bullwhip and take over the series.




Denise Richards as a Nuclear Physicist
In arguably the most jaw-droppingly bad example of haywire Hollywood casting ever, Denise Richards -- until then best known for a topless threeway scene in Wild Things -- played nuclear scientist Christmas Jones in the mostly forgettable 1999 James Bond flick The World Is Not Enough. She called her role "brainy," but spent most of the movie in a wee tank top and tiny shorts, which only Hollywood would think was an appropriate outfit for one of the world's leading nuclear physicists.




Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes, and John Leguizamo as Drag Queens
In a misguided attempt to cash in on the unexpected popularity of the Australian flick Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the drag-queen fad, the three men, usually cast in masculine roles, were tapped to play New York City drag artists on a cross-country trip to L.A. in the 1995 movie To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. "Drag" is definitely the descriptor that comes to mind.




Melanie Griffith as a Homicide Cop as an Hasidic Woman
In a truly remarkable case of bad casting within bad casting, Sidney Lumet's A Stranger Among Us features blonde, blue-eyed, baby-voiced Melanie Griffith as a hardened New York City homicide detective who goes undercover as a member of the Hasidic community to solve a murder. How meta.




Jay Leno as a Detroit Cop
The funnyman's movie career stalled in part thanks to his role as a tough-as-nails, maverick Detroit cop partnered with a Japanese detective played by Pat Morita in 1989's Collision Course. Thankfully, he chose to focus on late-night talk shows instead of films thereafter.




Kevin Costner as Robin Hood
Casting all-American guy Kevin Costner as 12th-century English outlaw Robin Hood raised eyebrows -- eyebrows that stayed up when the native Californian gave up on even pretending to be an Englishman partway through the movie. Instead, he basically reprised his character from Dances With Wolves, complete with mullet.




Sofia Coppola as Mary Corleone
When moviemakers try to illustrate why it's never a good idea for a director to cast family members in key roles, they say "Sofia Coppola and The Godfather, Part III." Francis Ford Coppola's little girl -- who had a bit part as the baby being christened in the first part of the trilogy -- subbed in as Michael Corleone's beloved child when Winona Ryder bowed out at the last minute. Coppola earned a Golden Razzie for Worst New Star by mumbling through her lines and hamming it up in a unintentionally hilarious death scene that caused audiences to break out in laughter in what was supposed to be the heart-wrenching climax to the series.




Tor Johnson as a Scientist
Under the expert guidance of wunderkind director Coleman Francis, Swedish-born wrestler Tor Johnson was totally believable as defecting Soviet military scientist Joseph Javorsky in the 1961 sci-fi masterpiece The Beast of Yucca Flats.

Really, though, he and everything about the movie were pretty much unwatchable.

Here: Johnson (left) in Ed Wood's so-bad-it's-good classic Plan 9 From Outer Space.




Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader
When Darth Vader was still a combination of James Earl Jones and English bodybuilder David Prowse, he was possibly the most intimidating villain in modern mainstream moviedom. But when slender Canuck Hayden Christensen donned the cloak and protrayed the pre-Vader Anakin Skywalker as a whiny, entitled brat in the prequel trilogy, the Dark Side of the Force seemed a lot less seductive.




Sylvester Stallone as a Country-Music Singer
In 1984's Rhinestone, the role of a wannabe country singer mentored by Dolly Parton was played by none other than thickly New York-accented Sylvester Stallone. To be fair, Stallone's character was also originally from New York City, but the fact that Stallone actually contributed lead vocals to a country song for the soundtrack -- "Drinkenstein" -- earns him a permanent spot on the Worst Casting Choices list.




Raquel Welch as a Transsexual Rapist
In the 1970 adaptation of Gore Vidal's Myra Breckingridge, Raquel Welch plays the title character, who rapes one of the male students in the acting class she teaches. The stretch comes in believing that Welch -- then at the height of her fame as the epitome of a feminine sexpot -- was actually a man who was the victim of a failed sex change.




John Wayne as Genghis Khan
American cowboy stereotype John Wayne donned a pasted-on goatee and taped-back "Chinesed" eyes to take on the role of legendary Mongol warlord Genghis Khan in 1956's The Conqueror, considered one of the worst movies ever made.




Michael Caine as a German Officer in World War II
In The Eagle Has Landed, Michael Caine plays a German officer tasked with kidnapping Winston Churchill. Unfortunately, he never even tries to put on a German accent, and some found a distinctive lack of tension in seeing Englishman Michael Caine in an English village.




