In Hollywood, it's not easy to maintain a successful career. An actor might be on everybody's lips one day and then forgotten the next day. When an actor loses their fan following and stops getting cast, they can either disappear or try to relaunch their career after a while.
Relaunching one's acting career can happen due to other reasons as well. When actors are typecasted, they try to break through their image and choose completely different roles to show more range in their talent. It need not be mentioned but the successful relaunch of an actor is rare and only a few performers have been able to achieve the feat.
John Travolta
John Travolta achieved overnight success with Welcome Back Kotter, a TV show in the 1970s. He got offered plenty of movies after that and there were many blockbusters such as Saturday Night Fever and Grease. However, eventually, Travolta's career started declining and one by one all his movies flopped.
Many called it the end of his career until Tarantino, to everyone's surprise, cast him in the now-iconic movie, Pulp Fiction. This opportunity from Tarantino catapulted his career and he had some great successes with hit films like Face/Off, Michael, and Get Shorty.
Kristen Stewart
Kristen Stewart came into the limelight with movies such as Panic Room and Into The Wild. Not long after that, she played Bella Swan in Twilight and turned into a household name and an icon for teens. However, it also put a lot of negative light on her because outside the fandom, the movies didn't have a good reputation.
After finishing the Twilight Saga, she purposefully avoided being typecast. She only chose indies and eccentric stories like Personal Shopper to get out of the teen vampire image. She was successful in doing so because recently she played Princess Diana in Spencer which is claimed to be her best work yet and even earned her an Oscar nomination.
Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman likes to dip her toes in big-budget movies as well as smaller indie films. This has prevented her from being stuck in a "type" in Hollywood. She started her career with Stars Wars prequels, which instantly turned her into a success.
Her more critical roles in smaller films (like Jackie and Black Swan) may not earn her a lot of money, but it does bring Oscar nominations to her doorstep, even a win for Black Swan. Portman is also a recurring character in the MCU as Jane Foster. Thus, she successfully enjoys the best of both worlds.
Daniel Radcliffe
Daniel Radcliffe's life completely changed at the age of 11 when he bagged the role of Harry Potter. He played the world-famous wizard for about 10 years and the character is so popular that even though, it made him a star, it also ensured that people would only see him as a bespectacled boy wizard for a long time to come.
However, Daniel did everything he could to break out of that image. He had been mostly doing indies after finishing Harry Potter and many of these roles are much darker. He has completely moved away from the kids and teen fantasy genre.
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder was immensely popular in the '80s and early '90s. She has plenty of hits under her belt from that era such as Edward Scissorhands, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Heathers. But then she fell from stardom when she was convicted of theft of $5,000 worth of clothes in 2001.
Her career almost collapsed as fans were more interested to know about shoplifting than her acting talents. However, she made a stellar comeback in Stranger Things, and suddenly, Ryder earns global fame and her career is back on track.
Joaquin Phoenix
Joaquin Phoenix struggled to escape his brother River's shadow when he started out as an actor. Among others, he accomplished this in Ron Howard's Parenthood and Gus Van Sant's To Die For. His career peaked in the early 2000s, with roles in Gladiator, The Village, Signs, and Walk the Line.
At this stage, he was well on his way to becoming a star with mass appeal but he chose a different route. He worked in films like Two Lovers, The Immigrant, and We Own The Night, which were all directed by James Gray. He wanted people to perceive his characters onscreen and forget that he is Joaquin Phoenix. As a result of this, he became so immersed in the portrayal of Joker that he won an Academy Award for the role.
Andrew Garfield
Andrew Garfield's breakout performance in The Social Network cemented his position as a leading man. His most famous role was Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel. Despite excellent reviews for his portrayal of Peter Parker, he described the experience as "heartbreaking" considering that the series was largely regarded as artistic failures.
To get over the Spider-Man disappointment, he turned to more creative projects. The result is that not only he was nominated this year for his amazing performance in Tick, Tick... BOOM!, but he also got the opportunity to get closure with his Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Matthew McConaughey
Matthew McConaughey made his name in the courtroom thriller A Time to Kill. Directors like Robert Zemeckis cast him in Contact, and Steven Spielberg cast him in Amistad. However, he got into the world of rom-coms with The Wedding Planner and got too involved in them with not much success.
The actor acknowledged this before it was too late and took a break for 20 months. His comeback saw him exclusively feature in films that stretched him as an actor, starting with William Friedkin's Killer Joe as a sleazy cop-turned-hunter. Following that, his credits include Magic Mike, Interstellar, and the Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club. His acting prowess quickly became the talk of the town again.
Robert Pattinson
Even though Kristen Stewart already had an established name in the industry before Twilight, Robert Pattinson was hardly known by anyone. He played Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter films but after that, he practically disappeared and people forgot about him until he stepped into the shoes of Edward Cullen and turned into an overnight sensation.
However, this resulted in him being typecast as the "beautiful boy" with not much opportunity to show his acting chops. Pattinson's roles in Water for Elephants and Remember Me fit into his image of a lover boy. This didn't bring much success though and it was then that he turned to more creative projects such as The Lighthouse, Nolan's Tenet, and Good Time. He earned a lot of critical acclaim for these movies and the result was that he donned the iconic role of Batman in the recent Matt Reeves film.
Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr. showed great promise even in the early days of his career. In the '90s, he even earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance in Chaplin. Unfortunately, a severe drug addiction, arrest, and a long jail term hampered his career.
However, that wasn't the end of his acting career as many thought. Downey got sober and went out to prove himself again, which meant taking any job he could obtain to establish his reliability. His appearances in projects such as The Shaggy Dog, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, and Gothika helped him regain good public attention despite not being amazing films. Soon after, with roles such as Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes, he became an A-lister who guarantees blockbuster movies.