Lots of actors take parts they later regret. Sometimes it can be a bad script or a bad director, but every once in a while there is a role that changes their entire life, and not for the better. These actors all had traumatizing experiences while on set that made them think differently about their careers, their choices, and themselves...
Megan Fox, Transformers
Even though Transformers got Megan Fox to the top of the Hollywood hierarchy, it came at a price. Fox has said that her relationship with the director, Michael Bay, was "a nightmare." She claimed that he was incredibly misogynistic to her on set, required her to self-tan, and once even made her clean his Ferrari.
Robert Pattinson, Twilight
No actor has ever hated a role quite as much as actor Robert Pattinson hated portraying the teenage vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight franchise. Over the years, Pattinson has repeatedly informed interviewers that the role was a huge mistake and set him down a dark path. There's even a blog dedicated to interviews the actor has given about his distaste for the part.
Emilia Clarke, Terminator Genisys
Not every role can be as perfect as Game of Thrones. Emilia Clarke was early in her career when she took on the role of Sarah from 'Terminator Genisys.' She was relieved when the movie flopped and she didn't have to make another one!
Speaking with Vanity Fair, Clarke said that she saw director Alan Taylor, get "eaten and chewed up on Terminator. He was not the director I remembered. He didn’t have a good time. No one had a good time."
Dev Patel, The Last Airbender
Sometimes, even the actors know that their film is going to flop. He was particularly fed up with his voice not being heard on set. He said it felt like watching a stranger on the big screen.
"I completely felt overwhelmed by the experience," he said, "I felt like I wasn't being heard. That was really scary for me, and that's really when I learned the power of no, the idea of saying no. Listen to that instinct you get when you read those words for the first time."
Gwyneth Paltrow, Shallow Hal
Shallow Hal has not stood the test of time very well, and Paltrow regrets having been a part of the problematic movie. Paltrow told Netflix that the movie was a “disaster.” She had never felt so shunned by society.
"The first day I tried the fat suit on, I was in the Tribeca Grand and I walked through the lobby. It was so sad. It was so disturbing," she recalled. "No one would make eye contact with me because I was obese."
Mark Wahlberg, Boogie Nights
No one hates this movie more than Mark Wahlberg. The young star played the character of Dirk Diggler, an A-list adult film star. He was so embarrassed by the role that he has asked God to forgive him for it.
“I just always hope that God is a movie fan and also forgiving because I’ve made some poor choices in my past." He recalled in an interview, "Boogie Nights is up there at the top of the list."
Penn Badgley, You
Some actors love to play the villain and step outside of their nice media persona, but Penn is not one of these actors, especially when people develop a crush on him as a killer. Over the years he's come to hate the character as fans love him more and more. What a vicious cycle!
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Badgley said of his character Joe: "I was like, 'Joe, I've never liked you less! I've never liked you less.'"
Mandy Patinkin, Criminal Minds
Did anyone think it was weird when Jason Gideon was written off in the second season of this fan-favorite crime drama? Not Mandy! "The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do Criminal Minds in the first place," said the actor in an interview following his departure. "[...] It was very destructive to my soul and my personality."
Brad Pitt, The Devil’s Own
Brad Pitt has had his fair share of questionable acting choices in his time, but he says that The Devil's Own could have changed the outcome of his entire life. Back in the year 1997, Newsweek ran an interview with Pitt who called the blockbuster film "the most irresponsible bit of filmmaking, if you can even call it that, that I’ve ever seen." He's never elaborated, but he has made his voice heard for sure...
Viggo Mortenson, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The actors were weighed down with a lot while playing their parts... literally. Viggo Mortenson, who played Aragorn, nearly drowned while filming one scene. Aragorn was dying from arrow shots to the back, so the actor had to lie down in the river and float. Unfortunately, the crew didn’t realize how strong the river was and Mortenson was quickly taken underwater.
Jason Statham, The Expendables 3
Terry Crews revealed that the stunts on this film almost took the life of action superstar Jason Statham. "He literally is supposed to stop the truck; we get out, we shoot, the whole thing. The truck doesn’t stop," recalled Crews, "The truck goes over the dock, into the Black Sea with Jason Statham driving."
Statham was able to free himself, but he's never been alright with the ocean since.
Michael J. Fox, Back to the Future III
In one scene from this film, Fox had to stand atop a box with a noose around his neck. Then a box would be removed and it would look as if the boy had been killed. Obviously, this was supposed to be some movie magic, but like it often does, this stunt went awry.
