Following a three-year sabbatical from acting, Zeta-Jones made her screen comeback in "Lay the Favorite" (2012), a comedy co-starring Bruce Willis and Rebecca Hall, in which she played the jealous wife of a gambler (Willis). Reviews for the film were negative, and the critic Betsy Sharkey of the "Los Angeles Times" found Zeta-Jones to be "far too shrill to amuse". In the ensemble musical comedy "Rock of Ages", co-starring Tom Cruise and Bryan Cranston, Zeta-Jones played the part of a religiously conservative wife of a mayor. She was attracted to the idea of playing a "nightmare of a woman" and based the role on the politician Michele Bachmann; the film received mixed reviews and failed commercially. Her final release of 2012 was "Playing for Keeps", a romantic comedy with Gerard Butler, which proved to be her third box office failure of the year.