The fallout from Will Smith giving Chris Rock both a verbal and literal smackdown for a joke Rock made about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, on Oscars night became a global controversy in 2022. Smith won the Best Actor award for “King Richard” shortly after the altercation, then resigned from the Academy as part of his long-winded apology tour.
But this is far from the first time that someone in Tinseltown has gotten themselves on Hollywood’s blacklist, in which the whole industry essentially cuts them out of work. Who could forget the notorious Hollywood Ten scandal of 1947, which saw more than a few screenwriters of communist sympathies kicked out of the industry (more on them later)?
Time will tell if Smith is eventually welcomed back into the industry’s good graces, but these 25 Hollywood exiles have had a far, far more difficult road to returning to the entertainment industry again.
Why Charlie Sheen Was Blacklisted
Chris Pizzello / AP Photo
Charlie Sheen sure had a good time running with his bad-boy image, dating and marrying such high-profile stars as Denise Richards, and being no stranger to drugs, rehab and run-ins with the police. But then came his little rant at “Two and a Half Men” costar Jon Cryer, which got Sheen axed from the successful sitcom.
Asked not long after the outburst if he was bipolar, Sheen claimed he was “bi-winning,” which didn’t exactly make casting directors anxious to call. Perhaps trying to get past the unpleasantness, Sheen even acted under his birth name, Carlos Estevez, in 2013’s “Machete Kills.”
