8 Great Actors Who Had Bad Final Movies

And then on the other side of things, there are the following movies, none of which stand as particularly strong swansongs for the relevant actors who appeared in them. It should be stressed, before things get negative, that all the actors here are legendary, and happening to appear in a lackluster final movie really doesn’t take away from all the good stuff each of them were in. Also, there are some voice-only roles considered, and things are going to kick off with one actor who, at the time of writing, could technically still act in another film (the rest have passed away).

8 Jack Nicholson

'How Do You Know' (2010)

At the time of writing, Jack Nicholson is still alive, but did announce his retirement from acting post-How Do You Know, making this rather lackluster rom-com his final film overall. It was a surprisingly expensive movie, with most of that money likely going to the lead actors, since nothing else about it looks particularly flashy. $120 million is a lot to spend on a rom-com in 2026, let alone 2010, since if you adjust for inflation, the budget was more like $180 million (by 2026 standards).

Nicholson’s in this alongside Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, and Paul Rudd, with Rudd the only member of the cast who seems to be giving it any effort. Regarding Jack Nicholson, he’s had a good working relationship with director James L. Brooks in the past, since Brooks directed two of the movies Nicholson won Oscars for (Terms of Endearment and As Good as It Gets), so maybe that factored into it. Anyway, the movie is not good, and Nicholson does kind of phone it in, which makes it a little unfortunate that it'll likely be his last-ever movie, rather than either The Departed (2006) or The Bucket List (2007).

7 Gene Hackman

'Welcome to Mooseport' (2004)

The last few years of Gene Hackman’s acting career were a little odd, or at least inconsistent, but can be compared to Nicholson’s final few roles in the sense that he had a great potential swansong in the form of 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums. That’s still his last great film, and maybe even one of the best movies he appeared in overall, but 2004’s Welcome to Mooseport was his actual final film.

It’s a fairly limp political comedy about a former President (Hackman) competing against a more everyday man (played by Ray Romano) for the position of mayor of a modestly-sized Maine town. If you want to see Hackman play a President, you're better off sticking to Absolute Power, which wasn’t amazing, and certainly not on the same level as Unforgiven (both that film and Absolute Power were directed by Clint Eastwood), but it’s got something to offer, as a political thriller.

6 Bela Lugosi

'Plan 9 from Outer Space' (1957)

It’s a little on the edge of things, in terms of being a “final role,” but Bela Lugosi is going here because he’s kinda/sorta in Plan 9 from Outer Space, which has a reputation for being one of the worst movies ever, even if it’s got a cult following and, believe it or not, has a fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Footage of Lugosi is awkwardly inserted into the movie, and then a chiropractor (and occasional actor) named Tom Mason was used as a body double for Lugosi in other scenes.

The plot here is a little hard to follow, though more or less summarizable as one concerned with an unusual kind of alien invasion. Plan 9 from Outer Space is somewhat fun, yet not really good in the traditional sense. To its credit, though, films with much higher budgets have struggled to insert footage of deceased actors into the proceedings in ways that feel natural and narratively relevant (see Carrie Fisher’s appearance in The Rise of Skywalker, which awkwardly used unused footage shot during the production of The Force Awakens).

5 Marlon Brando

'Big Bug Man' (2004)

Plan 9 from Outer Space was too iconic not to include, even if Lugosi wasn’t really a star of it, in the traditional sense, and on a similar note, Big Bug Man is simply too unusual not to include here. It’s another “kinda/sorta” example, seeing as it’s never been officially released, but it does contain what is technically Marlon Brando’s last-ever performance: a voice role as an elderly lady named Mrs. Sour.

Brendan Fraser voiced the main character, and all that’s really known about Big Bug Man, beyond the voice actors, is that it was an animated superhero movie, and it cost about $20 million to produce. It’s never been released, apparently because it would be too costly, and likely wouldn’t have made enough money to be profitable. Big Bug Man does remain a fascinating enigma of a “film,” though, partly because it’s incredibly unlikely it would've been even watchable. If you're talking Brando’s last-ever properly released movie, it was The Score (starring the other Vito Corleone, Robert De Niro), and that one was an honestly pretty solid heist film.

4 Gene Kelly

'Xanadu' (1980)

It’s somewhat fitting that Gene Kelly’s last on-screen acting role was in a musical, seeing as he was best known for starring in some of the most iconic musicals of all time. It’s a bit of a shame that said musical was Xanadu, though this is in the Plan 9 from Outer Space camp in being liked by some, since it is indeed campy, and so you'll find more than a few Xanadu defenders.

To Kelly’s credit, though, some of the scenes he’s in are among the better parts of the film. Also, he didn’t disappear from pop culture entirely between 1980 and 1996 (the year he passed away), since he hosted the compilation/documentary films That's Dancing! (1985) and That's Entertainment! III (1994), alongside being a choreography consultant for the animated 1997 film Cats Don't Dance (released posthumously).

3 Robin Williams (and Terry Jones)

'Absolutely Anything' (2015)

Robin Williams remained remarkably active in the final years of his life, and gave one of his very best performances as late as 2009, in the confronting yet surprisingly effective World's Greatest Dad. He was in five movies that were released in 2014, the year he passed away, and then had one final film role in 2015, which was admittedly a voice-only one in a largely forgotten live-action film called Absolutely Anything.

He voices a dog that can speak. Also, the five members of Monty Python who were alive in 2015 all appeared in the movie in voice roles, with one of them, Terry Jones, also being the film’s director… and, alongside Williams, it was unfortunately his last-ever movie, too, as he stepped away from being a filmmaker and actor in 2016, before passing away in 2020. Still, with both Williams and Jones, there are plenty of other things they were involved in and remembered for, so Absolutely Anything is little more than a footnote/curiosity in either man’s respective filmography.

2 Sean Connery

'Sir Billi' (2012)

With Sean Connery, you can disqualify Sir Billi (2012) if you don’t think animated movies should count, and then you're left with an also pretty infamous final live-action role: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which was very loosely based on the first volume of the (generally quite good/underrated) Alan Moore comic series of the same name. So, like, dishonorable mention to that one, or something.

Sir Billi is a special kind of bad/weird, though, and is worth including because Connery voices the main character, and that character has his likeness, too. It’s a visually unappealing, tonally chaotic, and overall bizarre animated movie that barely has a story, and is inevitably an oddity within Sean Connery’s filmography… and an honestly pretty easy one to overlook, seeing as there are so many genuinely good films Connery was in over the several decades of his acting career.

1 John Belushi

'Neighbors' (1981)

If you’ve forgotten about Neighbors, or were never even aware that it existed, then lucky you. This is a genuinely awful comedy that stars both John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, just one year on from the pair appearing in an all-time great comedy: The Blues Brothers. It was also directed by John G. Avildsen (between Rocky and The Karate Kid), was written by Larry Gelbart (who wrote or co-wrote numerous early M*A*S*H episodes), and had Cathy Moriarty as another cast member (one year on from her Oscar-nominated performance in Raging Bull).

There were tons of talented people behind Neighbors, and yet nothing about it works, with Belushi and Aykroyd both feeling weirdly miscast and out of place, since Belushi plays the comparatively “normal” neighbor and Aykroyd plays the wilder/more eccentric one. The whole movie is just them clashing in ways that are supposed to be darkly funny, but prove grating almost straight away. You're better off watching – or rewatching – pretty much any other John Belushi film instead… hell, even 1941, which also happened to star Aykroyd.