Top 10 Stars Who Still Have Careers After Controversy

Top 10 Stars Who Still Have A Career after Controversy

Oh, how the mighty have fallen, and how the mightier have bounced back! Welcome to MsMojo and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the Top 10 Stars Who Still Have A Career after Controversy.

For this list, we’re looking at celebrities and famous individuals who committed any type of questionable act that may have caused criticism, backlash and/or debate, such as crimes, racism, sexism, and sexual misconduct. However, we’re excluding any cases where the person involved may have a mental illness that would motivate a controversial act, like Britney Spears’ head shaving incident.

#10: Charlie Sheen

It seems that this actor’s life is full of scandal. In the mid-‘90s, Sheen was named as one of Heidi Fleiss’ clients. This didn’t seem to negatively affect his career or that of his family’s though; in 1999 his dad would begin playing the POTUS on “The West Wing”, while Charlie landed a long-runnning gig in “Two and Half Men” in 2003. However he’d be arrested for assaulting his wife Brooke Mueller by December 2009, which was followed by his drug use reveal and going to rehab. The early 2010s saw his subsequent dismissal from “Two and Half Men”, and that infamous ABC News interview. Still, Sheen would be able to get a deal with FX for Anger Management, and has appeared as a guest on “The Goldbergs”. So in his words, he’s winning.

#9: Alec Baldwin

He may be a charming ghost in “BeetleJuice”, but in real life, he has been well... a little more like the villain. At the height of his comeback with the role Jack Donaghy on “30 Rock”, Baldwin’s ex-wife, Kim Basinger, allegedly leaked a voicemail that Baldwin left for his 11 year old daughter, Ireland. In the voicemail, Baldwin infamously calls her “a rude, thoughtless, little pig”. It hurt his career a bit, but not enough to prevent his 2 Emmy wins on “30 Rock” - and let’s not forget his 2017 Emmy win for his role on SNL as Donald Trump. He and his daughter have made up since, and Jack is back on top.

#8: Rob Lowe

This Brat Pack member had everything a young star could want: money, women, and baby blue eyes that could melts ice caps. But early in his career, Rob Lowe found himself in a tricky situation when a sex tape of him and two girls, one of whom was 16, got its way to the press in 1988. Inadvertently starting a trend in sex tape scandals, Lowe dodged criminal charges because the age of consent in the state at the time was 14. However, Lowe won back fans’ hearts with his role on “The West Wing” in 1999. Of course, we now know him as Chris Traeger on “Parks and Recreation”, which solidified his legacy as one of TV’s greatests.

#7: Terrence Howard

Lucious Lyon can certainly be vicious to Cookie, but Howard himself has had his own checkered past with women. In 2001, Howard was still married to Lori McCommas and he was arrested for breaking down her door and hitting her. Despite this event, his career would go on to blow up with 2005’s “Hustle and Flow,” which earned him an Oscar nomination. In 2011, his second wife Michelle Ghent filed for divorce and described how Howard almost threw her off a balcony. Howard denies these allegations, saying that Ghent was the one abusing him. Yet Howard's career continued on, with his most notabley getting roles in movies like “The Butler” and ultimately a lead role on the TV series “Empire”.

#6: Mel Gibson

They may take away his life, but they most definitely won't take away his career. Mel Gibson was a heartthrob and Hollywood A lister for decades until a drunken DUI showed his true colors. In 2006, Gibson got pulled over by a cop for drunk driving and proclaimed that “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world”. Along with this bigotry, a tape was later released of Gibson saying the N word, and he has also been accused of making gay slurs in the past. Gibson was put in Hollywood exile for his remarks, but in the mid-2010s he was allowed back into the club with his Oscar nominated film “Hacksaw Ridge”. Thankfully, there will always be comedians who won't let Gibson live it down.

#5: Paula Deen

The queen of butter couldn’t butter up her fans after this faux pas. Known for her southern cooking and her Food Network appearances, Paula Deen was at the top of her game in the early 2010s. That is until former employee Lisa Jackson filed a lawsuit on racial discrimination against her in 2013, in which Deen admitted to using the N-word multiple times. Her career survived, but just barely as she lost many of her major partnerships, including with the Food Network, QVC, JCPenney, and Walmart. She did make a comeback on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2015, ultimately finishing in 9th place, and subsequently appeared regularly on the TV via the network Evine and the family friendly cooking show, “Postively Paula”.

#4: Martha Stewart

The mother of American homemaking, Martha Stewart was one of the most revered women in the world of entertainment. But in the early 2000s, she was charged with securities fraud due to insider trading on her company’s stock with ImClone. This resulted in her being sentenced to 5 months in prison. When she got out, she was not a media pariah though; in fact it was quite the contrary. She went returned to having a successful TV career, starring in her own spinoff of “The Apprentice” and launching “The Martha Stewart Show”. Plus, she entered into one of the most surprising partnerships in the business when she paired up with Snoop Dogg.

#3: Chris Brown

This is definitely one of the more shocking comebacks on our list. In 2009, Chris Brown was at the peak of his musical career. He had all the flare and dance of a young Michael Jackson, and was dating musical A-lister Rihanna. His records were chart toppers, and he had been nominated for Grammys. However, the night before the 51st Grammy Awards, Rihanna and Brown got into a fight, and he physically assaulted her, leaving her hospitalized. He withdrew from his planned appearance at that February 2009 ceremony, and the incident became a huge scandal that earned Chris Brown five years of probation. It took him a while to come back into the public eye, but when he did, he was rewarded with another Grammy, a chart-topping album and multiple collaboration opportunities.

#2: JAY-Z

He’s got 99 problems, but an assault charge, well isn’t one anymore. This hip hop mogul seems unstoppable nowadays so you would never believed that he went through a huge scandal that almost destroyed his career. In 1999, Jay Z was at the Kit Kat Klub with hip hop big hitters, Q-Tip and Lance “Un” Rivera. Jay-Z’s intentions were unclear, but he allegedly stabbed Rivera in the stomach, and was charged with a 2nd degree felony. But he was obviously given a second chance; despite a 3 year-probation sentence, Jay-Z earned a top 20 hit with “I Just Wanna Love U” less than a year later and the rest is, as they say, history!

#1: Woody Allen

Woody Allen’s career has been both widely celebrated, and incredibly problematic due to the early ‘90s molestation allegations against him. During a custody battle between Allen and Mia Farrow, his adoptive daughter Dylan alleged that Allen molested her when she was 7 years old. Though the findings of the Yale-New Haven Hospital’s investigation favored Allen, the judge in the trial denied him full custody of the kids and visitation rights for Dylan. Though adult Dylan confirmed she was indeed molested, Allen went on to make many movies with some of the biggest stars and earned multiple accolades. But in the wake of the 2017 Harvey Weinstein scandal and the vocal criticism in the industry that's followed, we have a feeling that Allen’s time will soon be up.