Everyone knows about Woody Allen and his weird affair with his lover Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter (who eventually became his wife), but few remember that another renowned director is also tainted by a sex scandal. In 1977 Roman Polanski was charged with the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. He fled to Paris to avoid sentencing and has remained in exile ever since. And yet Hollywood and society at large continues to honour his films. He won an Oscar for his 2003 film ‘The Pianist.’

Comebacks from delinquency

Everyone’s favourite child star-turned-bad-turned-good-again is Lindsay Lohan. Okay, so that was a joke. She’s still stuck in the ‘gone-bad’ stage and has nothing on Hollywood’s true wild child, who is, of course, Drew Barrymore. The cutie shot to fame when she starred in godfather Steven Spielberg’s ‘ET’ at the tender age of seven. She was boozing by the age of nine, taking cocaine by 12 and in rehab at 13.

But Drew defied the odds and, having squeezed a lifetime of delinquency into her teenage years, came back in the late nineties to establish herself as a romcom darling in films like ‘The Wedding Singer’ and ‘Never Been Kissed’ and a successful producer of the ‘Charlie’s Angels’ franchise.

Mel Gibson, on the other hand, established a solid reputation and stellar career before trashing it in an incident of drunken anti-Semitism, where he is alleged to have remarked that ‘Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world’. Hmm…perhaps not such a good idea Mel, considering that Hollywood is dominated by Jewish dynasties.

Following the path of Hugh, Mel apologised profusely for his bigotry and asked the Jewish community to help him on his path to recovery. Although the ‘Braveheart’ star isn’t likely to get any Bar Mitzvah invites any time soon, his 2006 film ‘Apocalypto’ did just fine at the box office and was nominated for a number of awards including a couple of Oscars.

Perhaps the dictum that any publicity is good publicity is true after all. At least, that is no doubt what Winona Ryder was hoping when she was caught shoplifting in 2001. The ‘Reality Bites’ star has only been in one post-klepto movie worth mentioning – ‘Mr Deeds’ – and while this wasn’t a disaster as such, the jury is still out on whether or not she will make a comeback.

Comebacks from obscurity

Breakdowns, scandals, delinquency…these are all things worth coming back from, but what about those who simply faded into obscurity. The naughties have been the decade of the return of the obscure.

Keifer Sutherland, a member of the eighties ‘Brat Pack’ faded out of fame in the early nineties only to return in 2001 as TV’s most beloved never-say-die guy Jack Bauer on the series 24. Other late developers include Matthew Fox (the hunky doc on ‘Lost’), whose previous claim to fame was ‘Party of Five’ and Patrick Dempsey (McDreamy on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’) who starred briefly in eighties romcoms like ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’.

Television has given the ladies a second chance too. Self-proclaimed has-been Teri Hatcher made it big in ‘Desperate Housewives’, having faded into advertising anonymity after her days as Lois in ‘The New Adventures of Superman’. Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America, who was forced to step down after some nude pics made it into the public arena, has made a fabulous comeback in the ‘Ugly Betty’ series as the bitchy fashion editor.

And then there are those has-been stars who we fervently hope will never make a comeback – David Hasselhoff, Chuck Norris, Angela Lansbury (Jessica Fletcher), Melanie Griffith, MC Hammer, Don Johnson and Sylvester Stallone…oh no wait…who could forget that steroid-fuelled Rocky comeback?