These 13 Stars Destroyed Their Reputations In An Instant

This Film Director lost the love of his audiences when he, according to allegations, showed a proclivity for the darkest of tendencies: cradle snatching. 

It became darker still when his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, published a 2014 open letter renewing her claims that he had ab*sed her when she was seven.

The claim followed shortly after the then in-demand filmmaker celebrated his Golden Globe lifetime achievement award on January 14 of the same year, per United Press International.

Allen denied the allegation even though it was seconded by his son Ronan.

But more telling was his flagrant courting and marriage to his ex-wife’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, whom he started having an affair with when she turned 21.

The scandal spread to everyone around him, and actors like Colin Firth vowed never to work with him again.

Stars Timothée Chalamet, Selena Gomez, and Rebecca Hall, who acted in the 2020 film A Rainy Day in New York, have since donated their entire salary from the production to charity.

Everybody’s favorite benevolent talk show host took a step out of the public favor when she denied getting an invite to Dakota Johnson's thirtieth birthday party on October 5, 2019.

Johnson called her out for it on live TV. 

Compounding matters, Ellen DeGeneres, a lesbian, was spotted sitting next to former president George Bush–known for his anti-LGBTQ stance–at a Dallas Cowboys match on October 6–the very next day.

The real odium would strike in April, 2020, during COVID, when her workforce of about 30 employees found themselves unable to work due to the lockdowns.

They were shocked to learn via social media that The Degeneres Show continued to film from their boss’s home with non-unionized staff, according to a 2020 exclusive published by Variety. 

Also, while they had been informed they would be receiving a severe pay cut, the exact percentage remained opaque for an extended period. 

She survived this with an apology but was not yet through the woods because two months later, a former employer blew the whistle on her, saying that she was oblivious of the conditions they were forced to work under.

Buzzfeed dropped another bombshell in the same month when they unearthed accusations of s*xual misconduct among the staff.

Eventually, in 2022, the show that had been running for 19 years crumbled under the weight of bad ratings.

She resurfaced for a 2024 tour named Ellen’s Last Stand… Up where she admitted: “It’s been such a toll on my ego and my self-esteem.”

It was the second time she had been cancelled.

Action figure Steven Seagal’s departure from the spotlight was gradual. He was popular during the 1980s and 1990s, but just as illustrious were accusations and rumours of s*xual harassment often implicating under age individuals.

The allegations reached their peak in 2017 and 2018, and this was after Vladimir Putin gave the actor a Russian passport, prompting Ukraine to ban him from their country over security concerns.

This act did not occur in a vacuum. Seagal was known for his support of the autocracy when they annexed Crimea.

Also, in 2018, the Kremlin appointed him as their special envoy to the U.S. 

In 2023, his new home country gave him an Order of Friendship award for what it called “humanitarian work.”

Back in the United States, his movies appear to have passed their sell-by date as did his fighting moves.
 
The podcast Imagination & Junk examined Seagal’s fighting skills and noted that he claimed to have a 7th-degree black belt.

It also reported that according to his ex-wife, this is a fallacy. She said that the defector possesses a 1st degree at the most, which was obtained only because the person who graded him fell asleep.

As can be seen on the subreddit, r/Movies, the public is, for the most part, pitted against him, offering an array of reasons for their dislike of him
 
One user on Quora did not mince words when they wrote: “Steven Seagal destroyed his own stardom by being an insufferable pr*ck.”

This personality fell from grace overnight—quite literally. 

At 2:45 am (EST) on May 29, 2018, Roseanne Barr tweeted:

“Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj,” referring to former President Barack Obama’s longest-serving advisor, Valerie Jarrett.

Likely having slept on it and realizing that she had erred grievously, she tried to correct her faux pas, and at 10:33 am the same day tweeted “I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me – my joke was in bad taste.”

But once again, the die had been cast and the chips fell fast. Less than two hours later, at 12:04 pm the same day, her show Roseanne’s producer, Wanda Sykes, quit.

By 1:21 pm, her co-star made clear her stance on the matter by condemning Barr.

Twenty six minutes later, ABC, for whom she worked, weighed in with their rebuke, calling her “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.” They mentioned in the same update that they had cancelled the show.

Twenty-three minutes after that, Disney’s head honcho, Bob Iger, put his weight behind ABC’s decision, saying that her cancellation was “the right thing to do.”

According to Axios, Barr’s agent dropped her before the hour was through.

Logan Paul, a comedic YouTube personality with more than 15 million followers, claimed his infamy in 2018 when he decided to explore an allegedly haunted forest in Japan.

While filming their jaunt, they came across a single instance of what was purported to be the reason for Aokigahara Forest’s ominous aura.

In the now-deleted video, Paul discovered the hanging body of someone who had taken their own life and filmed it while asking his guide if they should call the police.

The answer was “no,” and they decided to double down on what they went there to do—focus on the “haunted aspect” of the area.

His fans blasted him and he later posted a video claiming that the offending footage was not intended to mock s*icide but rather raise awareness for it. “I’m sorry,” he told his audience.

Australia’s ABC News at the time reported that viewers were unforgiving and the video drew a wave of backlash from netizens on X, including Breaking Bad alum, Aaron Paul, when he wrote:
“You are pure trash. Plain and simple. S*icide is not a joke.”

YouTube also reacted by placing projects with Paul on hold while removing him from their preferred program, per a 2018 BBC report.

Fresh in the public’s memory, is the once bulletproof Will Smith. 

It was not the rumors that plagued him and his wife Jada’s marriage, nor was it the Augustus Alsina fling, which Jada claimed did not constitute cheating but rather “entanglement.” 

It was not even the scandalous suggestion that the two were swingers back in 2017, per Cosmopolitan, that broke the proverbial camel’s back. 

But it was that fateful 94th Academy Awards of March 27, 2022, when the smiling funny man, Chris Rock, decided to take a stab at Jada over her (lack of) hair as she sat next to her husband near the stage.

What resulted was “The Slap Heard Around the World.” 

During one of his shows a year later, Rock would tell his audience that yes, it hurt, and still does. 

The I am Legend star was consequently banned from the Academy Awards for a decade and lost an estimated $1 billion in economic opportunity, per IMDb.

He admitted as much when he told Complex’s Speedy Morman in March 2024: “This is the downsizing phase of my life.”