Celebrities Who Soured Their Reputations Beyond Repair In 2025

Becoming a star is getting easier these days. Social media has opened up a whole new tunnel to fame that we've never seen before. At the same time, access to our favorite celebrities is becoming simpler, which means the spotlight is that much brighter. So, one wrong move and someone's celebrity status can be stripped quicker than you can say "canceled." This year, we have witnessed several cautionary tales about maintaining reputations, as many have gone down the drain in 2025.

Even veterans of Hollywood have felt the public's shifting opinion of them, inciting ire among the masses over everything from getting married to feuding with co-stars. Katy Perry's recent actions have sparked an intense debate among fans, while Leonardo DiCaprio's popularity decline accelerated this year, despite decades worth of odd behavior. Some of the names on the list might be predictable, while others were not on our 2025 Bingo card at the beginning of the year.

As long as Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift don't make a surprise jaunt down the aisle by the end of this year, then the biggest wedding of 2025 has to be that of Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos. The lavish, three-day extravaganza in Venice, Italy, was met with in-person celebrations from the likes of Ivanka Trump, the Kardashian clan, and Leonardo DiCaprio (partly why he is on this list), among others. However, the celebrations stopped there. Sánchez and Bezos' nuptials were the subject of massive protests across the European city, with massive signs, including one that said (via BBC): "If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax," with the Amazon founder's face at the bottom. The conversation bled into internet discourse, with one X user writing at the time: "This is what oligarchy looks like."

Many thought the wedding was tone-deaf, though that could be said of the couple's other ventures this year as well. On April 14, 2025, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' aerospace company, sent several female A-listers up to space for 11 minutes before landing back on the ground. Among the lucky women who took the flight was Bezos' wife, then-fiancée, Sánchez. The mission was not well received by those back on Earth. Of course, Sánchez wasn't the only one at whom people were taking aim. Pop singer Katy Perry was right there with her. 

"Firework" hitmaker Katy Perry might feel like a "plastic bag" most of the time, but after launching to space with Lauren Sánchez and others, including journalist Gayle King, Perry felt like a different, but equally knocked-down, object. In the aftermath of her now-infamous Blue Origin flight, the singer took to the comment section on an Instagram post in April to emphasize how the online hate was making her feel like a "human piñata." "...The internet is very much so a dumping ground for unhinged and unhealed [people]," she wrote. 

Katy Perry found herself with a soured reputation and at the center of criticism as the price of a Blue Origin ticket became widespread knowledge. While the cost of Perry's seat on the spacecraft, as well as whether or not she actually paid for it, is unclear, the space tech company reportedly sold a ticket for its first mission in 2021 via auction for $28 million, per The New York Times. Nonetheless, the option to go to space doesn't come across an ordinary person's desk, which made Perry look out of touch. "Stop branding privilege as achievement," one comment on her Instagram post about the journey read. "It is very embarrassing."

The shady behavior that ruined Leonardo DiCaprio's reputation didn't start in 2025, but it has become the catalyst for mocking the Hollywood legend this year. In July, DiCaprio made an appearance at the Wimbledon Tennis Championship, which the official Wimbledon X page spotlighted with a photo of the "Titanic" star in sunglasses. The comments on the post weren't quite as enthusiastic as the tournament's social media team might have hoped. Many X users joked about DiCaprio's purported relationship rule, where he refuses to date anyone older than 25 — though his current girlfriend, Vittoria Ceretti, is 27. "Chatting up ballgirls," one person mused. Despite being an Oscar-winning, acclaimed actor, DiCaprio has transformed into the butt of the joke.

It is unclear as to why trolling DiCaprio particularly snowballed this year, but it has something to do with his attendance at Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez's wedding. "The Revenant" actor went viral during the June nuptials after a photo of his attempt to conceal his face with a baseball cap was published, revealing his attendance at the contentious weekend event. He was called out for being a hypocrite online for championing environmental activism one day and hanging out with a billionaire private jet-owner the next.

The decline in Blake Lively's popularity, ironically, began during the promotion of what could have been a career-changing film. During the press tour for the 2024 movie "It Ends With Us" — based on the Colleen Hoover novel of the same title — the internet seemed to catch on to a pattern of shady behavior from Lively during interviews. The backlash was exacerbated by an old, and now-viral, interview in which Lively insulted a journalist who congratulated the actor on her pregnancy. In December 2024, the firestorm of vitriol against Lively briefly simmered when she filed a lawsuit against her "It Ends With Us" co-star, Justin Baldoni, accusing him of sexual harassment and orchestrating a smear campaign against her.

Baldoni subsequently filed a lawsuit against Lively — vehemently denying both of her major accusations — and revealed what is now generally considered cringeworthy behavior by Lively, bringing public criticism against her to a new level. In his filing, Baldoni included a text chain between himself and Lively, which alleged that Lively compared herself to the "Game of Thrones" character, Daenerys Targaryen, threatening to unleash her "dragons" — later identified in the message chain as "Ryan and Taylor," presumably husband Ryan Reynolds and friend Taylor Swift — on her co-star if he didn't accept her rewrites to the "It Ends With Us" script (via People). Despite a judge throwing out Baldoni's lawsuit against Lively in June, public perception of the actor remains contentious. 

No one has battled the wrath of the masses quite like Carrie Underwood. The "Before He Cheats" hitmaker faced significant backlash after performing "America the Beautiful" at Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2025 — one of her most controversial moments to date. Her choice was met with fierce criticism and disappointment, especially from her LGBTQ+ fans, whom she had wholeheartedly supported in the past. Although Underwood has never publicly affiliated herself with the Republican party, many are taking her performance as a sign of support for Trump. "Idk if Carrie Underwood is dim, but she lost a big chunk of her fanbase today," one X user wrote at the time.

However, in a clip from this past season of "American Idol," where Underwood is a judge, the singer explained that she sees none of the hate she receives because she uses the "post and ghost" tactic. "Anytime anybody thinks they're yelling at me or insulting me ... they're just yelling at the clouds," she said. Ironically, that message might not have reached the crowd she was speaking to, as Underwood's presence on the singing competition show conjured less-than-enthusiastic responses and even boycotts from the series' fanbase. In the Instagram announcement of her first season as a judge this year, many "Idol" viewers said they wouldn't be watching this season. "It's a no for me dawg! I'll watch when Kelly joins," one user wrote, presumably referring to Kelly Clarkson.