25 Athlete Acting Roles That Were Instant Failures

Wayne Gretzky – Saturday Night Live:

Rightfully nicknamed ‘The Great One,’ Gretzky is considered by many (if not most) National Hockey League (NHL) fans to be the best player in history. Indeed, he has many offensive records that may never be broken.

But his appearance as the host on “Saturday Night Live” was even more offensive in a much different way. Gretzky just didn’t cut the mustard, and his lines had little to no emotion delivered along with them. The end product was just horrible and failed to match up in any sense to Gretzky’s all-time greatness in hockey.

Dan Marino – Ace Ventura:

Now, Marino’s performance and “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” have a large cult following that makes this an endearing performance. Indeed, it was the film that launched superstar Jim Carrey’s acting career into the mainstream.

But Marino’s performance is laughable nonetheless. He plays himself in the flick and is at the center of a plot to kidnap the Miami Dolphins’ mascot Snowflake. He ends up getting kidnapped himself by the movie’s cross-dressing antagonist Ray Finkle, and it was while he was filming an Isotoner Gloves commercial. Overall, Marino’s lines were delivered with a large helping of nacho cheese. But the movie is and always will be a hit.

Joe Namath – The A-Team:

A smooth-talking superstar of the 60s, “Broadway Joe” will always live on in infamy for his guarantee of a Super Bowl win for his New York Jets over the favored Baltimore Colts. He delivered on that promise. Yet his overall NFL stats left something to be seriously desired when compared to that of quarterbacks from later eras.

And his acting skills may have been even worse. Namath made an appearance on the popular show “The A-Team,” which of course starred Mr. T. The episode he was on, aptly named, “Quarterback Sneak, featured the A-Team setting up a rescue behind the guise of having an exhibition football game.

Convenient timing given Namath was the guest star. It’s almost like they wrote the plot just for that. In any case, the acting was hard to watch, with Namath hamming up all over the joint. “Broadway Joe” later got into trouble on television while drunk, but he wasn’t acting then. Here, he was actually trying, and that makes it much worse.

Tom Brady – Entourage:

Brady is another athlete who put on an awkward performance on HBO’s man-drama “Entourage.” And like the aforementioned Phil Mickelson, it involved a round of golf. Unlike Mickelson, Brady’s appearance involved the main gang of the show.

He robotically laughed at main character Vincent Chase’s brother Johnny during a golf bet. Then, he got in a telegraphed on-screen “conversation” with their friend “Turtle.” Brady invited him and his girlfriend, “The Sopranos” star Jamie Lynn Sigler, over for dinner. Brady may justifiably be the greatest NFL quarterback of all-time.  His six Super Bowl victories prove that. But his acting skills were uninspiring and seemed like they were read off a teleprompter without any feeling.

Dennis Rodman – Double Team:

In the 1990s, Rodman was well known in the basketball community as an eccentric star and the best rebounder in the NBA. It earned him a role in “Double Team” opposite martial arts movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme. The result was horrific in terms of acting skill.

Rodman served his lines up with a full serving of corn in this buddy cop flick that ranks among the worst of the genre. That’s saying a lot. Hey, he did get chased by a tiger in the final fight scene of the action flop. But that doesn’t even come close to redeeming this monstrous cinematic dud.

Brian Bosworth – Stone Cold:

‘The Boz’ was one of the most notorious tough guys of the 1980s. He picked up a role in the tough-guy cop film “Stone Cold” in 1991. This one was doomed from the start. Bosworth can be heard telling his pet lizard, “Listen, man. You’re gonna have to eat your grub if you wanna be stud” in the opening scene. Yep, that happened.

From there, Bosworth went about his role with over-the-top cheese of playing a hard-nosed cop infiltrating a killer biker gang. I honestly did think this movie was awesome when I was 10 years old. And true, Bosworth’s mullet was epic. Yet it just didn’t age that well, putting “The Boz” up with the upcoming Howie Long as a football bruiser from the 90s who didn’t fare nearly as well in acting.

Howie Long – Firestorm/Broken Arrow:

Hulking defensive end Long was a great football player for the Raiders. Similar to many of his peers, his acting didn’t compare to his on-field skills. He now does quite well as an NFL football analyst on FOX. But in the 1990s, he still parlayed his size and strength into some action film roles in “Firestorm” and “Broken Arrow.”

While the films may have been lacking in the plot and/or writing department, Long certainly didn’t help matters with his cheesy acting. His performances just weren’t very realistic. However, he did get kicked off a train into a river after a long fall. That’s Long’s most-viewed scene of his often-blasted acting career which has since translated well onto television.

Wilt Chamberlain – Conan The Destroyer:

Chamberlain is an NBA legend who ranks high up on our list of the greatest NBA players of all-time, and for good reason. Of course, he holds the NBA record for most points in a game with 100. He was a legend on the courts.

His acting career didn’t turn out quite as well. “Wilt The Stilt” did land a role as “Bombaata” in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film “Conan The Destroyer.” In it, he did fight 1980s action star Grace Jones. He also betrayed Schwarzenegger’s title character, resulting in a fight between the two. It was a bloody one, with Chamberlain nearly biting Conan’s ear off. But he was ultimately stabbed and killed, mercifully ending this brutal performance.

Deion Sanders – Saturday Night Live (1994):

Like Wayne Gretzky before him on this list, two-sport star Deion Sanders put forth a massive bomb in terms of acting on “Saturday Night Live” in 1994. At the time, he played for the Cincinnati Reds. Major League Baseball (MLB) was experiencing a strike and Sanders was assigned to be the team’s representative in a skit.

The result was simply terrible. “Primetime” seemed to flaunt his wealth by taking phone calls involving supposedly lucrative paydays. But he couldn’t keep the lines straight, as he stumbled and bumbled his way to a performance that could legitimately be called one of the worst hosting performances on “Saturday Night Live.” It’s certainly one of the worst by an athlete.

Hulk Hogan – Mr. Nanny:

Hogan is known for his career as arguably the most popular pro-wrestler of all-time. Given his legendary status in a scripted competition where he cut lengthy promos in front of the mic, you would think he’d be decent at acting. But his dud “Mr. Nanny” argued otherwise.

Hogan had several acting roles that didn’t exactly blow the doors off critics. This gem may take the cake, however. It starred Hogan in a role in which he dressed in a pink tutu and did ballerina dancing. That’s probably enough said, and enough to earn the role a spot on this list.

Shaquille O’Neal – Kazaam:

Like fellow Lakers legend Wilt Chamberlain before him, O’Neal used his size and stature to become of the NBA’s all-time greats on the basketball court. He also used that status to earn him several acting roles.

The one that takes the top spot on the list of the 25 worst athlete acting performances is his starring role as the genie “Kazaam.” It was 1990s cheese at its best – or you could say it was actually at its worst. O’Neal rhymed and rapped his lines all the way to producing just an outright piece of trash. The 1990s was a decade known for producing some time-honored cinematic classics. Or at the very least, some endearing comedies. “Kazaam” was neither. It was simply a schlock-filled flick that proves the best athletes rarely translate to success in the acting field.