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15 Actor Endorsements That Aged Horribly

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Ignacio Weil

Entertainment - June 20th 2026, 11:00 GMT+2

Johnny Depp Dior Sauvage cropped processed by imagy — 1. Johnny Depp – Dior Sauvage

Johnny Depp’s Dior Sauvage deal started as brooding movie-star perfume branding and somehow turned into a cultural weather report. The campaign was already criticized for its use of Native American imagery, and later became tangled in Depp’s very public legal battles and career fallout. Dior’s decision to stand by him made the fragrance a rallying point for some fans and a headache for others. For a cologne built around rugged mystery, it ended up smelling a lot like internet warfare. | © Dior

Scarlett Johansson Soda Stream cropped processed by imagy — 2. Scarlett Johansson – SodaStream

Scarlett Johansson’s SodaStream endorsement was meant to be bubbly, cheeky Super Bowl advertising, but the fizz went flat almost immediately. The controversy centered on SodaStream’s factory in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, which clashed with Johansson’s role as an Oxfam ambassador. She ultimately left Oxfam, citing a difference of opinion, and kept the brand deal. That is a lot of geopolitical weight for a countertop soda machine to carry. | © SodaStream

Julia Roberts L Oréal cropped processed by imagy — 3. Julia Roberts – L’Oréal

Julia Roberts selling beauty products sounds like the safest celebrity endorsement imaginable, which made the backlash even more revealing. Her L’Oréal-owned Lancôme ad was banned in the UK after regulators ruled that the image had been too digitally altered to fairly represent the product’s effect. The problem was not Roberts, who famously does not need much help from Photoshop, but the fantasy being sold around her face. A beauty campaign accidentally became a case study in impossible beauty standards. | © Lancôme / L’Oréal

Brooke Shields Calvin Klein Jeans cropped processed by imagy — 4. Brooke Shields – Calvin Klein Jeans

Brooke Shields’ Calvin Klein Jeans campaign did not just age badly; it became one of the most dissected fashion ads ever made. She was only a teenager when she delivered the famous “nothing comes between me and my Calvins” line, which drew immediate outrage over its sexual undertones. Shields later said she did not fully understand the innuendo at the time, adding a sharper edge to the whole thing. The ad sold jeans, but it also opened a debate fashion advertising still has not escaped. | © Calvin Klein Jeans

Matt Damon Crypto com cropped processed by imagy — 5. Matt Damon – Crypto.com

Matt Damon’s Crypto.com commercial might be the rare ad that got more infamous every time Bitcoin had a bad week. With its glossy “fortune favors the brave” message, the campaign framed crypto investing like humanity’s next great leap, somewhere between space travel and historical destiny. Then the market crashed, ordinary investors lost money, and the ad became a meme for celebrity-backed financial optimism gone wrong. Damon later explained that the deal helped support his charity, but the internet mostly remembered the timing. | © Crypto.com

Ashton Kutcher Popchips cropped processed by imagy — 6. Ashton Kutcher – Popchips

Ashton Kutcher’s Popchips campaign wanted to be goofy, viral, and dating-app silly; instead, one character sank the whole thing. In the ad, Kutcher played several fake bachelors, including an Indian man named Raj, complete with brownface makeup and a stereotyped accent. The backlash was fast enough that Popchips pulled the spot and apologized. It remains a perfect example of early-2010s “edgy” internet comedy aging into something brands now sprint away from in terror. | © Popchips

Sharon Stone Dior campaign cropped processed by imagy — 7. Sharon Stone – Dior

Sharon Stone’s Dior endorsement unraveled because of comments that had nothing to do with fashion, perfume, or red carpets. After the devastating Sichuan earthquake in China, Stone suggested the tragedy might be “karma” connected to China’s treatment of Tibet, sparking enormous outrage. Dior quickly removed her from its Chinese advertising and issued an apology alongside her own. The episode showed how quickly a global luxury campaign can collapse when a celebrity’s off-script moment hits the wrong market. | © Dior

Chris Noth Peloton cropped processed by imagy — 8. Chris Noth – Peloton

Peloton’s Chris Noth ad was already a reactive stunt, created after *And Just Like That...* killed off Mr. Big following a Peloton ride. The brand brought him back for a cheeky damage-control commercial, only for sexual assault allegations against Noth to surface almost immediately afterward, which he denied. Peloton pulled the ad, turning what was supposed to be a clever PR save into a second PR emergency. Very few brands have ever pedaled so hard and still ended up going backward. | © Peloton

Larry David FTX cropped processed by imagy — 9. Larry David – FTX

Larry David’s FTX commercial had a funny idea: cast him as history’s eternal skeptic, the guy who dismisses every major innovation before finally rejecting crypto. The punchline was that viewers should not be like Larry and miss out, which became painfully ironic after FTX collapsed and founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud-related charges. David later admitted he regretted doing the ad. In hindsight, the commercial’s accidental message was not “ignore Larry,” but “maybe listen to the cranky guy.” | © FTX

Dakota Fanning Marc Jacobs Oh Lola cropped processed by imagy — 10. Dakota Fanning – Marc Jacobs “Oh, Lola!”

