The movie industry is very cruel. Just as it takes you to the top, it buries you when you take a wrong step. But some could have revenge.
Michael Keaton
Michael Keaton is one of the actors who knows the most about the ups and downs in Hollywood. After starring in "Beetlejuice" and the two installments of Tim Burton's Batman, he made the occasional forgettable movie like "Herbie at Full Speed" and disappeared from the film map. He barely appeared in "Need For Speed" or "RoboCop," but nothing of note on the big screen. Until the Mexican director, Alejandro González Iñárritu gave him the role of Riggan Thomson in the acclaimed “Birdman” and revived his career. He did not win the Oscar but he did win the Golden Globe for a brilliant performance that earned him critical acclaim that would be repeated a year later with “Spotlight”, the biopic that also won the Oscar for best film. In 2016, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A few years earlier, in 2010, he had been hit hard by the death of his ex-wife, Caroline McWilliams. In an interview with Elle magazine, Keaton spoke about that passing, a tragic moment, especially for the life of his son, a successful and Grammy-nominated songwriter, with whom he has an unbreakable bond. “We were always very close, but when Caroline died, we became much closer. Now the family is us."
Robert Downey Jr.
During the 80's he was the promise of Hollywood, in 1992 he played Charles Chaplin, a role for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Then his career went down the drain when alcohol and drugs dominated his life, alternating between prison and rehab centers. "It's like having a loaded gun, in your mouth and your finger on the trigger, you know it's going to go off at any moment but you like the taste of the gun's metal." With these words, Robert Downey Jr. confessed his drug addiction before a judge in 1999. He had already been sentenced to three years probation after being arrested for speeding through the streets of Los Angeles, and for possession of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and crack. Virtually no one, except his most faithful friends, wanted to give him work. Over a long period of five years, his personal life spiraled out of control. It was difficult for him to get a role on the big screen again. He was considered a troublesome and unreliable actor. So he tried television. In the middle of treatment to get him sober, in 2001, he won a Golden Globe for his participation in the series "Ally McBeal."
He received critical acclaim for his role in "Tropic Thunder," a performance for which he would once again be nominated for an Oscar. He was also recognized for his role in "Sherlock Holmes," with which he won a third Golden Globe. These opportunities paved the way to the role that, in 2008, would definitely change the course of his career: Jon Favreau hired him to play Tony Stark/Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Since then he has appeared in some eight films in the franchise, which became huge box office hits. This role catapulted him back to fame, so much so that he became the highest-paid actor in the film industry, with Forbes magazine estimating earnings of more than USD 250 million just with his participation in these productions. From being a Hollywood loser, a promising young man who became a black sheep, Downey Jr. is now a businessman in the industry. He plans to play Iron Man again in "Black Widow", a film scheduled to be released in 2021.
Mickey Rourke
In the eighties, he was one of the undisputed leading men in Hollywood. For his role in "New Weeks and a Half" along with Kim Basinger, he became the most desired by the public and by the studios. But in the nineties, he became an enemy of the studies for his addiction to drugs, alcohol, and violence problems. To this we must add that his career as a boxer destroyed his face, leaving him practically unrecognizable; his addiction to plastic surgeries didn't help him either. Although 2005 he participated in "Sin City", it was not until 2008 when director Darren Aronofsky cast him as the main star in "El Luchador", which won the Golden Lion at the 65th Venice International Film Festival. He picked up several Best Actor awards for his performance in the film, including a Golden Globe and a BAFTA. "It has been a very long road for me (...) but well, several years ago, I was practically out of this business, but a young man approached me to offer to be my representative, and he did a brutal job," he said. the actor before his colleagues when receiving the Golden Globe. He also thanked his dogs. "Sometimes you're alone, and all you have is your dog, they mean the world to me."
That same year, she earned her first Oscar nomination, allowing her to revive her career.
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder was the rare girl who had made it in Hollywood. Her performance in "The House of the Spirits" alongside Meryl Streep, Antonio Banderas, and Jeremy Irons, and in "Generation X" alongside Ben Stiller and Ethan Hawke finished positioning her in Hollywood. By the end of the decade in 1999, she filmed "Girl, Interrupted" with Angelina Jolie, who took home an Oscar for that performance. But the label of her as an excellent actress of hers fell with her fame unstable of hers. She did it with that incident in 2001, in which she was caught stealing exactly $4,760 worth of clothing and accessories from a Saks Fifth Avenue store in Beverly Hills. This event marked her career and her life: she went from being one of the best paid in Hollywood to completely disappearing from public life. A year later, in December 2002, she was sentenced to three years probation and underwent therapy for kleptomania. “The media attention I received embarrassed me greatly. I preferred not to say a word about it. I did not publish a statement. I did absolutely nothing. I just waited for people to forget about it, ”she said later. The actress, who was 30 years old at the time, was branded "crazy" and practically disappeared from the screens. She moved to San Francisco to be close to her parents and she made the “conscious decision not to work”.
In addition, she commented that many of her colleagues recommended that she not stay away from the cinema. "People told me: 'You shouldn't do it, you have to keep working because otherwise, everyone will forget about you.'" He returned to the set in 2007 and tried his luck with films like "Black Swan" or "Homefront" but it was not until the great success of Netflix “Stranger Things” (2016) that the star born in Minnesota returned to the top, achieving a new Golden Globe nomination and participation in new projects such as the HBO series, “The plot against America ”.
Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore achieved fame as a child for "E.T.", but her adolescence was not easy. She spent two stints in rehab, one for drug and alcohol abuse and the other for a suicide attempt, all before the age of 15. Because of her reputation, she struggled to find work in films. In an interview when she was 17, the actress said: "I had two, three years with casting directors telling me I would never work in this town again... That just made me mad. more, it made me put a lot more into my work... And, out of sheer ambition, I showed those mother F- that I can do it. Success is the best revenge in the world. And I'm back." Drew continued acting, but it was the 1998 movie "The Wedding Singer" that brought her back to the big leagues. With "Charlie's Angels" and "50 First Dates" she established herself stronger. Now she's the star of Netflix's “Santa Clarita Diet” and has just launched her own Ellen DeGeneres-esque talk show, plus she owns a successful cosmetics brand.
