Top 30 Celebrity Comeback Fails

From Bonnie and Clyde to Reds, Warren Beatty was among Hollywoods most prominent names. Even following the disastrous bomb Ishtar, he rebounded with Dick Tracy and Bugsy. After Town & Country set a new standard for flops, though, Beatty retreated from the limelight for fifteen years. Beatty returned with Rules Dont Apply, which he directed, wrote, produced, and starred in as Howard Hughes. It was clear this would either be a legendary comeback or failed Oscar bait. It was the latter, not only receiving zero Oscar nominations, but barely grossing a sixth of its $25 million budget. Beatty still appeared at that years Oscars to present Best Picture. Of course, that was the year of Envelopegate, which is sadly where most modern audiences know Beatty from.

A staple of every kid raised on Nickelodeon, Amanda Bynes success seemed bound to follow her into adulthood. Then suddenly in 2010, she announced her retirement from acting. Over the following decade and a half, Bynes made headlines for run-ins with the law, substance use, mental health struggles, troubling tweets, and a temporary conservatorship. Bynes occasionally teased a comeback. In 2018, she expressed her desire to revisit acting, although her filmography remained inactive. 2023 set the stage for another potential comeback with Bynes to appear at 90s Con, but she missed the All That panel. That same year, Bynes co-hosted a podcast with Paul Sieminski, although she walked away after an episode. Bynes has seemingly left showbiz for good, now focusing on being a manicurist.

The definition of a sleeper hit, My Big Fat Greek Wedding grossed over $300 million on a $5 million budget. The rom-com catapulted star and writer Nia Vardalos into stardom, although the honeymoon couldnt last forever. Over the following years, Vardalos took center stage in a short-lived sitcom based on her Oscar-nominated film, as well as the box office flop, Connie and Carla. Vardalos wouldnt lead another movie until 2009 with My Life in Ruins and I Hate Valentines Day, neither of which found success. In recent years, Vardalos tried capturing lightning in a bottle again with two My Big Fat Greek Wedding sequels. Neither could make even half of what the 2002 blockbuster grossed, while even Windex couldnt expunge the poor reviews.

Although Britney Spears had her fair share of failed comebacks, fans have passionately rallied behind her over the past few years. Ironically, around the same time that Spears career rebounded, Justin Timberlakes started to flounder. Even before Spears opened up about their relationship in her memoir, Timberlakes newer music wasnt having the staying power as his earlier output. Most people had forgotten about Man of the Woods by the time Timberlake released his comeback album, Everything I Thought It Was, which received a middling response at best. Timerblake hit a new low shortly after being pulled over and arrested by a cop who reportedly didnt recognize him. It seemed like the definitive sign that maybe Timberlake wasnt as relevant as he was in the aughts.

The 2010s were a roaring success for this pop star, although Left Shark mightve been the peak. Katy Perry kicked off the 2020s with Smile, her first studio album in three years. Amid its mixed reception, Perry focused on raising her daughter and other ventures over the next few years. The 2024 album 143 seemed poised to launch Perry back onto the music scene like a firework. It wound up being the biggest critical and commercial failure of her career. It didnt help that one of the albums producers was Dr. Luke, whose history of sexual misconduct allegations had returned to the public consciousness. The album itself was so dated and cliche that some question if AI made it. No, it was just bad.

Through films like Sullivans Travels and I Married a Witch, audiences fell in love with this Golden Age starlett, even if collaborators found her difficult. Veronica Lake became instantly recognizable thanks to her iconic hairstyle, which she changed in The Hour Before the Dawn. Lake suffered a tragic accident on that set, resulting in the loss of her baby. Shortly after, Lake endured a divorce and increased substance use. Meanwhile, her filmography throughout the remainder of the 40s proved hit and miss. Lake filed for bankruptcy in 1951, the same year she released Stronghold. That would be her last movie until 1966s Footsteps in the Snow, which sadly wasnt a comeback, not even seeing a U.S. release. Itd be Lakes penultimate film.

Hitting the ground running with Terminator 2, Edward Furlongs future on the big screen appeared bright. Furlong saw further acclaim in films like American Heart and American History X. On the road to adulthood, though, Furlong unfortunately fell into the same traps as other former child stars. Despite substance issues, legal troubles, and career setbacks, Furlongs fans remained hopeful that a comeback was on the horizon. Furlong seemingly got his chance when news broke hed be reprising his role as John Connor in Terminator: Dark Fate. It was a huge letdown when the film merely used Furlongs facial likeness, killing John off in the opening scene. It wasnt a comeback for Furlong nor the franchise, with Dark Fate being another box office dud.

