Fame is a fickle mistress and celebrities don’t always have their stars shine as brightly as they did when they first burst onto the scene. Sometimes, we think a celeb is bound to be the Next Big Thing, the hottest actor or musician out there, the person you’ll see on the cover of every magazine and winning every big award.
Sometimes, this happens. Occasionally, the hype is accurate, and these celebs don’t only meet our expectations, but exceed them, and go on to do incredible things we never quite expected. More often than not, however, they totally fizzle. A lot of hype and a lot of press sets most people up for failure and disappointment, and when you don’t have it – talent, skills, good agents and managers – you just don’t have it. No one likes to hear that they haven’t made it after they were promised the world, but that’s the case for 8 of these ladies, who we thought had it all and squandered or it or just never reached their full potential. The other 8 – the lucky 8 – proved that our hopes were just right!
16 OVERHYPED: Elisha Cuthbert
The early 2000s saw a series of pretty young things be declared the next It Girl, only to prove that they were actually just attractive flashes in the pan. Such was the case for Canadian actress Elisha Cuthbert. After getting her start in Canadian TV productions like Popular Mechanics for Kids and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Cuthbert was cast on 24 alongside fellow Canuck Kiefer Sutherland. What came next was a couple of film roles that used her good looks as a character trait rather than giving her a quality character to work with, like in House of Wax and The Girl Next Door.
Unfortunately, Cuthbert’s blonde ambition didn’t get her very far. She cropped up in a couple failed TV shows but is nowhere near the star we expected her to be.
15 JUST RIGHT: Saoirse Ronan
Her name may be a difficult one, but Saoirse Ronan has shown us that pronunciation is only a small hurdle to jump over when you’re packing talent like hers!
We were first introduced to Ronan back in 2007, when the then-13-year-old was cast as Briony, the narrator and little girl, which earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Then, she was a little under the radar for a while before really turning heads again in 2015, as the lead in the film Brooklyn, which saw the Irish actress nab another Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress! Clearly, this Galway Girl (she appeared in the Ed Sheeran video) knows how to cash in on the hype, starring as the titular “Lady Bird” in this year’s most-hyped film, Lady Bird! She’s catching steam again, 10 years on, and we think she has the skills to make it last.
14 OVERHYPED: Kate Hudson
Okay, before you bite our heads off, yes, we know that Kate Hudson is hugely successful. It’s rare to pick up a magazine that doesn’t have her wide smile somewhere in its pages, but think back to when we were first introduced to the daughter of Goldie Hawn.
It was 2000, and Hudson was scoring raves for her role as rock n’ roll groupie Penny Lane in Almost Famous, which earned her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nom. She was picked as the newest It Girl and we expected big things in her film career future. Unfortunately, she never really delivered on those big promises, instead making a series of middling rom-coms, like Alex & Emma, The Divorce, You, Me, and Dupree, Fool’s Gold, Bride Wars, and Mother’s Day. Have any of those stuck out as stellar? Didn’t think so.
13 JUST RIGHT: Emma Watson
Coming off of the mega-successful Harry Potter franchise that spanned over a decade and began when she was just 11, one might think that a lesser actress would crash and burn, but not Emma Watson! Pulling off puberty in front of the camera is no easy feat, but Watson did it with grace and style, and so we all had a pretty good feeling about her, which she has proved right!
After HP, Watson went to Brown University in true Hermione fashion, and later used her wealth and status to draw more attention to the UN Women campaign HeforShe as a UN Women Goodwill ambassador. And, because excelling in one area isn’t enough for the Brit, she also starred in the ultra-successful live-action reboot of Beauty and the Beast, proving that a little magic goes a long way when used in the right places!
12 OVERHYPED: Kate Bosworth
What girl growing up in the mid-2000s didn’t suddenly develop an interest in surfing after seeing Kate Bosworth ride the waves in Blue Crush? Arguably the actress’s most notable role to date, it also happens to have happened over 15 years ago! Since then, Bosworth hasn’t become the celebrity we all imagined she would be, instead falling by the wayside with so many other blonde, tanned, beauties that cropped up during the decade.