I" swung unconscious at the end of the rope for several seconds before Bob Zemeckis, a fan of me though he was, realized even I wasn’t that good of an actor," recalled the actor of the event.
Peter O’Toole, Lawrence Of Arabia
This 1962 epic flick, titled Lawrence Of Arabia, is one of the most notable films in history. But Peter O’Toole might beg to disagree, as he nearly died by the hooves of running camels. The titular actor had been thrown from his camel and hurt his back during the fall. He luckily fell behind his camel before he could be trampled, narrowly escaping.
Shailene Woodley, The Secret Life of the American Teenager
Shailene had a real morality crisis when it came to her main character part in the show 'The Secret Life of the American Teenager'. Her character Amy was the protagonist, so it made leaving pretty hard, but Woodley didn't like her work there.
"[I]t was a bit hard to show up to work every day knowing that we were going to project all of these themes to thousands, millions, of young adults across the country, when in fact they weren’t what I would like to be sending out," she said.
Kevin Smith, Live Free or Die Hard
Working alongside Bruce Willis was supposed to be a dream come true for Smith, but as he later revealed in his memoir, the experience was anything but ideal. The two battled constantly. Smith wrote, "He turned out to be the unhappiest, most bitter, and meanest emo-b*tch I’ve ever met at any job I’ve held down." These two will not be working together anytime soon...
George Clooney, Three Kings
Hollywood rumors stick around, and George Clooney has always been thought to be very nice among the film elite. However, after his work with David O. Russell during the filming of Three Kings, the director would likely disagree. Clooney said that Russell created "the most havoc-ridden, anxiety-ridden, angry set that I have ever witnessed." While Clooney came out fine, he said that many of the younger actors and crew members were riddled with fear after the experience.
Jessica Alba, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Jessica Alba has a great reputation with fans, but not with the director of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Tim Story. After Story told her that she needed to "cry prettier" Alba apparently began to question her own acting ability. She said that the single comment managed to disassociate her for weeks and make her difficult to work with...just one note!
Dustin Hoffman, Tootsie
When Dustin Hoffman did Tootsie, he developed a fear that you might not expect. For some reason, he believed that the director of the film was out to kill him. Sidney Pollack, the director, said that he and Hoffman fought a lot, but the clashing personalities sure did make for a compelling film and a crazy story of going crazy!
Bjork, Dancer in the Dark
A sexist director drove Bjork up a wall and into her home. Lars von Trier was so terrible and misogynistic to the elusive singer that she vowed to never again make a movie. When telling his side of the story, Lars said "[T]he problem with her was a little bit like the problem you have with women — sometimes they do something that you don’t really understand."
Christian Bale, The Machinist
Bale is no stranger to changing his appearance for the right part. He's gained loads of weight, lost it all, gotten super ripped, and then super skinny all over again. For this film, the actor lost over 60 pounds and weighed only about 120 pounds. He lived on only water, an apple, one single cup of coffee, cigarettes, and whiskey.
Shelley Duvall, The Shining
The Shining is recognized by film buffs as one of the most incredible films of its genre, but Shelley Duvall's time on set was a total disaster. Kubrick, the director, spent the majority of his time with Shelley ruthlessly berating the actress. Kubrick tormented her, telling the cast and crew not to talk or sympathize with her and regularly critiquing her acting skills. The movie was shot in order—meaning that Duvall's breakdown took place both in the film and in real life.
Duvall's co-star Jack Nicholson said that the actress had been given "the toughest job that any actor I've seen had, because forty percent of that movie, she's hysterical," but he thought that maybe there was a reason behind the madness.
"He beat Shelley into that performance," said the leading man. "If that was me, I don't know what I would do. I do not. I still wonder. You're supposed to be able to do it... but for four months? But she did. She's brilliant in the movie."
Val Kilmer, The Doors
Val Kilmer completed some serious studies for the role of guitar legend Jim Morrison to appear in Oliver Stone's 1991 film The Doors. Kilmer taught himself how to sing 50 songs by the band Morrison fronted. He spent days in the studio studying Morrison's many stage moves, observing hours upon hours of interview footage—all in the name of capturing the icon in film.
Kilmer requested that everyone refer to him only as Jim. Kilmer was so dedicated to the part that once production finally finished, he had to go to therapy just to disconnect himself from the part of Jim. Paul Rothchild, a rock producer who knew Morrison in reality, said that the actor "knows Jim Morrison better than Jim ever knew himself."