Accused of sexual misconduct in 2017, this Oscar-winning actor was fired from House of Cards while his scenes for All the Money in the World were reshot with Christopher Plummer. Although Kevin Spacey weathered through his court cases, the public made it clear that they werent interested in a comeback. That hasnt stopped him from trying. The first cringey attempt was a 2018 Christmas Eve YouTube Video, reprising his Frank Underwood role. This became something of an annual tradition, like it or not. Spacey found work in films like Once Upon a Time in Croatia and Peter Five Eight, which we doubt youve heard of. Even after he controversially accepted an award at Cannes in 2025, many feel like Spaceys comeback is all in his head.

Hollywood is somehow the most forgiving and unforgiving industry. Leading up to the release of 2023s The Flash, star Ezra Miller had left behind a trail of scandals that ranged from disturbing to just bizarre. Regardless, if The Flash proved to be the summer blockbuster that Warner Bros. was hoping for, Millers slate likely wouldve been wiped clean. While people knew Millers erratic behavior off-screen and a growing superhero fatigue might hurt the film, few could imagine just how horrendously The Flash would crash and burn at the box office. Although Miller alone couldnt be blamed for the financial failure, it provided the extra incentive for Hollywood to cut the actor loose. Miller was recast in other projects, with their acting output significantly slowing down.

Many felt society had taken the ultimate step backward in 2021 when disgraced comedian Bill Cosby was prematurely released from prison, having only served about three years. While the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had overturned Bill Cosbys conviction, that doesnt mean all was forgiven. In late 2022, word got out that Cosby was eying a return to stand-up, planning a comeback for the following year. People were aghast to realize this wasnt a parody headline, although Cosbys 2023 tour never materialized. Another year passed with no major career announcements from Cosby. Who knows what the future holds, but we think we can safely say that a Leonard Part 6 remake starring Kevin Hart has a better shot at happening than a Cosby comeback.

This rapper hit his peak in the mid 2000s. His fourth studio album, All I Feel, reached #7 on the Billboard 200 chart, and its lead single, Sexy Can I, reached #3 and went platinum. Every one of his subsequent singles have failed to chart on the Hot 100, with the exception of I Hit It First, which reached #51 in 2013. The song makes reference to the adult film Kim Kardashian, Superstar, featuring his ex and himself and released in March of 2007. The 2010s has seen Ray J hosting Oxygens Bad Girls All-Star Battle and competing on both My Kitchen Rules and Celebrity Big Brother. The latter stint only lasted a week, as he left the show after blacking out from tooth pain.

Many child actors flounder after their big show has ended, and Dustin Diamond is one of them. Diamond famously played Screech on Saved By the Bell, which ran while Diamond was entering his teenage years. He later reprised the role for The New Class, which ran until 2000, when Diamond was 23. And that was about it for him. He went on to direct an adult film titled Screeched - Saved by the Smell and released a behind-the-scenes book called Behind the Bell, which was fiercely criticized and rejected by his co-stars. He attempted a comeback in 2013 by competing on Celebrity Big Brother, but a 2014 arrest and four-month prison sentence pretty much ended his career before he died in 2021.

This ex-fashion model was quite a big name in the late 90s and early 2000s. She starred in the likes of Starship Troopers and The World Is Not Enough before marrying Charlie Sheen. They were married from 2002 to 2006, and their messy divorce kept Richards in the spotlight. Despite some valiant efforts, Richards hasnt been able to reclaim her past glory. She has starred in many B-movies and a few short-lived TV shows, and for several years, she acted in the soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful. Like many attempting a comeback, she has also transitioned to reality TV, joining the main cast of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

This R&B artist was huge throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, with four of her first five albums peaking in the top five. Her second, Ciara: The Evolution, reached #1 in 2006. Her singles also performed well. Goodies peaked at #1 in 2004, and both 1, 2 Step and Oh reached #2. Following Love Sex Magic in 2009, none of her singles have breached the top ten. She has remained in the spotlight thanks to public relationships with rapper Future and NFL player Russell Wilson, but her music career isnt what it once was. Her last two albums, Jackie and Beauty Marks, reached #17 and #87 respectively on the Billboard 200.

Entertainment Weekly named Mischa Barton The It Girl of 2003 owing to her work as Marissa Cooper on The O.C. The show ran for four seasons between 2003 and 2007. Barton starred in the first three before her character was killed off in the third season finale. Ever since then, Barton has struggled to retain her It Girl status. She has appeared in many independent films and competed on Dancing With the Stars in 2016. However, she was just the second person eliminated. She too eventually went the reality TV route and joined the cast of The Hills: New Beginnings in 2019.

