We all have embarrassing memories. Luckily for most of us, those moments aren't preserved on camera for other people to rewatch endlessly.
Here are 13 TV and movie roles that actors are seriously embarrassed by:
1. In 2024, Sabrina Carpenter told Cosmopolitan that the rap scene from her 2016 Disney Channel remake of Adventures in Babysitting is "a bit triggering" and "really embarrassing."
She said, "Because this has resurfaced online in times where I don't need it to. Do you know when you're like, 'I have a crush on someone,' and then all of a sudden your fans start to circulate a really embarrassing video of when you're little, and then it comes up on their explore page because that's how algorithms work? Because this is the world we live in now? ...This damn video, it haunts me in my sleep."
2. In 2023, Margot Robbie told BBC One, "I was in Neighbors for three years. They once made me wear, like, a giant cigarette suit. It was the most embarrassing thing."
3. In the same BBC One interview, Ryan Gosling said, "I was a hamster at one point" — referring to an episode of The Mickey Mouse Club.
4. On a 2021 episode of her podcast Empty Inside, Jennette McCurdy — who's most well-known for playing Sam Puckett on Nickelodeon's iCarly and Sam & Cat — said, "My experience with acting is I'm so ashamed of the parts that I've done in the past...but I resent my career in a lot of ways. I feel so unfulfilled by the roles that I played and felt like it was the most just cheesy, embarrassing [experience]..."
She continued, "I did the shows that I was on from like 13 to 21, and by 15, I was already embarrassed. My friends at 15, they're not like, 'Oh, cool, you're on this Nickelodeon show.' It was embarrassing. I imagine there's a very different experience to be had with acting if you're proud of your roles and if you feel fulfilled by them."
5. On a 2020 episode of SiriusXM's The Jess Cagle Show, Ben Affleck said, "[My mom's best friend] was casting a kids' science and math adventure, sort of pre-Dora the Explorer show for PBS. I was 7 or 8 and ended up getting the part...Periodically, I would leave town, and go do this series, The Voyage of the Mimi. And it was cheesy, and I was embarrassed about it."
"It wasn't like I was coming back home and being like, 'You guys gotta see this! I'm so cool!'" he said.
6. In 2019, Adam Driver told the New Yorker that, after watching 2013's Inside Llewyn Davis — specifically where his character sang backup for a performance of the folk song "Please Mr. Kennedy" — he could no longer stomach watching his own movies.
He said, "I hated what I did."
7. In 2022, Sandra Bullock told TooFab, "I have one [role] no one came around to, and I'm still embarrassed I was in. It's called Speed 2."
"I've been very vocal about it. Makes no sense. Slow boat. Slowly going towards an island," she said.
8. In 2020, Joseph Gordon-Levitt told Vanity Fair, "I was going to arthouse cinemas and watching movies coming from Sundance [Festival] and, you know, watching Sling Blade and Reservoir Dogs and Soderbergh and Tarantino, and that's what I wanted to do. I know this sounds weird to say, or it sounds like I'm not grateful, [but] I was always a little embarrassed before [I was cast in those kinds of movies]. I was mostly embarrassed about 10 Things I Hate About You, to be honest. I was."
He continued, "And when I got to do these Sundance movies, I felt like I was doing what I wanted to do. They felt like a reflection of me and the art that I liked. When I look back now, I'm kind of equally proud of all those things, but subjectively, at that time ... it was really meaningful to me."
9. Appearing on The Graham Norton Show in 2015, George Clooney said, "I always apologize for Batman & Robin. Let me just say that I'd actually thought I'd destroyed the franchise until somebody else brought it back years later and changed it."
"I thought at the time that this was going to be a very good career move. Umm...it wasn't," he said.
10. On a 2022 episode of WTF with Marc Maron, Christina Ricci said, "If you actually watch Casper, I'm terrible in it. People get so upset when I say that."
She said, "There was a lot going on. I was 13. Everything was very difficult and I was just always annoyed. Embarrassingly...I don't think I tried as hard as maybe I should have."
11. John Turturro was initially "embarrassed" about his role in The Big Lebowski. In 2017, he told IndieWire, "The first time they showed [my scenes] to me, I was really embarrassed. I didn’t even get the movie when it came out."
"When I saw it, I thought [Jeff Bridges] was great, but it went over my head," he said.
12. In 2021, Rosamund Pike told Collider Ladies Night, "I think I failed just through ignorance and innocence to understand, to fully get a picture of what Doom meant to fans...I wasn’t a gamer. I didn’t understand. If I knew what I knew now, I would have dived right into all of that and got fully immersed in it like I do now. And I just didn’t understand. I feel embarrassed, really. I feel embarrassed that I was sort of ignorant of what it meant and I didn’t know how to go about finding out because the internet wasn’t the place it is now for the fans to speak up."
She continued, "I wouldn’t have known where to find them. I do now! In fact, I now have many friends who were massive fans of the game and I just wish I had known them then."
13. And finally, while presenting a Pink Floyd — The Wall screening at the 2023 EnergaCamerimage Film Festival, Bob Geldof said, "No, I don't like the film. I think I'm really bad. I've seen the movie twice, and I was embarrassed."
"I was just embarrassed every day by how shit I was. I don't like looking at myself. I don't like listening to myself. I don't like hearing myself. The last thing I want is to see myself on the side of a building," he said.