13 Celebs Who Ended Their Career With One Photo

Everyone makes stupid decisions in their life. In today's digital world, making the wrong mistake can cost you more than just an undignified embarrassing moment. It can cost you your entire career and tarnish your reputation for a very long time. This is true even if you are not famous. For celebrities, they have even more at stake with their names in the limelight. We may envy them. We may wish that our lives could be more like theirs. But once the cat is out of the bag for them, the whole world knows and it is hard to be forgiven. Us normal folk can recover more quickly because… well, we are not famous. Sometimes, all it takes is just one stupid act that is captured on camera to provoke a career ender.

These are the very rare times that we actually feel bad for celebrities because they had it all and then it all came crashing down. As a society, we tend to tear celebrities down just to build them back up again. That is the way the media operates and creates sensationalism. Lucky for some of these celebs, they were able to do self-sabotaging acts and then build themselves back up and reclaim their fame. Others, not so much. It's not fair how some can get away with their scandals and others can't.

13 Dani Mathers

This happened in more recent news. Dani Mathers, a former Playboy 2015 Playmate of the Year was accused of invasion of privacy. She sent a revealing SnapChat photo of a 70 year old woman getting dressed in the locker room of an LA Fitness to a friend. She was immediately slammed on social media for body shaming and was banned from all LA Fitness locations. Prosecutors said that she took the photo without the woman's consent and posted it on social media. To defend herself, she said that she sent that picture privately to a friend. She was charged with a misdemeanor count of invasion of privacy and sentenced to perform 30 days of community labor and 3 years of probation. In response, she said "I didn't have an intention of breaking a law. I just wasn't thinking, to be honest."

12 Kesha

This crass Twitter photo of Kesha just makes us all look bad. In 2012, the 25-year-old pop singer had no shame in publicly urinating and making sure that everyone found out about it. Her tweeted caption read, "pee pee on the street. PoPo come n get me if u can find meeee. I blame traffik.” Kesha in her short-lived career (after the controversy with Dr. Luke) had made a name for herself by not being a polished respectable young lady. This wasn't the first time she made a questionable decision about her shamelessness in public. In 2009, singer Lily Allen was reportedly shocked when she witnessed Kesha urinating in a sink in the bathroom of a London pub because the line for the toilets was too long. Ewwww. That is just plain disgusting.

11 Vanessa Williams

Vanessa Williams made history by being crowned the first black Miss America back in 1984. Then, she was forced to step down and hand in her crown after nude photos of her appeared in Penthouse magazine. These were photos that were taken before her 10-month reign, so she probably had no idea that she was going to be the future Miss America. She got the last laugh when she later went on to have a successful singing and acting career. In September of 2015, CEO for Miss America, Sam Haskell made a public apology to her on behalf on his organization. He said, "I want to apologize for anything that was said or done that made you feel any less than the Miss America you are and the Miss America you will always be." This is because now in this day and age, having nude photos leaked adds to your fame and notoriety rather than damaging it.

10 Frenchie Davis

Back in 2003, Frenchie Davis seemed like a hopeful contestant on American Idol with her Aretha Franklin-like range in her voice. She even had to raise money to make the trip to her audition. From her very first audition, she wowed the judges and seemed like she could be the winner. That is until some topless photos of her resurfaced posing for an adult website when she was 19 years old. She was looking for money to help pay for her books and tuition at Howard University in Washington DC. Davis said, "at the time, I was homeless. It's not something I'm proud of, but I don't regret it either, because it contributed to who I am today." Davis even told the producers about the shots before being kicked off the show and they said they were fine with her modeling - that is until the media got wind of it. Though her talent didn't deserve this type of punishment, she had the last laugh because now she is a Broadway star.

9 Tila Tequila

Tila Tequila has already flagged herself as a has-been because she hasn't really been seen in the public eye since her dated MTV reality show and her MySpace heyday. This stint in particular really drove any chance she had for a comeback into the ground. First, she caused a stir by posting a picture from the alt-right National Policy Institute conference when she and two friends did a Nazi salute. She tweeted, "Seig heil!" with the misspelling of "sieg." The Daily Beast denoted: "In her recent glamor shot of a Facebook image shows her in a scantily clad Nazi uniform. It seems that she is either trying to make a desperate move to gain fame once again, or she is just deluding herself in believing that Hitler would have accepted her as an Asian nazi if he was still alive."

8 Britney Spears

Though Britney Spears has revived her career since going through a rough time circa 2009, her dark past still something that the public has not forgotten. There have been countless disturbing images of her erratic behavior and questionable mental stability around this time. One of the most disturbing images that sticks out in our mind is the time where she was caught shaving her own head. She looks quite creepy and happy to do it, wearing a smile similar to the Cheshire Cat's in Alice in Wonderland. What was once America's sweetheart had turned into a slow train wreck of self-destruction that was just too hard for us to watch, but impossible for us to look away. Britney fans were devastated and concerned for her, while the rest of us proceeded to watch in utter disbelief.