Gregory Peck, The Omen
The Omen was a totally cursed set. Producer Harvey Bernhard even carried a crucifix around with him in between takes. Bernhard said, "The devil was at work, and he didn't want that film made."
The film nearly drove everyone on set past the point of no return. Gregory Peck's son killed himself only a few months prior to filming, and his aircraft was later struck by lightning. Weirdly enough, the same thing happened to the film's producer, Mace Neufeld.
Bernhard may have been right after all. The night after filming a safari park scene, an animal handler was destroyed by a tiger. The assistant of effects artist John Richardson was mauled in a car crash adjacent to a road sign that read "Ommen, 66.6 km." Finally, the crew didn't take the plane that was originally scheduled for aerial shots, which crashed and killed everyone who took the flight.
Adrian Brody, The Pianist
Adrian Brody went through an insanely intense transformation to play the role of Wladyslaw Szpilman, based on the real pianist and Holocaust survivor. The part earned Brody an Academy Award.
Brody lost a heavy amount of weight in order to depict Szpilman, a survivor of starvation. For six weeks, Brody ate only two boiled eggs, a small amount of chicken, and fish with steamed vegetables. Brody stood tall at 6'5", but while filming, he weighed only 130 pounds.
Brody gave up everything in his life for the part. He sold his belongings and home, disconnected from friends and technology, and moved across the globe. While the solitude was difficult, Brody said that the emotional effect of starvation was the biggest difficulty for him.
"I was depressed for a year after The Pianist. And I don't suffer from that, generally. It wasn't just a depression; it was mourning," Brody told IndieWire.
Heather Langenkamp, A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a Wes Craven film that introduced one of the most iconic antagonists in cinema history, but Craven once had struggled to get the flick off the ground. Craven told one magazine that many studios were "afraid of making a film that had blood in it." Thankfully for him, New Line Cinema took a chance on the idea, and the beautiful Heather Langenkamp was cast as Nancy Thompson.
Langenkamp was led into a "chamber of horrors" on set. Craven modified the bathtub scene so that a man in a scuba suit was able to sit under Langenkamp and make it look like Krueger's arm was emerging from between Nancy's legs. "So Jim [Doyle, VFX engineer] is blindly plunging that thing between my legs," Langenkamp remembered. "One time it's too far to the right, next time it's too far to the left, then it's way too fast—and Wes just patiently waited until he got the take that he wanted."
Bill Skarsgård, It
It's not simple to capture the unique vibe of Pennywise, the scary clown who massacred children in the 2017 film adaptation of Stephen King's It. Skarsgård had a difficult time living inside the clown suit and was relieved when production finally ended. He told Entertainment Weekly that he had a "destructive relationship" with the villain, finding it burdensome to enter the headspace of a killer. It deeply affected his psyche...
Skarsgård said that the clown came to him during the night. He told Entertainment Weekly: "Every night, he came and visited. It was in the shape of either me dealing with him, sort of Pennywise as a separate entity of me, and then also me as Pennywise in circumstances that I didn't appreciate. Like, I'm Pennywise and I'm really upset that I'm out in public and people are looking at me."
Skarsgård reprised the role in It: Chapter Two, but it was definitely not easy to go back.
Liv Tyler, The Strangers
The Strangers made a box office profit nearly nine times over its initial $9 million budget. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman played a lovestruck couple on a romantic getaway that goes awry after a group of masked strangers takes them hostage. Tyler and Speedman's performances were praised by Variety for "credibly registering every hue of panic," but the panic was apparently very real to Tyler...
"That's what is so real about The Strangers," Tyler said. "Like, you'd be in bed at night trying to relax, and all of a sudden you hear a noise and you go, 'What was that!' And you wonder, are you brave enough to go check or not? Imagine if you went to look, and there's a person in a mask standing in your living room with a butcher knife!"
Laura Margolis had been instructed not to tell Tyler view her without the mask: "She didn't want to have to fake it, and so it was my responsibility to really scare her."
Margot Robbie, I Tonya
Margot Robbie had difficulty portraying the wild and manic figure skater Tonya Harding, the famous face whose involvement with Nancy Kerrigan's assault destroyed her career. Robbie required weekly MRI scans after herniating a disc in her neck, but the actress' physical health was absolutely not her main concern. The role became so enmeshed with Harding's persona that Robbie had difficulty distinguishing fiction from reality.