This Australian rapper burst onto the scene in history-making fashion. Literally. She became just the second artist in history to hold the top two spots on the Billboard Hot 100 with their debut entries on the chart in 2014. The Beatles did it in 1964 with I Want to Hold Your Hand and She Loves You, and Azalea poetically matched it fifty years later with Fancy and Problem. She was a guest artist on the latter, but the record still counted. Unfortunately, her star has since fallen from grace. In My Defense reached #50, a far cry from The New Classics peak at #3. Her last single to peak in the top five was Black Widow in 2014, with none of the singles from In My Defense even breaching the top fifty.

The 90s belonged to Sharon Stone. She received one Academy Award and four Golden Globe nominations for Basic Instinct, Casino, The Mighty, and The Muse. Her role as Ginger in Casino was particularly acclaimed, as it won her the Golden Globe and earned Stone her only Oscar nomination. Basic Instinct also made her a national sex symbol, and by 1995, Stone had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Unfortunately, a string of disappointments followed in the 2000s, including Catwoman and the embarrassing Basic Instinct 2, which essentially killed her career for a decade. Stone has attempted a comeback of sorts, appearing in The Disaster Artist and The Laundromat, but she has yet to re-capture the magic.

This younger sister of Jessica Simpson made some waves in the mid 2000s with her albums Autobiography and I Am Me. Both reached #1 on the Billboard 200, both were certified platinum (with Autobiography going 3x platinum), and Pieces of Me proved a big hit, peaking at #5 on the Hot 100. Unfortunately, Simpson hasnt released any music as a solo artist since 2008, aside from a non-album single in 2012 that failed to chart. Shes now part of a duo called Ashlee + Evan with her husband Evan Ross, and they released an EP in 2018 that failed to generate much discussion. They also launched an E! reality show, but that only lasted for six episodes.

Like many on this list, Fergie was huge in the 2000s. She was obviously a big part of the Black Eyed Peas, but she also saw success as a solo artist with The Dutchess. Released in 2006, The Dutchess reached #2 on the Billboard 200 and was certified 5x platinum. The album also spawned three number one singles - London Bridge, Glamorous, and Big Girls Dont Cry - and one number two with Fergalicious. After about a decade away (aside from a song on The Great Gatsby soundtrack), Fergie returned with Double Dutchess. It wasnt nearly as successful. It only reached #19 and failed to generate any successful singles. The most successful, "L.A. Love (La La), peaked at #27.

Despite coming from an uber successful and unfathomably rich family, Paris Hilton made a name for herself through modeling and reality TV. She notably starred on The Simple Life alongside Nicole Richie from 2003 to 2007. While her dumb blonde, spoiled persona was obviously played up for the camera, the show made her insanely famous. Most of that fame came at her own expense, but she clearly didn't care. And while shes still making bank through her numerous business ventures today, Hiltons public spotlight has faded. She has dabbled in DJing in recent years and went back to reality TV with Vicelands Hollywood Love Story, but that came and went. She was also the subject of a YouTube Original documentary titled This Is Paris in 2020.

Vanilla Ice became a worldwide megastar with Ice Ice Baby. The song was an enormous hit, peaking at #1 in eight different countries, including the United States and Zimbabwe. In fact, it made history by becoming the first hip hop single to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Ice took a break from music in 1993, but when he returned, his subsequent records received little fanfare. He did find success with his DIY Network show The Vanilla Ice Project, thanks to his experience in home improvement. In 2011, he released his comeback album W.T.F. (Wisdom, Tenacity and Focus). It was not a success, and Vanilla Ice hasnt charted on the Hot 100 as a lead artist since Cool as Ice hit #81 in 1991.

Another big 2000s star, Katherine Heigl first gained some fame in 1999 starring as Isabel Evans on The WBs Roswell. She rode this role to greater success, including her Emmy-winning performance on Greys Anatomy and movies like Knocked Up and 27 Dresses. That time would prove the height of her career. She has since starred in many movies, but none of them were very popular or that good. Most of Heigls work can be found on television. The mid-to-late 2010s saw her star in State of Affairs, Doubt, and Suits. The first two were cancelled after just one season, and her role in Suits lasted two. Heigl is still receiving steady work, but the recent TV comeback fails to match her Greys Anatomy heights.

