What’s the grossest thing that an actor had to do to nail a performance?
Well, one female actress had to actually put a live bird in her mouth!
Keep watching to find out who it was.
There has long been talk of Halle Berry going to extraordinary lengths to get into character
as Vivian alongside Samuel L. Jackson in “Jungle Fever,” Spike Lee's 1991 exploration of
romance and race relations.
Jackson portrayed the scene-stealing, drug-addled brother of Wesley Snipes' lead character named
Gator, while Berry was Gator's hardscrabble main squeeze.
“Jungle Fever” features a memorable scene that called for Jackson and Berry to bicker
back and forth, when Gator wants some alone time with his brother.
For Berry, who came from the world of modeling, it was an unexpected role, and one she had
worked hard to land.
To prepare for the part, she spent several weeks not bathing, with most reports claiming
that she went unwashed for two weeks.
Some even speculated that her avoidance of soap and water went as long as two months!
In 2012, the Oscar winner told talk show host Wendy Williams that the Method tale was no
exaggeration, claiming to have avoided bathing for about ten days.
She said,
"It's true [...] Ask Sam Jackson, he had to get a whiff of it constantly!"
Berry elaborated in a 2016 interview, saying,
"Spike Lee wanted me to read for [a different role] and I read that part fine enough, but
then I said to Spike, 'You know, I really am eyeing this crack ho role [...] It was
an amazing way to start my career."
Yes, the rumours are true: Nicholas Cage ate cockroaches.
Cast in the role of Peter Loewv, a literary agent suffering from paranoid delusions in
the 1988 horror/comedy "Vampire's Kiss," Cage was a fast-rising Hollywood star at the time.
He was known for taking daring risks and making, let's call them, “unique choices” in his
mannerisms.
In the years since, the box office flop has become a cult hit, as well as a dependable
Halloween watch.
"Kiss" also offers viewers the chance to watch the actor do some off-the-wall things.
From falling down stairs to tearing a room apart to screaming the alphabet in its entirety
— jumping on desks, chasing pigeons, and pouring hot yogurt on his toes...
The odd performance has since fed multiple memes, and is considered a landmark in the
cinematic evolution of Cage, perhaps the most interesting actor of his generation.
To convincingly portray Loew's spiraling descent into insanity, Cage made a habit of offering
to do more than what was being asked of him — for one scene, in particular.
Though the script only called for Loew to slurp down a raw egg, Cage felt more was needed.
Speaking to “The Ringer” in 2019 about the infamous movie moment, Bierman recalled
that day on set.
He shared,
"[Nicolas Cage] said to me, 'The thing I hate most in the world are cockroaches [...] so
let me eat a cockroach.'
[...] I thought, 'This is terrific!'
I sent my prop people down into the boiler room [...] they brought me a box, divided
up into little sections with tissue paper.
The cockroaches were there, lined up for me to cast."
He added,
"I think they're actually called water bugs [...] They're bigger than cockroaches."
“I couldn’t think of a more horrible job if I wanted to.”
Major spoilers for the 2014 murder mystery thriller "Gone Girl."
If you've seen the film, you'll know the gruesome final act that Rosamund Pike must perform
as Amy Dunne, jilted lover and missing person.
After attempting to escape her apparently abusive and unfaithful husband Nick — played
by Ben Affleck — Amy hides out with another formerly abusive ex boyfriend, Desi.
She makes the world believe she has disappeared while knowingly implicating Nick in the process.
The film follows Nick's attempts to clear his name and find his wife, with Amy being
revealed as a ruthless, cunning woman out to destroy her husband's life.
In the film's climax, Amy decides to return to Nick, and is forced to murder Desi and
frame him for her disappearance so she and her husband can live happily ever after.
Actress Rosamund Pike was required to believably slice the throat of actor Neil Patrick Harris,
who played Desi.
It was a key scene that she wanted to be prepared for, so she did what any reasonable person
would.
She got a hold of some pig carcasses, and pretended to murder them.
The actress told Collider in 2016,
"If you're going to do something like that, you have to do it with a certain degree of
accuracy.
I had no idea how much force you needed to slice someone's throat.
I actually went to a butcher and asked them if they wouldn't mind me just using a box
cutter on a pig carcass, just to understand what it would be like."
Matt Damon was nothing if not dedicated when he took on the role of Max DeCosta, a blue
collar worker in a dystopian future version of Los Angeles in the 2013 film "Elysium."
The movie was a much-anticipated follow-up to director Neil Blomkamp's indie hit "District
9," a science fiction drama featuring overt commentary on South African apartheid.
With "Elysium," Blomkamp took the formula that worked so well before.
This included its social commentary — and dialed it up a notch: adding a bigger budget,
bigger sets, and bigger stars like Damon and Jodie Foster.
But that expanded FX budget didn't mean the entire movie would be filmed on greenscreen.
So to portray Los Angeles in a future where pollution, overpopulation, and climate change
had ravaged the landscape, producers used a garbage dump in Mexico City as a stand-in.