"I had lost my mind," Robbie told Grazia. "I genuinely thought [Sebastian Stan and I] were these people and we were off the set, running down the street screaming at each other and the cameras are running after us," Robbie said.
Stan was portrayed by Jeff Gillooly, Harding's ex-husband. Robbie later stated that the "abusive relationship" depicted between herself and Stan changed her whole mindset.
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Heath Ledger's role as the Joker in The Dark Knight got him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor prior to the actor's death.
Ledger went further than he had ever gone for a role. In the years after his death, it was believed that the mental and physical experience of preparing for the role had played a part in Ledger's untimely death. Members of his family don't agree with this idea—but it's hard to deny that Ledger may have looked at the Joker a little too closely.
Before shooting, the actor was reported locking himself in a hotel room for weeks. Here, he maintained a disturbing diary in order to enter "the realm of a psychopath." Even after production had ended, Ledger had trouble distinguishing himself from the villain.
"I probably slept two hours a night," he said in an interview with The New York Times. It was Ledger's sleeping troubles that definitively led to his death; he overdosed on painkillers and prescription sleeping pills.
Vera Farmiga, The Conjuring
Prior to signing on for The Conjuring, Vera Farmiga knew little of her character's past. On the night Farmiga began looking over Warren's projects, she concluded a phone call with director James Wan and opened her laptop only to see "three digital claw marks, from the upper right diagonal to the lower left."
After filming ended, she returned back to her home in New York, and after one day, found similar markings on her thigh.
"It was these three very distinct—what looks like claw marks—that long nails or long fingertips could make," she recalled. Farmiga tried not to think about the incident too much, but she did think that "there's clear evidence of some strangeness that's occurred. My husband did not do that to me. I did not scratch some mosquito bites. It's inexplicable."
Patrick Wilson, The Conjuring 2
Patrick Wilson has made appearances in all sorts of freaky flicks, such as the Insidious franchise, Bone Tomahawk, Hard Candy, and The Conjuring series. Although he got through the first movie without problems, The Conjuring 2 gave Wilson a fright. Apparently, in the middle of filming, a floor-to-ceiling sheet started swaying despite the lack of fans, doors, or open windows on set. "You didn't even hear any hair, but you watched these curtains sort of violently going," he recalled.
This terrified the crew. After some time, the cast even requested a priest come and bless the set. Wilson admits that although he's a bit of a skeptic, the time there was "pretty trippy" to see. Since working on these projects, Wilson is convinced that his own house is now haunted.
"I've heard people on two different occasions say they've heard kids' laughter in the middle of the night in my house," Wilson told The Independent.
Bob Hoskins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Bob Hoskins had an impressive and interesting career, but he's best known by the last generation for his role as P.I. Eddie Valiant, the real-life character in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Hoskins spent a long time each day talking and acting with his imaginary co-stars. Spending several months communicating with animated characters would take a toll on anyone's mental health.
In order to get his performance in the best place possible, Hoskins said he "learned how to hallucinate" that Roger and the other characters were actually there in the room. By the time filming had concluded, Hoskins often found himself speaking aloud in empty areas, even hallucinating that Roger Rabbit was there beside him. He took a break from acting after this...
Kit Harington, Game of Thrones
No one on Game of Thrones could have predicted the success of their smash hit show, but it was actor Kit Harington who was under the most pressure. Harington's character, Jon Snow, slowly became the show's central protagonist—and Harington had a hard time dealing with the stressful part.
"It wasn't a very good time in my life," Harington said to Variety. "I felt I had to feel that I was the most fortunate person in the world when actually, I felt very vulnerable."
"I had a shaky time in my life around there—like I think a lot of people do in their 20s," he remarked. "That was a time when I started therapy and started talking to people. I had felt very unsafe, and I wasn't talking to anyone."
Not long after production on the final season had finished, Harington was reported going into a "wellness retreat," where he worked on some undisclosed "personal issues." According to Page Six, the actor sought assistance for dealing with exhaustion, stress, and alcohol abuse.
Ryan Reynolds, The Amityville Horror
The 2005 recreation of The Amityville Horror resulted in some serious superstition around set. A number of bizarre occurrences slowed production down dramatically, such as a dead fisherman that washed up on shore right as the filmmakers were about to begin their shoot. Just before the press tour kicked off, the inspiration for Reynolds' character George Lutz, Ronald DeFeo Jr. passed away.