This hard rock band was once one of the biggest in the world, with their first four studio albums reaching either #1 or #2 and selling over five million copies each in the United States alone. Things slowed down with 1993s The Spaghetti Incident?, as it only reached #4 and ended the bands multi-platinum run. It would be fifteen years until the band returned, and the results were underwhelming. On November 23, 2008, the world finally received Chinese Democracy, which received middling reviews and only sold one million copies. The long-awaited comeback was completely dead in the water. Luckily, both Slash and Duff McKagan saved the band by touring with Axl and company on the incredibly successful Not In This Lifetime Tour.

This New York rapper got her start through The Notorious B.I.G. by joining his group, Junior M.A.F.I.A. This led to a highly successful solo career throughout the late 90s and 2000s, which included three top ten albums. 2001 also saw her singing Lady Marmalade, the highly successful single from Moulin Rouge! But like Guns N Roses, Lil Kim took a major hiatus. There was a fourteen year break between 2005s The Naked Truth and 2019s 9, and the wait was not really worth it, according to most accounts. The album received mixed reviews from critics and performed poorly, failing to land on any major charts or generate any notable singles.

This American actress had quite a respectable movie career throughout the late 90s and early 2000s. She appeared as Bunny in The Big Lebowski and went on to star as Vicky in the American Pie franchise. Rounding out her filmography were works like Josie and the Pussycats, My Bosss Daughter, Van Wilder, and a stint on Scrubs. Something happened around 2005, and Reid just disappeared. Not completely, as she was still in things, but the hits had certainly dried up. Reid then tried her hand at reality TV, including Celebrity Big Brother and her own show Taradise before settling on the B-movie turned cult Sharknado series.

There once was a time when Ellen DeGeneres was the biggest name in entertainment. Her historic coming out as a lesbian both paved trails and ignited controversy, and her follow-up talk show proved enormously successful. While coming out nearly tanked her career, it was the talk show that ultimately did. In 2020, Buzzfeed reported through anonymous employees that working for Ellen was akin to hell on earth, complete with harassment and racist comments. While her show wasnt cancelled, the eighteenth season premiere faced significant backlash. Outlets criticized her opening monologue, and the YouTube videos like to dislike ratio skews heavily towards the latter. The next season would ultimately be the talk shows last. It was also reported that the shows premiere week viewership was down 30% from last year.

This rapper released a string of successful albums throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, six of which peaked within the top ten on the Billboard 200. These include Rule 3:36 and Pain Is Love, both of which reached #1 and both of which were certified multi-platinum. However, Ja Rule has subsequently faced numerous legal issues throughout his career, including a two year prison sentence in 2010 and another 28-month sentence the following year. He was released in 2013, and just three years later started the infamous Fyre Media, Inc. It could have been a huge business and public comeback, but the Fyre Festival proved so disastrous that he faced a $100 million class action lawsuit instead.

By 2010, Two and a Half Men was proving so popular that Charlie Sheen was earning nearly $2 million per episode. However, his personal life wasnt nearly as triumphant. Sheen was well known for his substance abuse and reckless behavior, with especially the latter allegedly aimed towards his then-wife Brooke Mueller and the trashing of a hotel suite. He was eventually dismissed from Two and a Half Men, and while the resulting press put him in the news, the termination effectively killed his career. Sheen attempted a comeback with roles in Scary Movie 5 and a show called Anger Management, and while the latter ran for 100 episodes, it received poor reviews. The comeback was a fail, and Sheen hasnt been seen in movies or on TV since 2017.

There once was a time when Lindsay Lohan was a promising and ambitious actress. But her life and career hit unexpected road bumps in the mid 2000s, and Lohan went through a highly publicized downward spiral filled with bad press, substance abuse, and both rehab and prison stints. 2019s Among the Shadows proved her first feature-length movie in six years, although it was only released through video on demand and received little attention. She also launched her own reality show on MTV called Lindsay Lohans Beach Club, but it was cancelled after just one season. Her comeback efforts are nevertheless valiant, finding some success playing Katerina West in the second season of Sky Ones Sick Note and headlining a few Netflix movies.

Few comebacks have crashed and burned like this one. Barrs sitcom Roseanne was a huge hit throughout the 90s, remaining a top four show for six of its nine seasons. It came to a controversial end in 1997 with a divisive series finale. Luckily for fans, it was revived by ABC and brought back for a tenth season in 2018. It was actually a huge success, with the premiere episode generating nearly 20 million viewers. It lasted all of two months. Barr made a comment that was deemed racist on Twitter, which she proceeded to blame on Ambien. The show was immediately cancelled amidst the controversy, as was Barr herself. She once again faded into irrelevancy, and everyone else moved on to The Conners without her.

Which celebrity comeback do you think couldve gone better? Let us know in the comments.