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There is such a thing as too much of a good time.
There’s no such thing as partying too hard… right?
Wrong. And while lifestyles of the rich and famous are often peppered with thrilling tales of debauchery, most of the time, those stories only sound cool when you’re not actually living them. Being a star doesn’t mean you’re immune to the consequences that come with getting a bit too crazy.
Though there’s the odd success story, such as in the cases of Eddie Redmayne and Matt LeBlanc — both managed to follow nights of partying with auditions for what would become their breakout roles — many stars know what it feels like to have bad habits get in the way of your career.
Ahead, we take a look at nine celebs who lost out on jobs because of a bit too much partying.
01 of 09
Christopher Atkins
In the 1980s, Christopher Atkins became a heartthrob breakout after starring in The Blue Lagoon opposite Brooke Shields. However, his acting career was never able to quite reach the highs of that 1980 film. Recently, the 65-year-old actor admitted he lost out on a role that could have truly propelled him into stardom: Ren McCormack in Footloose.
The role ultimately went to Kevin Bacon, which launched the actor’s entire career. Atkins chalks it up to the fact that he was partying way too hard at the time. At a Q&A panel at the Fanboy Expo Knoxville in Tennessee, per PEOPLE, Atkins said candidly, “I was a mess back then. I was partying it up way too much, and they called me in. I said… ‘I can’t go in right now. I’ve been drinking and carrying on.’”
According to Atkins, he was essentially guaranteed the part, but the creatives wanted him to come in just to be sure. And, well, it didn’t go great.
“I went in and I just blew that audition,” he said. “I mean, it wasn’t even an audition. I had the part, but I was so messed up that they said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to have to pass on this guy.’ And I’m almost 40 years sober, so there you go.”
02 of 09
Dominic Fike
Dominic Fike played the character of Elliot, a young drug-user who befriends Rue (Zendaya) and Jules (Hunter Schafer), in season 2 of HBO’s Euphoria. But it was Fike’s real-life drug use that cost him a part when he first auditioned for season 1.
In a 2022 interview with GQ, Fike admitted he had been using “so many drugs” at the time, but had managed to get through multiple rounds of callbacks and was given a final read with one of the show’s stars, Barbie Ferreira.
For this final audition, Fike had been high on mushrooms in order to help him get into character for the audition — except, it didn’t actually help at all. “I started peaking right when me and Barbie were reading,” Fike said, and his drug-addled state made him think that series creator Sam Levinson was wearing women’s clothes.
“I looked at him and I was like, ‘Are you wearing a dress right now?’ It was crazy. I started making fun of everybody in the room,” he reflected.
03 of 09
Edward Furlong
Though Terminator 2: Judgment Day put then-adolescent actor Edward Furlong on the map, that time in the sun was quickly dashed when he was dropped from the next Terminator sequel due to a cocaine addiction.
In a 2024 interview on Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, Furlong candidly discussed the personal troubles that led to him being let go from his breakout role.
“When I lost Terminator 3. Oh my God, dude. So much drugs in my life,” he reflected. “That was the contract: They were like, ‘We want you to not do any drugs.’ Whatever, just sign a clause in the contract, no drugs. And it was a sweet deal. It was the best deal that I had ever gotten in my life. For T3, it was like a lot of money, like millions. And I had never made that kind of money. So I called my friends, and I’m like, ‘Guys, I just signed this f***ing awesome contract, we’re going to go to the club, we’re going to get a bunch of blow.’”
That very celebration ended up costing him the job. Later that night, he overdosed on cocaine, collapsing on the floor of the club. His friends called an ambulance, and he later learned he had suffered a seizure. At first, he was simply embarrassed by the incident, but it soon made headlines.
“The news caught wind. And, of course, [the studio was] like, ‘Yeah, you know, you lost the movie. We’re not going to do it with you.’ That was it. And I was like, ‘I’m so sorry, oh my God,’ but it didn’t matter... I had just signed a contract saying that.” He added, “That was the worst luck or maybe the best luck... I was already on a downward trajectory in a lot of ways, so maybe if I had had that it would’ve been worse.”
In February 2025, Furlong shared on Instagram that he’d been sober for seven years.
04 of 09
Tom Hiddleston
Before Tom Hiddleston made a blood pact with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the actor had been up for a role in the Pirates of the Caribbean series. And not just any sequel or random B-character role: Hiddleston had an audition to be the Will Turner in The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003).
Thus, Hiddleston would have been able to achieve mainstream success about a decade prior to his role in 2011’s Thor — had he not been hungover from a night of college partying.
As the Night Manager star explained in an interview for the documentary Muse of Fire, the night before his audition for The Curse of the Black Pearl he went out for celebratory drinks after one of his college friends finished their exams. The next day, the young actor had a massive hangover and hadn’t even become acquainted with the script.
“[The casting director] was like, ‘Uh-huh. Well, thanks for coming in,’” Hiddleston explained. And when the casting director asked him why he had failed to memorize the script, he chalked it up to only receiving the script the previous night. Though he obviously didn’t get called back, he doesn’t hold a grudge.
“You’ve got to learn one way or the other. But Orlando Bloom is Orlando Bloom. Who is to say I would have gotten it anyway?” the actor admitted.
05 of 09
Mackenzie Phillips
Mackenzie Phillips may have been on top of the world while starring in the hit ‘70s sitcom One Day at a Time, but she was struggling privately. Those difficulties led to her being fired during the show’s fifth season. She later returned in a recurring capacity before being dumped for good in the final season.