"I think a lot of people make that stuff up to sell their movie, but there was some weird stuff that happened," Ryan said. He added that a majority of the team was waking up at precisely 3:15 a.m., which is when the Amityville murders took place. Reynolds also disliked everything about the house where the film was set and shot.
"It's terrifying," he recalled. "You walk up and it's just upsetting. There's something about the house that's upsetting. There's something about the colors around it. Everything was just a little upsetting."
Dylan O'Brien, The Maze Runner
In 2016, teen star Dylan O'Brien was the victim of an accident on the set of The Maze Runner that could have ruined not only his acting career but his entire life. O'Brien was doing his own stunt that went tragically wrong—he was supposedly tossed from one vehicle and hit by another. The actor had a concussion and a damaging facial fracture, which had the star in a "really fragile, vulnerable state."
O'Brien said that following the filming, he had a "rough year." Thankfully, he was supported by his girlfriend and family who were both assisting him with his quick recovery.
"The first time I saw my face I was like, 'That's it,'" he recalled. "Spending that six months out of it and in recovery so far away from it, you're in a state of questioning everything. I absolutely went through a period of not knowing what my future was going to be."
Jodie Foster, The Silence of the Lambs
Anthony Hopkins' legendary performance as scary serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter spooked more than just the viewers. Although Hopkins had been introduced to Jodie Foster prior to filming at their table read, she was still scared of him afterward, so much so that she refused to say another word to him off-camera for the rest of production. Foster went out of her way to avoid Hopkins: "We got to the end of the movie and really never had a conversation," she remarked. "I avoided him as best as I could."
Hopkins earned an Academy Award for Best Actor, but behind the scenes, he felt not nearly as calm or collected as his performance had made him appear. On the last day of shooting, Hopkins walked up to Foster, who had a single tear in her eye. She said, "I was really scared of you," to which he said, "I was really scared of you!" Turns out that everything isn't what it seems to be on the big screen.
Sarah Paulson, The People vs. O.J. Simpson and American Horror Story
Sarah Paulson earned quite a lot of significant critical acclaim for her roles on both American Horror Story and The People vs. O.J. Simpson, but with Paulson's success came a rather nasty trait: both roles required Paulson to take up smoking cigarettes. Paulson didn't smoke prior to filming either, but soon cravings started to set in.
After the primary disgust of her first couple of cigarettes wore off, Paulson found herself looking forward to the myriad of scenes that required her to light up a cigarette. Marcia Clark, who Paulson was playing in the docuseries biopic The People vs. O.J. Simpson, was a known chair-smoker in real life—which didn't bode well for the actress' growing habits. Paulson said the task was "a real situation."
Jeffrey Dean Morgan, The Possession
Jeffrey Dean Morgan had quite the difficulty on the set of his film The Possession. Morgan and his co-stars were so unsettled by the real legend of the dybbuk box that they did everything possible to keep any evil spirits away. Although Morgan described himself as a critic, he admitted that there were a number of unexplained happenings when filming.
"Lots of lightbulbs exploding," Morgan noted. "Just overall kind of creepiness... 'Don't mock the box' was sort of the mantra that we lived by while filming this."
The real dybbuk box in question was the subject of a 1994 Los Angeles Times piece, which eventually became the inspiration for the film. When someone offered to bring the real deal to set, Morgan staunchly refused, unwilling to risk the potential outcomes of playing with evil spirits: "If you go and loook at what has happened to people that have had contact with an actual dybbuk box, it's not good stuff... why risk that?"
Johnny Depp, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Johnny Depp eagerly jumped on the chance to play Hunter S. Thompson in a film called Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, as the actor considered Thompson to be a personal hero. In preparation for the film, Depp tried to learn everything he possibly could about Thompson's personality and lifestyle. He even moved into Thompson's basement to get as close to the journalist's mannerisms as possible.
By the time production started, it seemed like Depp had fully become Thompson's character. Depp and Benicio del Toro were so engrossed in their parts that the cast and crew thought they might actually be on drugs the whole time, and Depp remained in "Thompson mode" for a full year after filming ended. The two stayed close until Thompson took his own life in 2005; Depp allegedly paid $3 million to shoot Thompson's remains out of a cannon.
Marilyn Burns, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Tobe Hooper was a cutthroat writer-director on this project. When the Texas Chain Saw Massacre hit the silver screen, audiences were literally scared out of their seats—but he also managed to terrify the entire cast. In order to film their most authentic reactions, Hooper made the executive decision to conceal Leatherface's scariest and bloodiest features until it was time to begin rolling.
