Celebrities Who Have Been Blacklisted

Vanessa Marquez had a recurring role on the hospital drama ER during the ‘90s playing Nurse Wendy Goldman and she alleges that George Clooney helped blacklist her after she spoke up about the harassment that was occurring on the set of the hit show. Clooney has denied the allegations. “I had nothing to do with casting. I was an actor and only an actor. If she was told I was involved in any decision about her career then she was lied to. The fact that I couldn’t affect her career is only surpassed by the fact that I wouldn’t,” he said in a statement. Following her stint on ER, she has only appeared in a handful of roles.

After his 2006 arrest where he spewed anti-semantic remarks at the police officers arresting him, Mel Gibson’s has been a persona non-grata in Hollywood. Between 2006 and 2010, he only had one film role in Edge of Darkness. Then, in 2010, when he was caught on tape going on a racist rant and making death threats against his ex, Oksana Grigorieva, any comeback for him became even less likely as the talent agency William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, which represented him, dropped him as a client. It’s only been in the last couple of years that Hollywood has begun to forgive him. His movie, Hacksaw Ridge, received critical acclaim, as well as six Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Director for Gibson.

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Tara Subkoff was an up and coming actress in the ‘90s who had roles in movies like As Good as It Gets, All Over Me, and The Last Days of Disco. She was up for a part in one of Harvey Weinstein’s movies when he offered her the role at a premiere after party – and then hit on her. According to her, after she rejected his advances, she found herself on Hollywood’s blacklist. She was the subject of false gossip and she was labeled “too difficult to work with.” “It became impossible for me to get work as an actress after this, so I then had to start a new career path and started Imitation of Christ, a fashion and art label,” she told Variety.

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Harvey Weinstein reportedly had Mira Sorvino’s career derailed after she rejected his sexual advances. She told Ronan Farrow that she had rejected him on several occasions and had even reported his harassment to a female employee at Miramax and had then noticed that her career was suffering. “There may have been other factors, but I definitely felt iced out and that my rejection of Harvey had something to do with it,” she said. In December 2017, director Peter Jackson came forward and admitted that Weinstein had badmouthed Sorvino to him, telling him that she was a “nightmare” to work with and “should avoid [her] at all costs.”

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Charlie Sheen was once one of the highest paid TV actors in Hollywood, but he hasn’t worked steadily since 2014 when he was the star of the sitcom, Anger Management. Recently, he claimed that he has been blacklisted from Hollywood. This was revealed when he filed a request to reduce his child support payments to his ex-wives, Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller. In the court documents, he alleged that he’s been unable to secure steady work and has “been blacklisted from many aspects of the entertainment industry.” While he didn’t go into any detail about this, it could possibly be due to the erratic behavior he was exhibiting in 2011 when he was fired from Two and a Half Men.

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Stacey Dash was famous for her role as Dionne in Clueless; however, in recent years she’s become more famous for her conservative views, which she’s claimed have gotten her blacklisted in Hollywood. “My acting opportunities have ceased because of my political beliefs. I’m being persecuted in Hollywood. I’ve been blacklisted. My agents have dropped me. I haven’t auditioned in over a year because of my beliefs and what I stand for. But I know that this is what God wants me to do. And so with that I will stand and I will do it, because I know that what God wants for me no man will keep from me, ” she told CNSNews.com.

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Ashley Judd found herself blacklisted in Hollywood after she refused Harvey Weinstein’s sexual advances. In December 2017, director Peter Jackson confirmed that Weinstein had Judd blacklisted. He had been told by Weinstein when he was casting for the Lord of the Rings trilogy that she was a “nightmare” to work with and should be avoided “at all costs,” so Jackson removed her name from the casting list. In May 2018, Judd filed a defamation suit against Weinstein, saying that he damaged her career by spreading lies about her in Hollywood. A trial is set for 2020.

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Brendan Fraser claimed that he was blacklisted from Hollywood after he was sexually assaulted by former Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) president Phillip Berk. According to Fraser, th assault occurred when he offered to shake hands with Berk. “His left hand reaches around, grabs my ass cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint,” he told GQ. “And he starts moving it around… I felt ill. I felt like a little kid. I felt like there was a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry.” The encounter made him retreat from the spotlight but, at exactly the same time, offers for major roles suddenly stopped being offered to him.

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Rose McGowan – who is best known for her role on the WB drama Charmed – has claimed that Harvey Weinstein had her blacklisted from Hollywood. In the late ‘90s, he reportedly raped her and, although she didn’t press charges, she did reach a settlement with him for $100,000. Since then, she’s found herself on the blacklist. Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez confirmed this. He tried to get her off the blacklist by offering a part in his movie Grindhouse (which he was working on for a division of Weinstein Company). Even though the film received great reviews from critics, it ended up tanking at the box office after Weinstein had it “buried.”

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A decade ago, Thora Birch was a promising young actress with a career on the rise. She received glowing reviews for her performance in the Academy Award-nominated film American Beauty and she had received a Golden Globe nomination for her role in Ghost World. Nowadays, that once-promising career has completely vanished. She’s no longer on the A-list – or even the C-list for that matter. She thinks that she’s been kicked out of Hollywood because of her difficult behavior. “I pissed a lot of people off over a long period of time and they found a way to upset me, hoping that upset would bring a change in my behavior. Like a distancing…But I’m done, I’m done. People wanted me to be not fine. A lot of it was bullsh-t,” she said. It hasn’t helped that her father was her manager for many years. He was the reason that she was fired from the off-Broadway revival of Dracula. He reportedly physically threatened one of her co-stars.

