Some famous names managed to do the impossible, and that’s going from punchlines and scandals to people the public is genuinely happy to see again.
Prison didn’t finish the brand
The idea of Martha Stewart being sent to prison sounded pretty ridiculous in 1998. But that’s exactly what happened in 2004, she was convicted on charges connected to lying to investigators about a stock sale. She went on to spend nearly five months in federal prison.
It completely ruined the polished image that she had built up for a while. Yet she managed to make it back from that. During a celebrity roast event, she poked fun at Justin Bieber and became friends with Snoop Dogg. She leaned into being less perfect. Turns out, that’s exactly what she needed to do, and people started loving her again.
Hollywood considered him too risky
Robert Downey Jr. wasn’t exactly an easy sell when Iron Man came out. He’d previously been arrested repeatedly over drugs and violated probation. He’d spent time in prison and lost his role on Ally McBeal as a result, so studios weren’t exactly lining up to hire him.
Even Marvel was apparently worried about insuring him, too. But director Jon Favreau pushed for him anyway, and he was chosen to play Tony Stark. The 2008 movie ended up making Downey one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, completely changing the idea of him as a liability. He became the face of an entire movie universe.
One arrest swallowed her career
Winona Ryder had a terrific film run in the late ’80s and ’90s. She was in Heathers, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and Reality Bites, after all. It seemed like she was unstoppable. But then came 2001. She was arrested for shoplifting at Saks Fifth Avenue and was accused of taking thousands of dollars in merchandise.
The case itself blew up, to the point where it was bigger than her movies for a while. Ryder was forced to disappear from major Hollywood roles and the public eye. It took a few years, but eventually, Stranger Things put her right back in millions of living rooms. They loved her.
People finally heard her side
Pamela Anderson spent so many years being talked about, and probably far more than she got to talk for herself. It was thanks to Baywatch that she became huge. But then came the endless press coverage. Everything about her was criticized, including her marriages and her looks.
Let’s not forget the private tape stolen from her and Tommy Lee. A lot of people saw her as a joke, but then she took control of the story. Yes, Anderson released a memoir titled Love, Pamela, and the Netflix documentary Pamela, a Love Story. She said that people came up to apologize for how they viewed her. What a turnaround.
The tabloid story finally changed
There was a time when you couldn’t open a newspaper without seeing a headline about Lindsay Lohan. It was quite a long way from the days of The Parent Trap and Freaky Friday. She’d been arrested multiple times and had been in and out of rehab. Her acting career came to a halt around 2010.
But then she began working again, starting with Netflix romantic comedies. The sequel to Freaky Friday, titled Freakier Friday, came out and changed the conversation. Now, people were talking about Lohan acting again, rather than whatever had gone wrong that week.
The old punchlines stopped being funny
The way that Britney Spears used to be mocked feels pretty uncomfortable now. Everything about her was apparently open to criticism, whether it was her relationships or parenting skills, even her mental health. The 2007 incident where she shaved her head became a source of entertainment, and she was shortly placed under a conservatorship.
But then, in court in 2021, Spears revealed the truth. She was essentially made a prisoner, forced to take medication and unable to make decisions about her own life. The conservatorship ended that November. The release of her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, gave her room to tell her own version of events, and people began loving her again.
A scandal nearly ended everything
Rob Lowe’s fall from Brat Pack heartthrob was pretty spectacular, and it happened because of a s** tape. One of the people on the tape was 16, and the legal age to make a video like that was 21 in Georgia. Lowe was sentenced to community service.
He then focused on getting sober and, slowly, he got better roles. The West Wing gave him serious credibility again, while Parks and Recreation did something else. It made him funny. He became the lovable Chris Traeger, miles away from what people originally saw him as.
The troubled kid grew up
What happened to Drew Barrymore was pretty sad. She’d been famous since she was a child, and all that time in the spotlight led to her drinking and using drugs. As a teen, she became a former child star with serious problems.
Yet she still managed to come back from that, thanks to movies like The Wedding Singer, Never Been Kissed, and Charlie’s Angels. She tried her hand behind the camera, too, as a producer, and went on to host her own daytime TV show. People see her very differently these days.
He learned to play William Shatner
William Shatner had two reputations for years. On the one hand, he was Captain Kirk from Star Trek. On the other, he was the person his original Star Trek castmates had said was extremely difficult to work with. Stories about his ego followed him around for decades.
That’s probably why Shatner started making the joke himself. He turned William Shatner into a character of his own through commercials and comedy appearances. It seemed like he was in on the joke, and soon enough, the hamminess became part of the fun.
Being uncool didn’t last forever
The problem with Donny Osmond wasn’t that he’d done something wrong. No, he became hated because he was too wholesome. ‘Puppy Love,’ the Osmond family image, along with the teeth and the sweaters, stuck around. People began hating him for being so sweet.
But that ended up working in his favor. The public’s sense of nostalgia rescued the very image that had boxed him in, and there’s no better example of that than his Las Vegas show with Marie Osmond. It was supposed to be a short run. It lasted 11 years. Clearly, people liked Donny.
The apology came 32 years later
Vanessa Williams made history in 1983 when she was crowned Miss America, the first Black woman to do so. But she was forced to resign a year later. Penthouse announced it was going to publish private nude photographs taken before her reign, and the fallout was quite brutal.
Most people only talked about the scandal, and none of her achievements. She refused to let that get her down, though. Williams got hit records and Broadway roles. She also had major TV success, including Ugly Betty, and then returned to Miss America as head judge in 2015. She received a public apology from the organization, too.
The Hathaway hate burned itself out
There was no arrest or feud involved in Anne Hathaway’s downfall. There wasn’t even a scandal. Turns out, she’d apparently won too many awards while seeming a little too polished about it, and the hate against her became something titled ‘Hathahate.’
People would happily pick apart her speeches and her enthusiasm. It got quite personal, and Hathaway even said herself that the negativity affected her career opportunities for a while. But people finally seemed to get over it, and she returned to major films and fashion campaigns.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
12 celebrities who hid their true identity to make it in Hollywood
Hollywood has no shortage of reinventions, but for some stars, their makeovers went much further than a new haircut or stage name.
12 celebrities who hid their true identity to make it in Hollywood