While she still gets in magazines for her fashion choices, nothing Bosworth has done in the past 10 years has been very interesting. There was a time when, before Miranda Kerr, she was linked to Orlando Bloom, and she’s also merited stories for her incredibly small frame, but we’d say she’s a better example of wasted potential.
11 JUST RIGHT: Margot Robbie
If she didn’t have the skills to back it up, it’d be easy to write off Margot Robbie as just another pretty face, the kind of actress who will play mean girls or beautiful girls or beautiful mean girls but, luckily for us audiences, she refuses to be so typecast.
Robbie first caught our attention in The Wolf of Wall Street and later popped up in The Big Short as herself before becoming everyone’s Halloween costume in 2015, as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad, which many agreed was the best part of the bloated film. Now, though, Robbie has struck while the iron is hot and has loads of projects coming out that put her talents on full display. First up is I, Tonya, which is already generating major awards buzz, and later we’ll see her looking decidedly unglamorous as Queen Elizabeth I in Mary, Queen of Scots!
10 OVERHYPED: Jennifer Hudson
Remember when Jennifer Hudson won an Academy Award? No? Probably because it was a surprise win and because she’s completely squandered any potential and hype she had earned from it ever since!
Following her win for 2006’s Dreamgirls, Hudson lost a bunch of weight and became a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers for appearing a third of her previous size, and then kind of dropped off the face of the Earth as far as notable acting is concerned. Sure, she appeared in a couple TV episodes, and most recently has become a coach on The Voice, but is that really what we saw coming from an Oscar winner, who got the gold on her very first acting credit? If that’s not a failure to live up to the hype, we don’t know what is!
9 JUST RIGHT: Reese Witherspoon
Like Kate Hudson, Reese Witherspoon garnered major buzz early on in her career, which began at the age of 14 in The Man on the Moon. And, like Hudson, Witherspoon also had her fair share of mediocre romantic-comedies, like Just Like Heaven, How Do You Know, and This Means War. However, unlike Hudson, Witherspoon also knew when she had a good script in her hands and if she couldn’t’ find one, she’d damn well make sure one got made!
In addition to winning an Oscar for her performance in 2005’s Walk the Line, Witherspoon jumped into the producer’s chair and racked up a string of hits like Gone Girl, Wild, and, most recently, Big Little Lies, proving that if the roles are hard to come by, you’ve gotta step up and make it happen yourself!
8 OVERHYPED: Sienna Miller
Everyone was a celebrity in the 2000s, and ironically, Sienna Miller of Factory Girl fame perfectly illustrated Andy Warhol’s prediction that in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, because that’s exactly what happened.
Miller was a gorgeous blonde Brit when there was a multitude of gorgeous blonde Brits around, she dated Jude Law when he was the hottest bachelor in Hollywood and made stylists and fashion fanatics drool over her effortless boho-chic style. With all the press surrounding her, you can understand why we expected such big things, but Miller failed to deliver on the hype. She’s played in a few major films, but never in big parts, and in all honesty, has gotten more attention for her love life than her career, but now it seems that no one is interested in either!
7 JUST RIGHT: Scarlett Johansson
When it comes to films, Scarlett Johansson has truly run the gamut. She’s been in smaller, indie movies (Ghost World), gigantic blockbusters (The Avengers), and intellectual films with Oscar gold written all over them (Lost in Translation). She’s done action (Captain America: Civil War), comedy (Rough Night), romance (The Nanny Diaries), sci-fi (The Island), drama (Her), and thriller (Under the Skin), and has never let her gorgeous looks be a hindrance to her professionalism or ability.
Johansson isn’t without a mark on her record, however, as she has chosen roles that probably should have gone to other actors or that simply weren’t in good movies to begin with, but in the 17 or so years since she first caught our attention, she has definitely proven time and time again that she deserves a spot on the A-list, not the “Has-Beens” list.
6 OVERHYPED: Jessica Biel
Speaking of attractive actresses, we have Jessica Biel who, unlike Scarlett Johansson, blamed her good looks for her inability to score major roles instead of pointing her finger at the real culprit: her lack of talent.