Dakota Fanning’s Marc Jacobs “Oh, Lola!” perfume ad was intended to be playful and fashion-forward, but regulators saw something much more uncomfortable. The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority banned the campaign after complaints that it sexualized Fanning, who was 17 at the time. The image’s styling and placement of the perfume bottle became the entire conversation, overwhelming whatever fragrance fantasy Marc Jacobs had imagined. It aged into a reminder that “provocative” gets a lot messier when the star is still a minor. | © Marc Jacobs

Rachel Weisz L Oréal Revitalift cropped processed by imagy — 11. Rachel Weisz – L’Oréal Revitalift

Rachel Weisz’s L’Oréal Revitalift ad promised smoother, more even-looking skin, but the UK advertising watchdog decided the real magic ingredient was digital retouching. The campaign was banned for misleadingly exaggerating what the anti-aging product could achieve, putting Weisz in the middle of a beauty-industry debate she did not create. The irony, of course, is that using a naturally striking actor and then editing her into unreality defeated the entire point. The cream was selling youth, but the scandal sold skepticism. | © L’Oréal Paris

Natalie Portman Dior cropped processed by imagy — 12. Natalie Portman – Dior

Natalie Portman’s Dior partnership hit trouble almost as soon as it became part of the brand’s glamorous public image. Shortly after she became the face of Miss Dior Chérie, Dior designer John Galliano was fired following antisemitic remarks, and Portman publicly condemned him in strong terms. As a Jewish actress representing the house, she was suddenly tied to a scandal far uglier than any perfume campaign could soften. The endorsement survived, but the timing made the launch feel brutally unlucky. | © Dior

John Boyega Jo Malone cropped processed by imagy — 13. John Boyega – Jo Malone

John Boyega’s Jo Malone campaign began as something unusually personal: a short film inspired by his life, his family, and his London roots. Then the brand reshot the concept for the Chinese market, replacing Boyega with another actor and removing the Black cast members from the original version. Boyega called the move wrong and stepped down as global ambassador, while Jo Malone apologized. A fragrance ad about identity somehow became a textbook example of how not to treat identity.
| © Jo Malone London

Keira Knightley Chanel Coco Mademoiselle — 14. Keira Knightley – Chanel Coco Mademoiselle

Keira Knightley’s Chanel Coco Mademoiselle commercial had all the usual luxury perfume ingredients: a beautiful star, a stylish shoot, and enough suggestion to fog up the lens. The issue came when the ad was shown around children’s programming in the UK, prompting regulators to rule that it was too sexually suggestive for that placement. Chanel was not banned from being sensual; it was told the scheduling was the problem. Still, once an ad is branded “too sexy for kids’ TV,” that headline tends to outlive the perfume notes. | © Chanel

Eva Mendes Calvin Klein Secret Obsession cropped processed by imagy — 15. Eva Mendes – Calvin Klein Secret Obsession

Eva Mendes’ Calvin Klein Secret Obsession campaign leaned straight into the brand’s long tradition of selling fragrance through provocation. The TV spot featured Mendes nude and was rejected by major U.S. networks for showing too much, turning the ad into exactly the kind of controversy Calvin Klein has often managed to convert into attention. Mendes pushed back at the censorship, arguing that violence was treated more casually than nudity. The campaign aged as both a scandal and a marketing strategy doing its job a little too well. | © Calvin Klein

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Celebrity endorsements are supposed to make a product look cooler, safer, richer, or at least slightly less embarrassing on a billboard. But when famous actors attach their names to the wrong brand, campaign, or very questionable paycheck, the internet never really forgets. From awkward commercials to partnerships that became PR nightmares, these actor endorsements did not just age badly, they practically curdled in public. And honestly, half the fun is watching how confidently everyone involved thought it would work.

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Celebrity endorsements are supposed to make a product look cooler, safer, richer, or at least slightly less embarrassing on a billboard. But when famous actors attach their names to the wrong brand, campaign, or very questionable paycheck, the internet never really forgets. From awkward commercials to partnerships that became PR nightmares, these actor endorsements did not just age badly, they practically curdled in public. And honestly, half the fun is watching how confidently everyone involved thought it would work.