Robert De Niro as Fearless Leader
One can only assume Robert De Niro, often hailed as one of the greatest actors of his generation, needed some extra cash when he agreed to portray Fearless Leader, the big baddie who tries to take down a heroic moose and flying squirrel in the execrable The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle in 2000. At one point, the heavily made-up thespian even has to resort to mimicking himself in one of his more reputable roles, repeating the "Are you looking at me?" line from Taxi Driver.




Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates
Creating a shot-for-shot remake of the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece Psycho and then replacing the creepily effective Anthony Perkins with the hyperactive, verbally incontinent Vince Vaughn left moviegoers with only one question: Why?




Nicole Kidman as a Neurosurgeon
In the by-the-numbers 1990 Tom Cruise racing flick Days of Thunder, Nicole Kidman plays brain surgeon Dr. Claire Lewicki, who treats and, naturally, falls in love with Cruise's hotshot speed demon. And though Kidman herself may indeed be a quite intelligent woman, there was no way audiences were buying into her as a freakin' brain surgeon.




Jessica Alba as Sue Storm
In Fantastic Four and its sequel, a bottle-blonde Jessica Alba was supposed to be a top-notch genetics researcher who had no problem gallivanting around New York City in a skintight blue costume. Her creepily unrealistic electric-blue contact lenses just made the whole look even creepier.




Charlton Heston as a Mexican Drug-Enforcement Agent
No matter how much they darkened his skin or sharpened his moustache, defiantly American actor Charlton Heston made absolutely no sense as a Mexican official in the mostly brilliant 1958 Orson Welles movie Touch of Evil. It doesn't help that, nowadays, it's hard to watch the movie without imagining that he might at any moment break out screaming "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!"




Demi Moore as Hester Prynne
The Hollywood bastardization of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel The Scarlet Letter was complete when it was revealed that the role of Hester Prynne -- the Puritan adulteress -- was to be played by '90s film vixen Demi Moore.




Madonna as a Missionary Nurse
Madonna has reinvented herself countless times, but arguably the least effective transformation was from sex-saturated Material Girl to a missionary nurse in the truly awful 1986 movie Shanghai Surprise, costarring then-husband Sean Penn.




Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Pregnant Gynecologist
In 1994's Junior, manly man Schwarzenegger (who had yet to be hit with allegations of sexual harassment or to reveal that he'd fathered a child with his housekeeper), played a male gynecologist who becomes pregnant as part of an experiment.




Ben Affleck as a Blind Lawyer-Turned-Superhero
Affleck was supposed to be a blind criminal defense attorney by day and acrobatic superhero by night in 2003's Daredevil, but few could suspend disbelief enough to be convinced that he could pass the New York state bar exam.




Rosie O'Donnell as Betty Rubble
In bringing the Stone Age family the Flintstones to the silver screen in 1994, moviemakers filled the role of mild-mannered and slender Betty Rubble with outspoken and not-so-slender Rosie O'Donnell, who reportedly nailed the part because she could mimic the cartoon original's distinctive laugh.




David Bowie as Pontius Pilate
Just as Martin Scorcese's adaptation of The Last Temptation of Christ was itself, the casting of David Bowie (aka Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke) as Roman prefect Pontius Pilate remains highly controversial and, depending on who you talk to, was either a stroke of genius or astoundingly ill-conceived.




Harvey Keitel as Judas Iscariot
He's an undeniably powerful actor, but when playing Jesus's betrayer in The Last Temptation of Christ, couldn't Harvey Keitel have at least tried to hide his inexplicable Brooklyn accent?




Keanu Reeves as a Shakespearean Villain
Oh Keanu, when will you ever escape the curse of Ted "Theodore" Logan? When Shakespearean actor/director Kenneth Branagh was choosing the man to play the conniving Don John in 1993's Much Ado About Nothing, his finger somehow landed on the name of none other than Mr. Reeves, who was roundly derided by critics for his portrayal, which could be described as Surfer-upon-Avon.




Lindsay Lohan as the Star of a PR Firm
In 2006's Just My Luck, Lindsay Lohan was the high-powered star executive at a public-relations firm. But it was hard for audiences to buy her in the part, considering the fact that she wasn't yet 20 and that her real life already had "PR disaster" written all over it.




George Clooney as Batman
Even with the return to the goofy sensibility of the '60s TV series, 1997's all-around mess Batman & Robin went with the unfortunate decision to cast mellow charmer George Clooney as the driven, rage-filled heir who rampages against criminals out of a sense of vengeful justice for the murder of his parents.




Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi
Though his portayal of a buck-toothed, shortsighted Japanese man in 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's was laughed off as merely broad back in the day, non-Asian Rooney's caricature of Asian stereotypes is controversial and embarrassing to many people of all races today.


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Any additions? Also, sorry for the arrows in some of the photos.