From Penn Badgley to Robert Pattinson, 8 Hollywood actors who hated their most-loved characters

Imagine hating something that made you an overnight sensation? Or being resentful of a role that you are most likely to be recognised for? For these 8 stars, that is the reality. As an actor, you may sometimes need to take a job that doesn't reflect your personality. The character may not necessarily resonate with the actor but they end up doing it anyway. That is exactly what happened to these Hollywood actors. Robert Pattinson may go by Batman now, but his days as Edward Cullen still haunt him. Daniel Craig is tired of being asked to be James Bond once again, and poor Penn Badgley can't understand why he has so many fans for playing a serial killer.

Scroll below to find out which 8 actors hated their most famous roles. 

8 ACTORS WHO HATED THEIR MOST FAMOUS CHARACTERS

1. Penn Badgley in You 

Penn Badgley hates his iconic Netflix original character Joe Goldberg in YOU. The series, that released its 5th and final season this year, had Penn playing the lead character of Joe, a part-time bookstore owner-slash-professor and a part-time serial killer. According to Badgley, Joe was "irredeemable, and he hated how people loved this character portrayed by him. The Gossip Girl actor found it highly conflicting to play such a horrible character; however, he did like the experience, calling it a "deep, deep psychological exploration". When asked what kind of ending he would like for Joe, Badley replied, "death".

2. Robert Pattinson in the Twilight Saga 

Robert Pattinson may now be known as the saviour of Gotham City, but in the early 2010s, he was most popular for hating on his most famous character. Pattinson gained popularity after portraying the role of Edward Cullen in the popular teen movie franchise The Twilight Saga, which was based on the book series of the same name.  Pattinson hated the character and was vocal about his hatred through the years, even when he was an active part of the series. He even said that the only thing he stole from the Twilight set was his dignity back.  

Pattison believed that if he had never watched the movies, he would have "mindlessly hated them" anyway. He did not like the hype around the Twilight fandom, terming it "strange". He said that if Edward were not fictional and you ended up meeting him, he would turn out to be an "axe-murderer." 

3. Blake Lively in Gossip Girl 

Before becoming a movie star, Blake Lively was best known for her portrayal of Serena Van der Woodsen, the famous socialite from the Upper East Side in Gossip Girl. The Another Simple Favor actress felt uncomfortable with the choices that Serena made; from sleeping with someone else's boyfriends to drug overuse. Her character made many flawed choices and Lively found these choices to be "absurd" and, as a result, wasn't proud of the character she played. 

4. Kate Winslet in Titanic

Fewer roles are as iconic as Jack and Rose from Titanic are. The love story that gave us epic scenes such as the 'Titanic pose' and the soundtrack of My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion. But for Winslet, who played the role of 17-year-old Rose, the experience was less than pleasant. It was not that Winslet didn't like Rose herself; it was the fame that came with her iconic role that caused her misery. She said that playing the role was a "horrible experience" and had an "unpleasant" impact on her life due to the expectations that were placed on her, leading her to actively seek smaller roles in the aftermath of success.

5. Megan Fox in the Transformers franchise

If you feel Kate's experience was harrowing, it's about to get worse. Any actress from the early 2000s can confirm that it wasn't easy to be the lead actress in popular masculine-tilted franchise movies as the character was often the centre of hyper-sexualisation and objectification. That's something Megan Fox had to face during her time as Mikaela Banes in the Transformer series. She revealed in an interview that her character was given the direction of "just be sexy" whenever she was on-screen.  

6. Cillian Murphy in Peaky Blinders 

Sometimes it isn't the character that the actor has a tough time dealing with but it's their physique that makes playing the character a task. Prior to bagging an Academy Award for playing the lead role in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy was best known as Thomas Shelby from Peaky Blinders. For this role, Murphy had to bulk up in order to look the part, which he hated: "I have to eat a lot of protein and lift a lot of weights and do all that stuff," he said to the Radio Times. He had to go back to eating meat after 15 years of vegetarianism in order to not look like a "skinny Irish fella". 

7. Daniel Craig in James Bond

Doing the same job for 15 years is not everyone's cup of tea; certainly not Daniel Craig's, who was tired of playing the role of the most famous spy in the world i.e. James Bond. He played the role of 007 from 2006 to 2021, making it emotionally difficult for him to deal with the role after all those years. Craig did enjoy the experience of being Bond but he no longer wants to continue to play the role. He even quipped that he would rather commit suicide than make another James Bond movie. 

8. Zac Efron in High School Musical 

Many talents emerged from Disney teen movie series High School Musical, one of them being Zac Efron, who played Troy Bolton. Since this movie, Efron has played many interesting projects, such as The Greatest Showman and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, where he played the role of serial killer Ted Bundy. Somehow, even after playing many other interesting characters, Efron is unable to shed his character of Troy, prompting him to say, "I step back and look at myself and I still want to kick that guy's ass sometimes." 

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