7 Brett Favre

Hearing about professional sports players acting inappropriate with women (especially ones that are already married) isn't really a new phenomenon. Towards the end of his career, Brett Favre made some questionable decisions in terms of where his career was heading while he had one foot out the door into retirement. When he left the Packers after playing with them for over 15 years, he started playing for the Jets. Jenn Sterger, a sports reporter who was employed by the New York Jets made allegations that Favre sent naked pictures to her when she worked there. When asked about the allegations at a press conference, Favre simply replied "I'm not getting into that." Luckily for him, there was no legal action to be taken and he was nearing towards the end of his football career anyways. So, it could be said that the "damage" to his career was minimal.

6 Mike Dukakis

Back in the '80s when most of us were babies, Mike Dukakis was campaigning for president as the Democratic nominee in 1988 running against Bush. During his presidential run, many critics commented that he was taking too much of a soft stance on defense. In response, just to prove that he did indeed take the country's defense seriously, someone in his PR campaign came up with the brilliant idea to get a picture of him on a tank. It was intended to become a key image for the campaign, but that quickly backfired. The infamous photo op was used for television ads for the George H. W. Bush campaign. It convinced the public that Dukakis was desperate to prove that he would make a good commander in-chief.

5 Shane Gibson

In 2002, Shane Gibson was the member of the ruling Progressive Liberal Party in the Parliament of the Bahamas. He was elected Immigration Minister and showed a promising career in politics. In 2007, after the death of Anna Nicole Smith, there were photos leaked of the two embracing each other in the bedroom. Though they were fully clothed and there was no proof that anything inappropriate was really going on, it fired a controversy. It was believed that they had a sexual relationship that led to Smith's application for permanent residency in the Bahamas to be expedited. Shortly thereafter, Gibson resigned his position as the Immigration Minister. He denied any wrongdoing. Even after death, Anna Nicole Smith still managed to stir up controversy and a scandal.

4 Gary Hart

Gary Hart was a United States Senator from Colorado and was the frontrunner Democratic nomination in 1988 for the presidential election. That came to a screeching halt when rumors were circulating that he was having an extramarital affair. When questioned by the press, he said: "Follow me around. I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'll be very bored." Bored was the descriptor in this scenario. After that statement, two reporters from the Miami Herald saw a woman identified as Donna Rice coming out of Hart's home in Washington DC. The paper published the story the same day after Hart's challenge. Two days after that story, the Herald obtained a photograph of Rice sitting on Hart's lap in Bimini on a yacht. Five days later, Hart dropped out of the Presidential race. Because of the scandal, Donna Rice lost her job as a marketing representative of for a pharmaceutical company.

3 Michael Phelps

In February 2008, the then 23 year old Michael Phelps was caught on camera at a party smoking a bong. The party took place about 3 months after he won 8 Olympic gold medals at the Beijing competitions. He was slapped on the wrist for a 3 month suspension from USA Swimming and he was no longer the face for Kellogg's. Though this time, most sponsors forgave him as well as his fans and the public. Later on in 2014, he was arrested for a DUI charge. He stated that it was a dark time in his life dealing with depression. Luckily, he was able to turn it all around and he made a comeback at the 2016 Olympics breaking the record of most medals ever won by an American at the age of 31 years old. He won 28 Olympic medals with 23 of them being gold.

2 Kate Moss

Kate Moss was caught on tape doing lines of cocaine and has been known to do it on more than one occasion. In 2005, Moss was accused of "indulging in a massive cocaine session - two years after she said she had given up drugs for good" according to the Evening Standard. There were pictures captured and even a video on YouTube of the supermodel snorting line after line. She was "cutting fat lines of cocaine on the back of a CD cover and sharing them with Doherty and his entourage." Seems like Moss may have been hanging out with a bad crowd of musicians. Wait, supermodels and musicians are stereotyped to do coke at their after parties. Not sure why this was such a shock. She lost major modeling contracts with international companies including H&M, Chanel and Burberry. Nevertheless, she is still Kate Moss and still an iconic supermodel. So there.

1 Chris Brown

This one is possibly the most despicable of all. When pictures of a battered Rihanna surfaced back in 2009, the world was shocked. Chris Brown was accused of assaulting Rihanna after a heated argument in the car over a text he was getting from one of his exes. Though he lost many commercial gigs and brands dropped him as a representative, that seems like a slap on the wrist. He was also sentenced to perform community labor, 5 years of formal probation and domestic violence counseling. He was never officially labeled "guilty" of his crime, so he was let off without truly forcing him to face the consequences of his actions. In 2012, his probation was then lifted and the singer was eager and ready to move on. He has lost a huge fan base and his momentum into stardom at the time was stalled after the incident. Now, his career has been revived.