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Isaiah Washington found himself on Hollywood’s blacklist after he made some homophobic comments at the 2007 Golden Globe Awards. He was already on thin ice because it wasn’t the first time that he had been openly homophobic – a year earlier, he had insulted T.R. Knight, his co-star on Grey’s Anatomy, with a homophobic slur. Even though Washington was put into “executive counseling” after the Globes incident, it was soon decided that his contract would not be renewed and that he would be fired. “After the incident at the Golden Globes, everything just fell apart. I lost everything. I couldn’t afford to have an agent…I couldn’t afford to have a publicist…I couldn’t afford to continue,” he said. The former television star has found a way to continue – by starring in B-list movies; however, he still hasn’t quite recovered from being fired from Grey’s Anatomy. “I don’t worry about whether or not the stories I tell will destroy my acting career because, you can’t take away something that doesn’t exist. They killed the actor (in me) on June 7, 2007,” he told I Am Entertainment magazine in 2014.

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Jim Caviezel believes that Hollywood blacklisted him after he took the lead role in The Passion of the Christ. Before he took the role, he was a rising star; however, after starring in the controversial film, he has been shunned by the film industry. Mel Gibson even warned him about this. “The next day, he said, ‘I want you to be aware of what you are going to go through. You may never work again.’ He said that several times publicly. I told him, ‘Mel, this is what I believe. We all have a cross to carry. I have to carry my own cross. If we don’t carry our crosses, we are going to be crushed under the weight of it. So let’s go and do it.’ And we began with the film,” he recalled. Gibson proved to be right – the film was slammed for being anti-Semitic. Since then, roles for Caviezel have been hard to come by; however, he has no regrets. “Jesus is as controversial now as he has ever been. Not much has changed in 2,000 years,” he said.

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Several years ago, Katherine Heigl was a sought-after actress, but not anymore. Word on the street is that she is really difficult on set and people in Hollywood talk. Insiders on the set of Life As We Know It described her as a pain. “She can cost you time every single day of shooting,” the source said. “Wardrobe issues, not getting out of the trailer, questioning the script every single day.” Her mother, who is also her manager, makes things even worse. “I have never experienced anything like Nancy Heigl,” the source continued. “It’s about the mouth. ‘F**k you. You are a f**king liar.’ Whatever you’d say, you were an idiot. The call would be, ‘This is the worst craft service we’ve ever had!’” To top it all off, she also has big movie star demands – she wants the best of everything. Her reputation is so bad that many people in Hollywood won’t even consider her for roles – she’s just not worth it. It still remains to be seen if she can actually repair all of the bridges that she burned.

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Tippi Hedren was Alfred Hitchcock’s most iconic leading lady. Under his direction, she went from being a model to a respected actress. Unfortunately, he wanted a little more than to just direct her on-screen. He was reportedly quite obsessed with her and made a number of sexual advances, which she rejected. “He stared at me and simply said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, that from this time on, he expected me to make myself sexually available and accessible to him – however and whenever and wherever he wanted,” she said. When Hedren tried to get out of her contract with Hitchcock, he threatened to ruin her career and then followed through with his threat. Because he had her under contract, he was able to keep her on the payroll without actually employing her. He made sure to turn down any film offers that came in from other studios. Looking back, she has a pretty good attitude about the situation. “He ruined my career, but he didn’t ruin my life. That time of my life was over. I still admire the man for who he was,” she said.

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After Clint Eastwood dumped Sondra Locke back in 1989, she found herself blacklisted by all of Hollywood’s major studios. This lasted for a decade. Before the breakup, she had quite the career. She had an Oscar nomination under her belt, had starred in six of his films and she was a budding director. Her breakup with the legendary director was pretty messy. She arrived home one day to find that he had changed the locks on their shared home and had put her stuff in storage. In response, she filed a palimony suit against him. In 1990, they reached an agreement. Eastwood set up a development/directing pact for her at Warner Bros. in exchange for her dropping the suit. Five years later, they were back in court. She alleged that he had compensated Warner Bros. to keep her out of work because they had rejected all of the 30 projects that she had proposed and didn’t give her any of their in-house projects. When he realized that the jury was going to side with Locke, he settled with her for an undisclosed amount. Her career wasn’t magically resurrected; however, it sent a message out in Hollywood that powerful people can’t abuse their power.

(AP Photo/ Damian Dovarganes)

Mo’nique claims that she was “blackballed” from Hollywood after she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in Precious. “I got a phone call from Lee Daniels maybe six or seven months ago. And he said to me, ‘Mo’Nique, you’ve been blackballed.’ And I said, ‘I’ve been blackballed? Why have I been blackballed?’ And he said, “Because you didn’t play the game.’ And I said, ‘Well, what game is that?’ And he gave me no response,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. While she has been offered roles since her big win, she’s been unable to book any of them. Daniels confirmed that Mo’Nique has been blacklisted. “Mo’Nique is a creative force to be reckoned with. Her demands through Precious were not always in line with the campaign. This soured her relationship with the Hollywood community. I consider her a friend. I have and will always think of her for her parts that we can collaborate on. However, the consensus among the creative teams and powers thus far were to go another way with these roles,” he said.

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