Rough Weekend for Ryan Reynolds, Mary-Louise Parker

You'd think the odds of Ryan Reynolds being in last weekend's box office hit would have been pretty good. He was, after all, the star of two of the week's four wide releases. Reynolds, however, defied the odds, and now he finds himself the highly visible face of one box office disappointment and one major disaster.

"R.I.P.D.," in which Reynolds plays a supernatural cop, was ripped by critics and avoided by audiences, and it ended up taking in $12.8 million on its opening weekend, less than 10% of its huge production budget. Reynolds is also the voice of the lead character in the Dreamworks animated family film "Turbo," which also had an unspectacular box office debut.

Over the past couple of years, Reynolds has enjoyed modest success in comedies ("The Change-Up"), action thrillers ("Safe House") and animated films ("The Croods"), but his ability to carry a movie as a big-budget leading man has been in question since the box office failure of "Green Lantern" in 2011. Being tied to a second mega-budget flop within two years is unlikely to help his case.

Although Reynolds is the weekend's most obvious double loser, another actor is linked to two of the week's under-performing films. Mary-Louise Parker has a supporting role in "R.I.P.D." as well as a role in "RED 2," the new action thriller starring Bruce Willis. "RED 2" took in $18.5 million for the weekend but came in fourth in the box office race; horror flick "The Conjuring" and "Turbo" drew bigger audiences, as did "Despicable Me 2" (in its third week of release) and "Grown Ups 2" (in its second week).

Unlike Reynolds, Parker hasn't made much of an effort to become a leading actor in films. Her success on TV in "Weeds" hasn't translated to the big screen, and she recently told News Corp Australia that she's contemplating an end to her acting career because "the world has gotten too mean."