Following her stint on 7th Heaven, Biel did what most young actresses try to do and chose roles that put her in a more mature light. Unfortunately for her, those roles were in things like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot. Biel is certainly still well known among the celebrity sphere, but that’s more due to her relationship status than any actual marketable skills. The wife of megastar Justin Timberlake, Biel’s sparkle will always be dimmed in the presence of her triple-threat husband and while she certainly married up, she didn’t live up to the hype that surrounded her when she first burst onto the scene.
5 JUST RIGHT: Emma Stone
Who would have thought that a girl who was first recognized in a Judd Apatow movie would go on to win an Oscar less than 10 years later? Emma Stone, that’s who! Beloved for her goofy sense of humour and just so damn likeable, Stone showed that starting in comedy might be the way to go in order to affect a naturalness in front of the camera, which paid off when she was nominated for the big award not once but twice – first for Birdman and then for La La Land, the latter of which she won.
Stone proved that getting hyped over her performances wasn’t behaving prematurely, because she’s proven through her film choices and the accolades she’s accrued that she’s more than a flash in the pan and will keep audiences in their seats for years to come.
4 OVERHYPED: Mischa Barton
A good rule of thumb when you catch your big break is to not bite the hand that feeds you. Unfortunately, no one told Mischa Barton.
After finding major success on the soapy teen drama The O.C., Barton decided that she’s had enough of Orange County and opted to quit the show, which resulted in her character being killed off. Maybe she thought she was heading for bigger and better things, but the bratty attitude exemplified by her character seemed to stick with the actress, who couldn’t catch a break. The media began to report on her erratic behaviour, substance abuse, and mental health issues more than any acting credits (although her fashion was also occasionally called into question) and she eventually burned out before she ever truly shone.
3 JUST RIGHT: Jennifer Lawrence
Love her or hate her, Jennifer Lawrence had all the ingredients to be an actress who failed to live up to the hype. First, she had a major film role that scored her a surprise Oscar nomination (for Winter’s Bone), then was cast in the massive young adult franchise, The Hunger Games, all the while killing it on the red carpet thanks to a lucrative contract with Christian Dior.
That wasn’t enough for one of the most hyped – and highest-paid – actresses in Hollywood, though, as she scored an impressive three extra Oscar noms (making her total four), winning for Silver Linings Playbook, and nabbed a major role in the X-Men reboot! Clearly, it pays big buck to be Jennifer Lawrence, who has shown us that a pretty face won’t hold you back when you have the acting chops and talent that she does!
2 OVERHYPED: Alicia Silverstone
Who didn’t love Alicia Silverstone in Clueless? Back in 1995, it was the cult classic that took everyone by surprise with its popularity, and now it’s simply become a classic, a ‘90s nostalgia trip we return to over and over again.
Unfortunately, while the movie that made her famous is timeless, the star, Alicia Silverstone, didn’t fare quite so well. After her major hit, Silverstone showed up in the critically-skewered Batman & Robin as Batgirl, tried her hand at TV with shows Miss Match and voiced the lead in the animated Braceface, but she definitely didn’t live up to the potential we all assumed she had. Instead, she became an outspoken vegan and advocate for attachment parenting, and now plays the mom in recent flicks like the sequel to Diary of a Wimpy Kid, so yeah, we’re a little disappointed.
1 JUST RIGHT: Kristen Stewart
After the behemoth success she found as the star of the Twilight franchise, former child star Kristen Stewart was thrust into the spotlight unlike ever before. The heroine of the tween phenomenon earned ink for her relationship with costar Robert Pattinson as well as for her obvious disdain of the Hollywood culture and penchant for biting her lip in place of acting. Fortunately, though, it was the material that was lacking, not Stewart’s talent. Unlike costar Taylor Lautner, who fumbled after reaching heartthrob status as the werewolf Jacob, Stewart chose to pursue more independent ventures, and earned critical acclaim for her role in movies like Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper. She went in a different direction than what we had envisioned, but no less proved that she’s more than a perpetually sullen face.