Sally (Marilyn Burns) had no idea what was coming. Hooper confirmed that her dinner scene was the most intense segment of the film, for Marilyn and everyone.
"The whole dinner scene is burned into my memory," Hooper remarked. "I just think because of the misery of it. At that point, we were really just on the verge of mental collapse. And Marilyn told me how awful it was for her because she was terrified—just being tied to a chair and then having these men looming over her constantly, she said it was really unnerving."
Keira Knightley, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
Keira Knightley was only 17 when she starred in the first film of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. "It's amazing looking back at it from the outside—you're like, 'Whoa, that was hit after hit,'" she remembered. "But, from the inside, all you're hearing is the criticism. I literally felt like I was worthless."
After being tossed into the spotlight, Knightley hid herself from the tabloid turmoil for a full year, becoming a recluse to avoid being captured by paparazzi at every location. Knightley locked up in her house for several months at a time.
Knightley eventually went back to work, but she had developed massive PTSD in the meantime. Despite having earned an Academy Award for Best Actress thanks to her role in Pride and Prejudice, Knightley couldn't help but feel like a fake. She even underwent hypnotherapy to stop panic attacks.
"I felt pretty much like actually, I didn't exist and I was this weird creature with this weird face that people seemed to respond to in quite an extreme way," Knightley said.
Michael B. Jordan, Black Panther
Black Panther was an overall sensation, procuring over a billion dollars. Michael B. Jordan played one of Marvel's most vital scoundrels, Erik Killmonger, an eager for war Wakandan usurper. Although numerous fans felt for Killmonger, the job took a significant cost for Jordan, who wasn't accustomed to playing the antagonist.
"I was never in a character for that long of a period of time and was, I guess, that dark, that lonely, that painful," Jordan admitted on The Bill Simmons Podcast.
He tried to get back to "the same old thing" in the wake of filming, however, it wasn't so natural. In the end, Jordan began seeing a specialist to help get himself out of the miserable mentality.
"I found myself kind of in the routine of being isolated and went out of my way to make sure I was by myself," he said. "Once I got finished wrapping the movie, it took me some time to talk through how I was feeling and why I was feeling so sad and like, a little bit depressed."
James Cromwell, Babe
In 1995, James Cromwell's time on the set of Babe changed his life in many ways. Before the film, Cromwell had considered the idea of vegetarianism, but he soon realized that wasn't nearly good enough. Cromwell said that the turning point during production was one that eventually led him to veganism: watching a baby pig be placed on a patch of grass.
"When that little pig was put down on that big pitch and saw the blue sky and the green grass and the sea, that pig just took off," Cromwell said in an interview with Vice. "I said, 'I don't want any part of this. I am out.'"
Since starring in Babe, Cromwell has become a pivotal environmental activist and supporter of animal rights, even going to jail in the name of the cause. He especially loves his pigs, who have earned a special place in his work.
Colin Firth, The King's Speech
To play George VI, the future King of England, Colin Firth had to partake in lessons with a vocal coach and study recordings of George VI in order to recreate his speeches, mannerisms, and nervous tics. In real life, George VI never really got over his stutter—and Firth nearly developed one himself by accident.
Nearly a year after the film's premiere, Firth confessed in an interview that his part on The King's Speech had left him with a minor speech impediment, occasionally falling into a stammer or stutter during everyday conversation. Fortunately, he appears to have hammered it out in the years following the role.
Isabelle Adjani, Possession
The subway scene in Andrzej Zulawski's 1981 Possession is thought to be a quintessential piece of body horror by film buffs all across the globe. If you haven't seen it yet, keep in mind, it's not for the easily scared—or the weak of nerves.
Adjani earned a César Award for her role as Anna, but the part was so physically and emotionally traumatizing that it permanently changed the actress. She later told an international magazine that she would never perform a similar part again, stating that it took her "years of therapy" to get away from the experience.
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
It was a long joke that Leo would never earn an Oscar, but the commitment he showed in The Revenant finally got him the long-awaited recognition from the Academy that he deserved. To prepare for the part, DiCaprio slept inside dead bear carcasses to survive the cold, only ate raw meat, and routinely went swimming in frozen lakes.
"If a cat has nine lives, I think I've used a few," he said to Wired.
