From child abuse to plagiarism and worse, 2014 saw some of Hollywood's favorites tarnish everything people liked about them.
Public meltdowns and PR nightmares aren't just for celebs you already hate – sometimes even the most acclaimed super stars find new and insane ways to burn through years of good will and popularity.
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Here are the six celebrities who managed to fall from grace the fastest in 2014.
Robin Thicke
Robin Thicke's downfall really began at the VMAs in August 2013 when he dressed up like Beetlejuice and performed "Blurred Lines" while Miley Cyrus groped his crotch with a giant foam hand. But the real trouble began after the show when a photo was snapped of the singer allegedly grabbing a girl's butt. This spawned a slew of rumors that Robin was cheating on his wife of eight years, actress Paula Patton, with whom he has a 4-year-old son.
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The couple shook off cheating rumors for months until February 2014 when Paula separated from Robin. And that's really when the train went off the tracks. During his concerts, Robin began crying and begging for Paula to forgive him, he would send her extravagant gifts, and he even named his 2014 album Paula. Despite all this – or possibly because of it – Paula filed for divorce in October. And Paula became one of the worst-selling albums of the year.
Adrian Peterson
Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was one of the most celebrated football players in recent years. Among his accolades: he received the MVP Award and the Offensive Player of the Year Award for the 2012 NFL season, and claimed the no. 1 spot on the NFL Network's Top 100 Players of 2013 list.
Then 2014 came around, and things turn a seriously dark turn. In September 2014, Adrian was indicted by a grand jury in Texas on charges of reckless or negligent injury to a child. Allegedly, Adrian beat his 4-year-old son with a tree branch, resulting in slashes and welts all over his body. He pled no contest to the charges in November and made a deal with the court to avoid jail time. Instead, he was fined $4,000 and ordered to serve 80 hours of community service.
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A general disdain for Peterson, and his suspension from the NFL, managed to overshadow a report by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in October alleging that, in 2011, Peterson spent money that was supposed to go to his charity foundation on a hotel room orgy involving four women and his brother. Peterson has vehemently denied the report.
Lena Dunham
The two-time Golden Globe winner's circle of haters grew quite a bit larger in 2014. First, when Gawker protested Lena's decision to not pay musicians and comics who would be performing at various stops along the book tour for her memoir Not That Kind Of Girl, and then when she started getting heat for a section of her book in which she talked about bribing her younger sister for kisses and various other things that Lena herself compared to things "a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl."
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While various right-wingers online accused her of glorifying sexual assault (she wasn't) or sexually abusing her sister (she didn't), Lena's heated and aggressive Tweets in response to the allegations fueled the fire and she found herself in the middle of a press barrage. Whether the publications were defending Lena or attacking her, it was a constant stream of headlines containing her name and some version of the words "sexual abuse."
Stephen Collins
No one expected the TMZ report in October, which revealed audio of 7th Heaven star Stephen Collins admitting to having inappropriate sexual contact with underage girls. It was a startling revelation that sent shock waves around the country. Any benefit of the doubt that people wanted to give Collins was eroded by his refusal to address the situation, and by his decision to sue his estranged wife Faye Grant for damages related to the release of the tapes, which Collins claimed Grant orchestrated.
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In response to the release of the tapes, Collins was fired from the production of Ted 2, his scenes were cut from Scandal, and he became the subject of a police investigation. It's unclear if his confession, which he wrote for People, will somehow damage his reputation further or make steps towards improving it – but as several people have pointed out it's next to impossible to un-ring that bell.
Bill Cosby
Allegations against Cosby go as far back as 2004 – if not earlier – but it wasn't until this year that America's image of the wholesome Heathcliff Huxtable began to irreparably crumble.
Cosby has denied the claims, and he has not been charged in relation to any of the allegations made against him. But in terms of burning through his good will? Well, there's this…
Shia LaBeouf
In December 2013, a short film LaBeouf had directed, titled HowardCantour.com, was posted online. The film turned out to have been plagiarized from a comic book written by Ghost World scribe Daniel Clowes. When called on it, Shia mocked Clowes by plagiarizing several famous apologizes, and then kicked it up a notch by having a sky writing plane scrawl "I am sorry Daniel Clowes" in the air, stepping up the game for anyone else who wants to make sarcastic apologies.
In the midst of this controversy, the actor stormed out of a press conference in Berlin for his upcoming indie drama Nymphomaniac, and wore a paper bag, with the words "I am not famous anymore," over his head to the film's premiere.
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In 2014 things got worse for the actor. An embattled LaBeouf allegedly chased down a homeless man while demanding to eat the man's french fries, and was then forcibly removed from the musical Cabaret for disorderly conduct. According to the arrest report, LaBeouf allegedly spit at the cops and screamed homophobic slurs. While the actor went to rehab and got sober, he has been struggling to get back in the good graces of fans ever since.
This wasn't a terrible year for every star, though. A number of them had some very lovely weddings. Check out the video below for a look at the six biggest celeb weddings of 2014.
For more celeb news and year-end roundups, you can follow Zach Seemayer on Twitter @ZachSeemayer.
