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In the time before the internet went into full effect, the only way to gauge how the general population felt about an actor or actress was through ticket sales at the box office or the television ratings. Any disdain towards an actor was usually due to their acting chops. Sure there were celebrity gossip magazines, but those publications were generally purchased by a particular niche. Even then, the only people you could express your disdain towards certain actors to were family and friends. These days, the internet has allowed the average movie and television viewer the luxury of blowing off their unfounded and often irrational steam to an audience of hundreds to possibly millions. It's also much easier to hear about the day-to-day goings-on of a celebrity thanks to the internet. The paparazzi have a huge online presence. Let's also not forget that blogs and social networking have given celebrities a great opportunity to put their feet in their mouths or show their true colors.
So, let's give a big round of applause to the internet for giving so many people the opportunity to air out their hatred of these fourteen actors!
Julia Roberts
Back in the days before Jennifer Lawrence and Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts was considered to be "America's Sweetheart." She had made a career out of playing characters that women wanted to be and men wanted to be with. A lot of people disliked the actress for the type of romantic comedies she had a penchant for making, and some disapproved of the litany of famous men she left in her wake. These are pretty typical reasons for some people in regards to Hollywood stars, but things took a much worse turn following the suicide of Robert's half-sister Nancy Motes.
Motes had often said her relationship with Roberts was rather rocky since she allegedly hounded Motes about her weight on multiple occasions in a reportedly rude and hurtful manner. Motes had stated in her suicide note that Roberts, her mother, and her other siblings were responsible for her deep depression and they will get nothing if she died of the intentional overdose. Despite this being directly stated, Roberts and her family proceeded to get into a bitter legal battle over Nancy's estate with Nancy's fiancé.
Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck made a few bad career decisions in his past. Once he rose to fame he took on some roles in some alarmingly bad movies like Reindeer Games and the notoriously awful Gigli. He started dating other much maligned celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and he soon became one of those celebrities that were famous for being famous as opposed to being famous for their work.
Affleck became a bit of a Hollywood joke with viewers but soon bounced back with some work of great quality like Hollywood Land, Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo. Despite all of this great work, a lot of people just haven't let Affleck live it down. This was made very clear when the internet almost broke after the announcement that Affleck would be taking on the role of Batman in DC Comics budding cinematic universe.
Keanu Reeves
Reeves just doesn't have the box office draw he once had. He's been in a number of flops in recent years and most of his post-Matrix movies have all had martial arts driven plots. Many say that Reeves is a very wooden actor, only capable of playing one character, that character being Keanu Reeves. There is also a widely held believe that Reeves may not have much going for him in the way of intelligence. This is most likely a stigma from his early role of Ted Logan in the Bill & Ted films, and his meat-head characters in films like Point Break and Speed.
This negativity towards Reeves is all really unfortunate since he just might be one of the nicest and most caring figures in Hollywood. He also has a very interesting and even tragic biography. Let's give the guy a break.
Jada Pinkett Smith
The entire "Smith Dynasty" seems to be mired in a bit of hatred from the general public. Some of this has to do with disapproval of Will and Jada's parenting style and a lot of it has to do with the fact that they've seemingly bought careers for their children as opposed to allowing them to earn one like everyone else. Out of everyone in the family, Jada seems to get the most hate.
A lot of it started when she created the Nu Metal band Wicked Wisdom. Nu Metal is often mocked as a genre these days in general, but no one really felt that a very wealthy woman really understood the genre. The whole project came off as insincere to a lot of people. It should probably be said that there was a racist angle behind some people's disapproval as well. There aren't that many metal bands with black members.
Fast forward to today. The entire internet seems to absolutely hate Pinkett and her character Fish Mooney in the new hit television series Gotham. A lot of people dislike the character because she isn't a part of the Batman canon, and others feel that Smith's portrayal is a little excessive.
Gwyneth Paltrow
A lot of celebrities, especially the very wealthy ones, usually are or at least pretend to be very modest about their wealth and status. Gwyneth Paltrow however, seems to constantly bring up her wealth, her lifestyle, and an almost comedic sense of entitlement. If you were to read her lifestyle blog, you would almost think of it as parody. There is a litany of pretentious quotes from Paltrow all over the internet. One being, "I would rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin." Can somebody please get me
Paltrow also has a cookbook called It's All Good where she often boasts about her life and even refers to herself in the third person. A lot of vegans thought the recipes were bland, so it came off as a bit of an excuse to boast and push her diet on others. Many people already feel that vegans have a "higher than thou" attitude, so this didn't help her situation much.
Shia LaBeouf
Shia LaBeouf has become notorious for getting completely wasted and starting fights in public. If he doesn't outright start a fight, he seems to revel in provoking other people. The actor can't even keep it in the bars or clubs as seen by his recent public disturbance at a Broadway performance of Cabaret.
The actor has also been guilty of biting the hand that feeds as he's trashed the Transformers film, his co-stars, and his director.
LaBeouf was also under a lot of scrutiny for plagiarizing the work of other artists. When he apologized, he plagiarized issued apologies from other celebrities. Other odd behavior followed when Labeouf wore a bag over his head in public and claimed that he was retiring from public life (which he did not). It all turned out that the whole ordeal was just an uninspired performance art piece that left a lot of people under the impression that Shia just thinks he's a lot more intelligent than everyone else.