Janet Leigh, Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock may have changed the horror industry, but the director was known for damaging women in his films. Although you could consider Psycho a classic, Janet Leigh was deeply hurt from her time on the shoot. Leigh, who portrayed Marion Crane, developed a fear of showers after she was killed in the now-infamous scene. Leigh only took baths following working on the movie, always making sure to keep the curtain open. She faced the door always.
Tippi Hedren, The Birds
In the last scene of Hitchcock's The Birds, Tippi Hedren is assaulted by droves of birds. There's a reason that Hedren's role is so convincing: it's because she wasn't playing pretend. Without warning, Hitchcock sent dozens of birds at Hedren to capture her authentic reaction. Hedren said that Hitchcock trapped her in a "mental prison." He had told Hedren that the birds would be mechanical, but Hedren was pelted with actual birds who pecked and battered the actress.
Keanu Reeves, The Matrix
The set of The Matrix was apparently cursed. Actress and singer Aaliyah, who had been solid in the part of Zee, died in an airplane accident at age 22. Gloria Foster, who performed as The Oracle, died. Keanu Reeves' girlfriend Jennifer Syme gave birth to a stillborn before they broke up soon after. Reeves' sister also had trouble with her leukemia, which postponed production.
Mia Farrow, Rosemary's Baby
Mia Farrow had just as terrible a time as her character in Rosemary's Baby. For one notable scene, Farrow, a vocal vegetarian, was required to eat a slice of raw meat by director Roman Polanski. That may seem nasty enough, but Polanski didn't just make her do it one time—Farrow was required to eat the raw liver repeatedly until Polanski was satisfied with the scene.
Heather Donahue, The Blair Witch Project
The actors of this movie were dropped in the forest and relentlessly tormented for a week straight. In order to capture a real reaction, the directors stalked the actors to make them on edge. They also fed them less and less food each day so they would lose their mind.
Heather Donahue also had to fake being dead. "My obituary was published when I was 24," she said in The Guardian. "It's a complicated thing to be dead when you're still very much alive and eager to make a name for yourself."
Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables
Anne Hathaway had to lose weight for the role, so she ate mostly dried oatmeal paste. She also shunned her husband to the U.S. so she could further dive into the character's dark headspace. Her version of "I Dreamed a Dream" brought critics to tears and got Hathaway an Academy Award nomination, but the starlet spent most of her time filming in a state of a psychological nightmare.
JoBeth Williams, Poltergeist
Poltergeist involved literal dead bodies. Steven Spielberg wanted to use real human bodies as props for the film, and JoBeth Williams was shocked to learn that the remains bobbing beside her in the pool were very real. She later believed that the haunted happenings in her life were all in her head, but she was still very freaked out about the bad mojo from with Poltergeist.
George Clooney, Syriana
George Clooney nearly died on the set of Syriana. The actor was injured in a stunt resulting in breaking his back, and the injury was so painful that he thought about suicide.
"I was at a point where I thought, 'I can't exist like this. I can't actually live,'" he said to Huffington Post. "I was lying in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm, unable to move, having these headaches where it feels like you're having a stroke, and for a short three-week period, I started to think, 'I may have to do something drastic about this.'"
Veronica Cartwright, Alien
Director Ridley Scott had opted to keep the cast and crew in the dark about the chest-bursting scene to make sure their reactions were authentic. "If an actor is just acting terrified, you can't get the genuine look of raw, animal fear," he said.
Veronica Cartwright passed out when the blood hit her. "You see this thing start to come out, so we all get sucked in, we lean forward to check it out... all of a sudden it comes out. I tell you, none of us expected it. It came out and twisted round," she said.
Maika Monroe, It Follows
Maika Monroe starred as Jay Height in the critically acclaimed horror film It Follows. However, she totally hated it. "It was a very difficult shoot," she said. "Every day was another battle to face just in terms of acting and the screaming and crying and running. All of that every day is very tiresome."
Monroe added that they filmed in "very creepy" locations, and the wheelchair scene really messed up her mind.
Isla Fisher, Now You See Me
Isla Fisher had a less-than-magical incident behind the scenes. Fisher was supposed to be able to release herself in her drowning magic trick.
"My chain got stuck," Fisher later recalled. "I had to swim to the bottom; I couldn't get up. Everyone thought I was acting fabulously. I was actually drowning. No one realized I was actually struggling."
Thankfully, the crew soon realized that Fisher needed their help!
Linda Blair, The Exorcist
Linda Blair was 13 years old when she was dealing with God, demons, faith, and Catholicism during the filming of The Exorcist in 1973.