Phillips has been open about her previous drug problems. In July 2026, she spoke at the Fanboy Expo Knoxville about being let go from One Day at a Time.
“Part of the contract was, because we all had a morals contract, but mine was a little more specific,” Phillips said. She explained that if anyone in the cast or crew thought she might be inebriated, she would be promptly taken “to a doctor for urinalysis.”
The day that Phillips was fired, she was taking a nap during her lunch break when she was woken up by the show’s co-executive producer, Patricia Fass Palmer. “She came up to me, and she said, ‘Mac, wake up. Wake up. We’re gonna take you to the doctor and have you pee in a cup.’”
Phillips tried to bargain for more time, but Palmer wasn’t budging. “‘No, we’re not waiting until tomorrow.’ And I said, ‘Okay, well.’ She said, ‘All right, Mac. Grab your stuff and get it together. Get all your stuff. And leave.’ So that’s what I did. And that was that,” Phillips explained.
After several rocky years that included multiple stints in jail, Phillips has been happily sober since 2010 and is committed to paying it forward.
“I help others, because I can’t keep it unless I give it away. The best way to get out of self-obsession is to help another person,” she told Healthy Women in 2021.
06 of 09
Dax Shepard
The “only career wreckage-y thing” Dax Shepard claims to have ever done was a disastrous appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 2004, which led to the CHiPS actor getting temporarily banned from the show.
On Blake Griffin’s The Pursuit of Healthiness in 2021, Shepard reflected on his career nadir during a struggle with addiction.
“I had done the pre-interview in a blackout, and I woke up to the hotel security shaking me awake,” he recalled. “And I had to be on Conan in literally 20 minutes from getting shook awake... I show up on the show, I don’t know what he’s talking about. I can tell he’s cueing me up for stories I’ve told, but I don’t know any of the stories. So, I’m just doing what I can to be funny out there and I am a mess.”
Despite the fact that he was incoherent, rambling, and even fell down while trying to sit, Shepard claimed that “the audience dug it. It was fine for the audience.” However, O’Brien was none too pleased.
“What a disaster,” Shepard admitted. “I didn’t know any of the stories, I broke a coffee table. So I was banned from that show for some years, until I got sober and I got myself back on it and now I’ve been on it a bazillion times.”
07 of 09
Mark Strong
Mark Strong is a recognizable English character actor who has played menacing villains in movies like Stardust (2007), Sherlock Holmes (2009), and Shazam! (2019). However, the one part that Strong will always regret blowing is that of a Bond villain.
In 2021, the Kingsman: The Secret Service star confessed on Sky One’s There’s Something About Movies that he had gotten way too drunk the night before with future James Bond star Daniel Craig and was “severely hungover” the next day. Ironically, it was during Pierce Brosnan’s Bond reign that Strong made his mistake.
“I went up for a villain in a Bond movie (in the) Pierce Brosnan era… and I learnt the lines… and to celebrate I went out for a drink, and I got pissed. I overdid it, and the next day I was severely hungover,” he said.
In the end, Strong couldn’t pass up at least giving the audition a shot, so he still went in: “I started, then I just forgot my lines, couldn’t remember what they were and they all just kind of fell apart.”
It was a “terrible experience,” Strong admitted, but he “really learned from it.”
And the cruel joke of getting sloshed with the guy who went on to become Bond was not lost on him, either: “The irony was, the guy I was out the night before getting pissed with was Daniel Craig. So I blame him!”
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08 of 09
Lauren Tewes
The Love Boat was a TV favorite during the ‘70s and ‘80s, but in 1984 it lost one of its key stars, Lauren Tewes, who had played cruise director Julie McCoy ever since the show started in 1977. And while she briefly returned during the final two seasons, she had been initially let go for her cocaine use.
In 2025, actor Fred Grandy, who played Burl “Gopher” Smith on The Love Boat, appeared on the CW’s docuseries TV We Love and reflected on his regrets over what had happened.
“My one regret about her situation was that I never really came forward and defended and supported her in a way that we should have,” he said. “So there is some regret there, at least as far as I’m concerned.”
“Let’s face it,” he added, “this is a business where a lot of people use controlled substances in one way, shape, or form.” But Tewes’ substance abuse wasn’t just a little bit of gratuitous fun — it was a problem, and it came with severe consequences.
“It was a different time,” Tewes said in the docuseries. “I was a woman, so I was blacklisted for that.” In a 1985 interview with TV Guide (via UPI), Tewes revealed that drugs had cost her not just her job, but her home and plenty of money.
“You think you are fine,” she reflected. “You think you are stronger, braver. I thought it gave me the courage I missed. It was like going to Oz and asking for courage, but instead, I got cocaine.”
09 of 09
Ray Winstone
English actor Ray Winstone once blew an audition for a Star Wars film because he was drunk at his audition.
The Black Widow and Sexy Beast actor told Far Out in 2025 that he had auditioned for an unspecified prequel film, but noted that he was in the running for “the Princess’ father, or something like that.” This likely meant that he was auditioning to play the father of Padme Amidala, played by Natalie Portman.
He said that it “didn’t go well,” in large part because he was so inebriated.
“I was pissed anyway,” Winstone reflected. “I’d been out all night, and I turned up, and I knew I was wrong for the part as soon as I walked in, but instead of saying that, [George Lucas] relayed the message to me through someone else, and I took umbrage at that.”
However, there were no hard feelings between Winstone and Star Wars mastermind Lucas: “I’ve worked for George since, and he was fine. He didn’t remember. Or if he did, he didn’t take it to heart.”
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