Jay Leno
Leno got under a lot of people's skin when he retired from the Tonight Show. It wasn't so much the retirement that rubbed people wrong, but the events that followed. Leno announced his retirement and Conan O'Brien was quickly brought up as his replacement. For whatever reason, Leno started another late night talk show in an earlier time slot. The show did not perform very well in the ratings so Leno decided he wanted to take back the Tonight Show. Conan O'Brien was very publicly unhappy with the terms being changed on his contract and the move rubbed a lot of viewers the wrong way as well. The whole debacle ended with Conan moving to TBS, a group called Team CoCo forming, and Leno eventually leaving again shortly after his return to the Tonight Show.
Jake Loydd
There might not be an actor in the world who gets as much hate as Jake Lloyd. Lloyd was the young actor that portrayed Anakin Skywalker in the much maligned Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. We all know how uppity Star Wars fans can get on the internet, but it's alleged that Lloyd still receives the occasional snicker and insult when out in public and someone puts together who he is. When people talk about the prequels, the one individual that might be insulted and ragged on more than George Lucas himself is Jake Lloyd. The whole thing is rather unfair. Any young male actor would have foamed at the mouth to land such an iconic role in a Star Wars film. Lloyd probably thought he was on to big things, but Hollywood essentially deserted the young actor after the film forever tarnished his image.
Adam Sandler
Adam Sandler is truly an enigma. His movies practically print money yet they are always poorly received, bashed by critics, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in a room full of people that would admit to liking a Sandler flick from the last twelve years. Sandler has been the butt of countless jokes concerning originality, and many suspect that the guy doesn't even know what constitutes as funny anymore. People constantly talk about the guy being horrible and having lost his magic but again, it must be stressed, that people are seeing his movies in droves. Either movie viewers have an almost non-existent attention span or over half the people claiming to hate Sandler and his cinematic offerings of the last decade are liars.
Mel Gibson
Ever since Gibson made The Passion of the Christ, a lot of things began to come to light. It all started when Gibson's father made a series of very anti-Semitic statements. It didn't reflect on Gibson right away (his portrayal of Jews in The Passion didn't help though) until he slowly started to boldly express the same views himself. They all came to a climax when Gibson was arrested on a drunken driving charge. Gibson asked the officer if he was Jewish, then went on to say "F***ing Jews. Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."
Gibson would follow this by threatening to kill his ex-wife while in the midst of a rather bitter custody battle. A lot of people say things like "I'll kill you" when they're angry with each other, but celebrities are usually held to a higher standard and the comments didn't sit right with the general public and other members of Hollywood.
Kristen Stewart
Kristen Stewart gets a lot of the same hate that Nicolas Cage gets. Most people just seem to be under the impression that she's a completely wooden actress with absolutely nil in the way of range. A lot of this comes from her portrayal of Bella in the Twilight Saga, a film series that gets plenty of hate itself, as does the series of books the films were based on. A lot of people forget that Stewart has been in some pretty great movies outside of the saga.
On top of criticism against her acting, Stewart received a lot of hate for cheating on Robert Pattinson. Everyone on Team Edward added more fuel to their hatred for the actress.
Finally (and this one isn't fair), Stewart gets a lot of flack for not smiling during her public appearances. A lot of people feel this means she must be a shrew. Many male actors almost never receive negative feedback for something like this.
Lindsay Lohan
Explaining why Lindsay Lohan is a much hated actress is beginning to get a little trite, but we'll go ahead and do this one more time.
Lindsay at one time was Hollywood's "it girl." Unfortunately an almost endless list of poor life decisions took her out of everyone's good graces. She has had a number of run-ins with the law for drinking and drug use. This lifestyle has had a profound effect on her work ethic. Many people have tried to throw Lindsay a bone and give her the benefit of the doubt yet she's notorious for being late to set if she shows up at all. It's also alleged that she's very hard to work with. She has just shown a repeated pattern of disrespect to those that hadn't given up on her. Add all of this to the fact that she has a highly unlikable family that seems to be oblivious to their collective downward spiral.
Katherine Heigl
It almost comes as no surprise that everyone seems to hate Katherine Heigl. She had a pretty nasty streak of biting the hand that feeds when it comes to her jobs in film in television. Heigl infamously withdrew her name from Emmy consideration for her role in Grey's Anatomy by stating she hadn't been given "the material to warrant it." This hit series creator Shonda Rhimes a little hard and even people who weren't fans of the show thought the move was a little rude.
Heigl also had a lot of negative things to say about her role in the Apatow comedy Knocked Up. She claimed the movie made women out to be shrews and the men out to be rather lovable. This is a fair critique but Heigl followed this with roles in an endless stream of romantic comedies that didn't exactly paint women in a very positive light either. This goes hand in hand with another reason people don't like her; she has starred in an almost endless stream of poorly rated romantic comedies.
Nicolas Cage
It really is a shame that everyone seems to hate Nicolas Cage. Sure, the guy has made what appears to be a seemingly endless run of absolutely terrible films. These days some of his flicks are even going straight to DVD and Blue-Ray. It's been reported that Cage has some expensive tastes and hobbies so he rarely turns down a script, which explains so many bad movies. He also gets a lot of flak for his "wooden" acting, yet also gets panned for his penchant for over-acting.
In defense of Cage, for every 5-10 terrible Cage flicks, you get an Adaptation, Wild At Heart, Bringing Out the Dead, or Leaving Las Vegas. The idea of the actor making incredible films isn't unheard of.
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