Never Forget: 10 Athletes Who Thought They Were Movie Stars

It’s tough to blame an athlete for believing that a lifetime of success in sports is in some way indicative of the ability to produce similar results in another industry.

Just because someone is a gifted athlete doesn’t mean he or she should give up on the pursuit of other interests and opportunities. And there are numerous examples of multi-talented athletes who took full advantage of newly opened doors to find success in other careers and ventures—so why not give it shot?

On the downside, going out on a limb also puts an athlete at risk for spectacular failure. For sports celebrities enticed by the stardom of Hollywood, trying to start a second career as a movie actor is more likely to lead to a highly visible face-plant than top billing in a summer blockbuster. 

Bad acting is nearly impossible to hide behind the various accouterments of cinema, so when a great athlete is cast as a fictional character in a movie, an awful performance is going get exposed. And even though one bad film doesn’t always stop a movie studio from making the same mistake twice, in the end the career move is probably going to look foolish rather than ambitious. 

These are 10 athletes who thought they were movie stars...but weren't. 

Wilt Chamberlain

After he called it quits in 1973, it was only a matter of time before legendary NBA big man Wilt Chamberlain (briefly) succumbed to the acting bug that plagues so many living in and around the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In 1976 he formed East Broadway Pictures, a production and distribution company that created the plot-less extreme sports-centered film Go for It. 

The only credited acting work Chamberlain did was an unimpressive appearance in 1984’s Conan the Destroyer, an unimpressive sequel to Conan the Barbarian. He played Bombaata, an angry henchman and would-be assassin who is (surprise, surprise) ultimately killed by Conan, the very man he intended to kill! Chamberlain did not stand out in a good way. 

Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote in his review: 

"

In case you came in late, Conan is the old Weird Tales magazine character created in 1932 by Robert E. Howard for the soda-fountain set. Conan is a sort of cut-rate Hercules, the mythological hero of what's called the Hyborean Age, which, from what we see in Conan the Destroyer, looks to be about 30 minutes east of Los Angeles by freeway.

"

Joe Namath

Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath was the NFL’s first true superstar. The prolific pitchman embraced celebrity in a way that was unusual for the time, but it would put him right at home in the league today.

Although “Broadway” Joe was perfectly at ease in front of a camera, he was never an especially impressive actor. Namath’s low points were probably the high-profile guest spots he did on The Brady Bunch and The A-Team, plus his co-starring role in 1970’s Norwood. The Glen Campbell film was not well-received by critics, but Namath’s presence was, mostly because he was there to look pretty and smile. 

The film review in the New York Times had this to say: "Big Joe has little to do and he does it well. But the picture is a showcase for the guitar-playing Campbell. And it is an entirely shapeless affair that simply bumps him around the country."

Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan doesn’t have anything to prove to anybody, so if he ever had designs on becoming a movie star post-NBA, it’s for the best that he never felt compelled to make it happen. Outside of his appearances in documentaries, his first and only real movie role was as…himself…in 1996’s Space Jam. 

The film is forever beloved by a strong contingent of fans who absorbed the full force of the movie’s marketing campaign (people who were kids in 1996) and were thrilled to see the biggest sports star in the universe on the silver screen. But, let’s be real, Jordan is playing an imaginary pickup game of basketball with Looney Tunes characters, who obviously carry the movie (with a pretty great appearance by Bill Murray, playing himself). 

James Berardinelli of Reel Views (h/t Rotten Tomatoes) reviewed the film: "This movie, which could just as easily be called The Michael Jordan Worship Show, plays like a 90-minute homage to His Airness, selling his every virtue."

Dan Marino

NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino’s movie filmography is mercifully short—he’s appeared in four films, including his last, Bad Boys II in 2003. Considering Marino was given a theoretically fail-proof role in all four movies—as Dan Marino—the fact his performances were forgettable at best is bewildering. 

The most cringe-worthy of Marino’s cameos is in the classic gross-out comedy Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, starring Jim Carrey. What makes his turn at playing himself so enigmatic is that he’s basically just engaging in the Dan Marino day-to-day (minus the whole getting kidnapped thing), which is something he should have mastered. 

Roger Ebert wrote of the film, "The plot deepens, if that is the word, when Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino also disappears." (That about sums up the impact of Marino’s performance in the movie.)

Roosevelt Grier

An All-Pro defensive tackle in the 1950s, Roosevelt “Rosey” Grier actually made a pretty decent living through the early '80s as a television actor after retiring from the NFL in 1966. Maybe he decided to stick to TV because his brief foray into film wasn’t very promising. 

The crown jewel (in a bad way, just to clarify) of Grier’s IMDB page is the 1972 nightmare, The Thing with Two Heads. It's your average stunningly racist romp about a “terminally ill brain surgeon” who has his head transplanted onto the neck of a black man (Grier) on death row. 