"To me, The Exorcist was a work of fiction," she recalled. "I didn't realize then that it dealt with anything in reality, and so when the press kept asking me about all the devil stuff, it just kept adding to the pressure I was under, and it was just an awful thing to go through as a teenager."
Diane Kruger, Inglorious Basterds
Diane Kruger played Bridget von Hammersmark, a film star in Nazi Germany undercover for the Allies in 2009's Inglorious Basterds. During the scene in which her character is strangled, Tarantino didn't want Kruger to be in any more danger than needed, so he wanted to choke her himself. However, he didn't yell "cut" quickly enough. Kruger passed out.
Kruger later spoke about the incident, acknowledging that it was a mistake, and said that working with Tarantino was nothing other than "pure joy."
Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games
Jennifer Lawrence claimed her fame through the role of Katniss Everdeen in the film adaptation of The Hunger Games. Despite Lawrence's fame, she didn't leave the franchise without issue. While filming a part where her character runs through a cave, one of the fog machines on set had an error and filled the tunnel with smoke—nearly suffocating Lawrence.
Martin Sheen & Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now
Harvey Keitel had to be removed from his role after a few weeks. Everyone caught a variety of tropical diseases. Marlon Brando had didn't read the script, changed his appearance, refused to be shot without shadow, and tried to improvise all of his lines. Director Francis Ford Coppola had a seizure, a mental breakdown, and suicidal thoughts. Yikes!
Malcolm Dowell, A Clockwork Orange
In Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, there is a scene where Alex is brainwashed, and Malcolm McDowell really did have to keep his eyes wide open with pins for every single take. Sadly, McDowell paid quite the price: the device scratched his eyeball and caused him to suffer from temporary blindness. The actor also fractured his ribs during the humiliation stage show scene.
Kyle Richards, Halloween
You might know Kyle Richards from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, but before that, she worked as a child actress in John Carpenter's Halloween at the age of 9. After seeing the slasher film's opening night, Richards was so freaked out that she had to bed with her mom until the age of 15, tortured by the idea of someone hiding under her bed.
Ellen Sandweiss in The Evil Dead
When Ellen Sandweiss agreed to participate in the 1979 horror flick The Evil Dead, she didn't know what she was getting herself into. "That scene initially was supposed to just be a 'tree attack' scene, the rape part kind of evolved as we were shooting it," Sandweiss said. "It was pretty grueling, shooting in the cold, in the middle of the night, getting scraped up by trees, not a whole lot of fun. People were quite shocked when they saw it, but not quite as shocked as I was."
Sandweiss wasn't the only one who felt the film was a grueling work of art: The Evil Dead was banned in the UK until the year 2000.
Amanda Wyss, A Nightmare on Elm Street
Amanda Wyss portrayed Tina Grey, the first teen to die in the series. For Wyss though, it didn't feel like movie magic.
"The first spin around [the room] felt like I was falling, even though I was on the floor," she said, "Then I felt that if I wasn’t falling, everything was going to fall on me. It was terrible. We had to stop. The terror in my death scene was 75 percent real."
Jim Caviezel, The Passion of the Christ
Assistant director Jan Michelini was struck by lightning twice during production. Jim Caviezel, who portrayed Jesus Christ, had flesh ripped from his body during the whipping scene. Caviezel also dislocated a shoulder while carrying the cross. Oh, and Caviezel was also struck by lightning. Seriously.
Margaret Hamilton, The Wizard of Oz
Buddy Ebsen, the original Tin Man, had to spend a couple of weeks recovering with an oxygen tent when the aluminum from his makeup covered his lungs. Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion, had to wear a 90-pound costume made of actual lion fur. Margaret Hamilton, who was the Wicked Witch of the West, caught on fire in the middle of a stunt gone wrong, disfiguring the actress with second-and-third-degree burns.
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Natalie Portman dislocated a rib during her long daily trainings and lost 20 pounds for the once-in-a-lifetime part, surviving solely on eating carrots and almonds. Portman won an Oscar for her performance, but she paid a price: "There were some nights that I thought I literally was going to die," she recalled.
Drew Barrymore, Scream
Barrymore knew how to get her adrenaline up and running before the week-long film production: she told Wes Craven her "secrets," which he would then whisper to her in private to make her upset. Barrymore would then hyperventilate, scream, sob, and get into the perfect picture of horor.
"It was intense," she said. "I remember driving home the night I wrapped and I was beat. I was exhausted."