Celebrity actors all go a little nuts sometimes, just like us regular people. The difference is,
they're much more likely to have a television camera pointed at them while it's happening.
These are some of the most memorable actor freak-outs ever captured on live TV.
Where do we even start with Tom Cruise? One of the most successful movie stars in the history
of movie stars has been the subject of substantial rumors and innuendos over the years. Many of these
allegations relate to his connection with the controversial Church of Scientology,
which itself has been accused of doing all kinds of awful stuff since, well, pretty much always.
There is plenty of speculation surrounding what Cruise was really trying to accomplish during
his frequently mocked 2005 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, in which he celebrated his
relationship with fellow celebrity Katie Holmes with a level of exuberance some people found a bit
unnatural. Perhaps Cruise has no idea how normal people act when they're happy, and can't reflect
the sentiment without it looking like a bad attempt at public image management. Perhaps
Cruise is just a weird guy who expresses himself in ways that look strange to the rest of us.
Maybe it's both things. Perhaps we’ll never know!
But Tom Cruise and Oprah Winfrey's interaction might not even be the most significant element
of this interview. The Mission Impossible star's couch jumping became one of the first
clips to go viral on YouTube, making Cruise an accidental digital media pioneer. After all,
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have been divorced since 2012, but we're all still using YouTube.
2005 was a particularly weird year for Tom Cruise. About a month after Cruise's display
on The Oprah Winfrey Show, a somewhat less crazy but equally strange outburst occurred
at the London premiere of his latest film, Steven Spielberg's remake of War of the Worlds.
According to Today, a group of comedians disguised as red carpet reporters approached Cruise,
got him answering questions, and sprayed him with water. Then the scene got a little scary.
“Come here. Why would you do that?”
Strangely enough, his signature smile didn’t waver for one moment.
“Hey, hey. No, no, no. Don’t run away from me. You’re a jerk!”
Police arrested the comedians, who were evidently shooting footage for a Channel 4
program called Balls of Steel. Cruise declined to press charges. In People, he remarked,
"I'm a Scientologist [...] When things like that happen I have no hesitation
in confronting it ... There are bullies, people who like to make people feel less and feel bad.
Those people need to be confronted ... I have never felt something like that is funny."
Drew Barrymore made her film debut in the 1980 psychedelic horror jam Altered States
when she was only 5 years old. That means that for a whole lot of you,
Drew Barrymore has been a certifiable movie star for longer than you've been alive.
Things sure have changed over the course of her career, though. Lots of behavior that
seemed completely outrageous in the mid-'90s looks pretty tame by today's standards.
Consider Drew Barrymore's legendary flashing of David Letterman in 1995.
She didn't face the camera when she lifted her shirt, so the program itself remained comfortably
in PG territory. It's clear that the 20-year-old Barrymore was aiming for a playful gesture,
rather than any genuine attempt to seduce the host. As stripteases go,
it's really not very sleazy at all. But still, it was certainly attention-grabbing.
A quarter of a century later, Barrymore reflected on the episode during a round
of interviews promoting a talk show of her own.
"I think if there's one thing I've learned in a very long life in front of people is there
is a line [...] There is TMI. And I kind of know what that line is, and it's a feeling."
Let's face it — If the craziest thing a person does in their 20s is flash David Letterman,
then that person has probably a pretty placid decade.
Especially if it was actually Letterman's producer's idea.
Here we have a case of a celebrity who was allegedly too messed up to
complete a relatively simple bit that was pre-arranged for TV.
“Are you talking to me?”
“I’m talking to you, yeah.”
“It seems all very rehearsed.”
But to say Madonna "lost it" on her notorious 1994 Late Show appearance feels... wrong. Or,
at least, putting it that way doesn't really tell the whole story. During the star's interview with
David Letterman, Madonna said the F word 14 times. She removed her underwear, and instructed the host
to take a sniff. She was openly abusive toward Letterman, who barely concealed his frustration
behind his typically happy face. She made a half-hearted attempt to salvage the video cues
she was supposed to remember, then just kind of winged it. Finally, she refused to leave the stage
at the previously agreed upon time, which created all kinds of backstage upheaval and confusion.
"We can’t get rid of her! What if she’s here tomorrow night?”
Yet despite all this chaos, Madonna was as cool and collected as a particularly poised cucumber.
According to a Grantland piece, Madonna casually admitted to getting bonkers high
before it was time to film her segment. But rather than fall all over herself like a sloppy drunk,
she simply scanned as totally unbothered by Letterman's talk show host hogwash.
Frankly, it's kind of a good look.
For hosts and members of the Saturday Night Live cast, the completely natural urge to scream
shocking curse words on live television must be suppressed at all times. If that didn't happen,
the program would stop being SNL, turn into something like Mr. Show,
and move to cable, where fewer people would watch it — though
it would also stand a pretty good chance of becoming a Mr. Show-style cult classic.
Performers still slip up and yell the f-bomb every now and again, of course. Sam Rockwell
exclaimed that a couple of struggling students, quote, "can't be this fucking stupid" in a sketch
from 2018. In a 2009 segment involving a wall of license plates, then-cast member Jenny Slate said,
quote, "I fucking love you for that." Kristen Stewart described hosting SNL as the, quote,
"coolest fucking thing" she'd ever done during her 2017 opening monologue. There is some dispute
regarding whether or not Samuel L. Jackson used any cuss words during his 2017 hosting spot,
but it sure sounded like he did, including a compound word that begins with "bull.”
In this case, the "it" in "losing it on live TV" refers to money, because the Federal
Communications Commission does not have a casual attitude about saying the f-word on the telly.
And if you don't pay those fines, the FCC has all the legal authority it needs to mess you up good.
While he earned praise for his performance as B-Rabbit in 8 Mile, Eminem is a rapper
first and foremost. As one the most unique personalities of pop music's previous few decades,
Eminem has feuded with a whole bunch of other celebrities. His enemies list includes Moby,
Christina Aguilera, Machine Gun Kelly, Everlast, Will Smith, Fred Durst, Vanilla Ice, 50 Cent,
Mariah Carey, and Eminem's own mom. Might as well toss Donald Trump in there as well. But as far as
we're concerned, Slim Shady's greatest enemy of all time has Robert Smigel's hand up his bum.
Some people say Triumph the Insult Comic Dog was very unwise to interject himself into the spat
between Eminem and Moby that dominated the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards. Perhaps they're right:
In one fell swoop, the ruthless physical assault enacted on our beloved canine
traumatized a generation of music and comedy fans. After the encounter, Triumph said
"I only wish that Eminem could relax and enjoy all he has [...] He should lighten
up ... I mean, my mom was a bitch too, but I don't go writing songs about it."
Andy Kaufman pioneered a style of fourth wall-breaking stunt comedy that was
easily decades ahead of its time. Quite a few modern performers owe an obvious, major debt
to Kaufman. But if you'd tried to explain the concept of meta humor to most network television
viewers in the early 1980s, they wouldn't have had the foggiest idea what you were talking about.
So when Kaufman broke the fourth wall by refusing to continue doing a sketch on the
ABC variety show Fridays in 1981, inviting the anger of his co-stars and eventually
a few punches from a crew member, nobody in the audience had any idea what was going on.
In subsequent years, basically everyone involved has claimed
that the catastrophe was entirely planned out in advance, and all pertinent members
of the Fridays ensemble had full advance knowledge of what Kaufman was going to do.
And yet, Kaufman died in 1984, only a few years after his epic Fridays disaster.
And since he's the only one who can truly confirm or deny what happened on stage that night,
we'll never know for sure who knew what, or when they knew it. It's a mystery for the ages! Whoa!
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