Ebert summed up the film: "His sinister plan is to wait until his head grows on—and then cut Roosevelt Grier's head off! Not only that, but Millard is a racist with a line of lousy cracks about watermelon for dessert. Some days you just can't win. It's bad enough to try to work with a veteran actor breathing down your back—but in your ear?” 

Hulk Hogan

For as well as Hulk Hogan played a slightly exaggerated version of himself in the wrestling ring for all those years, that star power didn’t necessarily translate to the silver screen. Sure, he was fine in Rocky III, but he was basically playing himself and sharing the screen with Sylvester Stallone, who seems to have trained at the WWE school of over-dramatics. 

In what is, perhaps, his only starring role as not Hulk Hogan, the 1993 disaster Mr. Nanny wasn’t exactly a reach for Hogan, who plays a “has-been wrestler” hired by the worst father in the world to care for the worst children in the world.

Twelve years later Vin Diesel would star in essentially the exact same movie. The Pacifier was terrible, but Mr. Nanny makes it look like Citizen Kane.

In her review, Jane Horwitz of the Washington Post wrote: "In its cynical blending of children, superstar, guns and comedy, Kindergarten Cop was execrable, but it was slick. Mr. Nanny isn't slick, it's sticky.” (You’re no Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hulk Hogan.)

Shaquille O'Neal

Ask someone to name the worst of Shaquille O’Neal’s many cinematic flops, and he’ll almost certainly go the Kazaam route. The movie poster exclaimed, “He’s a rappin’ genie-with-an-attitude…and he’s ready for slam-dunk fun!” Obviously, that would be a totally reasonable choice, but what did people expect with a tagline like that? 

Personally, I would argue that Steel, Shaq’s follow-up performance from a year later, was even worse. The “low-rent, poorly lit superhero” flick that was made for just $16 million in 1997, which is a shoestring budget compared to the superhero movies of today. 

Sean Means of Film.com (h/t Rotten Tomatoes) wrote: “Steel isn't a movie to excite or even entertain. It exists to move merchandise—specifically, Shaquille O'Neal's oversized physique and marketing machine.” 

Brian Bosworth

A two-time consensus All-American at Oklahoma, where his college career ended in disgrace, linebacker Brian Bosworth played just three seasons in the NFL—all with the Seahawks. It wasn’t a long professional career by any standards, but it was more than enough time to make a lasting impression in Seattle.

Post-football, Bosworth has made sporadic (and largely unsuccessful) attempts at an acting career. Released in 1991, Stone Cold stars The Boz as Joe Huff, a rogue cop who doesn’t play by anybody’s rules but his own, and on occasion not even those. Huff is enlisted by the FBI to infiltrate a particularly violent biker gang, in hopes of taking it down from the inside.

Six months later Charlie Sheen headlined Beyond the Law, which is a much better version of the exact same movie.

Richard Harrington of the Washington Post began his review of the film with this observation: "Brian Bosworth's acting debut in Stone Cold carries about the same wallop The Boz did in the late stages of his very brief career in professional football."

Dennis Rodman

Before he became America’s unofficial (and entirely unqualified) ambassador to North Korea, Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman was trying his hand at a post-NBA career as a movie star. In 1998 he starred alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mickey Rourke in Double Team, a film about hitting and shooting stuff. Cartoonishly stupid as it was, Rodman actually received better reviews for his performance than either of his co-stars.

The same cannot be said about his 2001 follow-up, Simon Sez, an “action-and-espionage thriller” co-starring deservedly maligned bro-comic Dane Cook, quite possibly the world’s least funny comedian. 

Joe Leydon of Variety wrote in his review: "Dennis Rodman shoots—and kicks—but fails to score in Simon Sez, a frenetically junky action adventure that will quickly dribble off to vid stores after a token fast break in theatrical release. … Rodman is stuck in a rattletrap star vehicle that recalls the most desperately unfunny spy spoofs of the mid-1960s."

Howie Long

Legendary Raiders defensive end Howie Long retired in 1994, after a Hall of Fame career that stretched 13 seasons. Very popular among fans, Long looked poised to embark on a post-NFL career as an action star with a supporting role in the 1996 John Travolta vehicle Broken Arrow. Though the reviews were mixed (at best), the John Woo film performed well, earning over $70 million domestically. 

Ever the overachiever, a mere two years later Long was already headlining his own action movie. In 1998’s Firestorm, Long plays a ballsy firefighter who “leads a team of smoke-jumpers who parachute into forest fires.” But the real drama begins when they encounter an evil murderer who escapes prison by killing an inmate and taking “his place in a group of convicts headed out to fight a forest fire.” The only thing more hollow than the plot was Long’s performance. And audiences agreed—Firestorm made just $8 million domestically, $11 million less than its budget. 

Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: “Former defensive lineman Howie Long is such a wooden actor, you'd think he'd catch fire in a movie called Firestorm. But bad acting is the least of the problems in a film that looks smart when it starts, then quickly sputters."