At San Diego Comic Con in 2012, Damon spoke to the curious crowd and told them about filming
the sci-fi epic, and how the landfill location was mostly fecal matter.
"The helicopters would come through and we'd be black with dust [...] Neil would come over
with his mask and said, 'I promise you, the photography looks great.'"
Filming for the 2015 Alejandro Inarritu wilderness epic "The Revenant" was notoriously difficult.
The director himself called the production's harsh conditions "a nightmare."
Filmed on location in the Canadian Rockies, the crew dealt with bitterly cold temperatures
that made production difficult, and Inarritu was heavily criticized for pushing his cast
and crew too hard under harsh conditions, in a shoot that went at least five months
over schedule.
Some crew members reportedly ranked it among the worst experiences of their career; one
cast member who didn't complain, however, was lead Leonardo DiCaprio.
To get into character and deliver his gut-wrenching performance, DiCaprio — known for going
above and beyond for his films — went to extreme lengths that included sleeping in
animal carcasses and eating raw bison liver.
He shared in a 2015 interview,
"Whether it's going in and out of frozen rivers, or sleeping in animal carcasses, or what I
ate on set.
[I was] enduring freezing cold and possible hypothermia constantly [...] I certainly don't
eat raw bison liver on a regular basis.
When you see the movie, you'll see my reaction to it, because Alejandro kept it in.
It says it all.
It was an instinctive reaction."
For the effort, Inarritu would become just the third director to win back-to-back Academy
Awards for Best Director, while DiCaprio would take home his first Best Actor trophy.
Based on the smash hit comic book by Todd McFarlane, 1997's "Spawn" is infamously remembered
today for its over-the-top, sometimes silly tone.
But the cast was certainly taking it seriously.
John Leguizamo's character, for instance, appears as a nauseating bulbous street punk
in bizarre facial makeup, whose disgust for humans is rivaled only by an appetite for
all things horrifying.
In one scene, the character eats a pizza covered with live maggots.
Like some other instances above, this immediately led to a debate among viewers about how real
the scene actually was.
Eventually the conversation got so loud that the actor himself had to respond.
He tweeted in 2014,
"Yes I did eat maggots in 'Spawn’ [...] But [I] only swallowed a few!"
He followed it up by warning his fans not to try it at home.
He said,
"Ha ha.
Don't go there!"
Shia LaBeouf has earned the reputation of a Hollywood eccentric, and in the right hands
this can sometimes translate to powerful on-screen work.
This was the case when his talents were tested in David Ayer's acclaimed 2014 World War II
picture "Fury."
Along with much of the cast, LaBeouf took part in several weeks of military boot camp
alongside a group of Navy Seals.
Star Brad Pitt said,
"It was set up to break us down, to keep us cold, to keep us exhausted, to make us miserable,
to keep us wet, make us eat cold food."
But LaBeouf, who played a tank driver in the film, took his Method performance one step
further — going so far as to having one of his teeth removed.
He explained on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" that it wasn’t as easy as one might think, saying,
"It's not like you can go to some dentist and go in there, like: 'Hey, I wanna get this
tooth taken out'.
They were like: 'You wanna do what?
That doesn't make any medical sense at all."
But ultimately, LaBeouf insists that he got it done because he wanted to add some depth
to the character.
He added,
"I found a guy in Reseda next to a Radio Shack.
He didn't ask too many questions."
To further Method this madness, "Fury" co-star Logan Lerman told an interviewer that the
scar on LaBeouf's cheek in the film was not only real, but self-inflicted.
Lerman explained,
"They were putting cuts on Shia and I said, 'Yeah, yeah, it looks good' [...] And Shia
was like 'No, it doesn't look real' ...[so] he walks out into the hallway and says, 'Hey
man, wanna see something fun?
Check this out.'
And he takes out a knife and cuts his face [...] For the whole movie he kept opening
these cuts on his face.
That's all real."
Among the most intensely-dedicated actors in Hollywood today, Christian Bale always
finds a way to stand out.
He notoriously lost 60 pounds for the 2004 flick "The Machinist," then immediately bulked
up to play Batman.
For the Werner Herzog Vietnam war drama "Rescue Dawn," Bale combined these methods and more.
Taking on the role of real life war hero and U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, Bale committed
himself fully to embodying the part of the long-suffering hostage of the Pathet Lao.
Tortured and starved, the movie portrays Dengler's struggle to endure his captivity, staying
alive for his ultimate rescue by American forces.
Bale once again put his heart and soul into a part, challenging himself both physically
and mentally during the shoot.
These adversities included wrestling a real snake, losing more than sixty pounds, and
being physically abused as part of several torture scenes.
But perhaps most nauseating, Bale ate live maggots in an attempt to portray the depths
of desperation his real-life character had reached during imprisonment.
He said in a 2007 interview
"Oh, yeah, those were real maggots.
They were very real [...] I didn't mind eating the maggots."
Asked what he wouldn't do, the actor remarked that being set ablaze is something that crosses
the line.
"Look, I've done other things where people have to be set on fire and jump three stories.
I'm not doing that [...] I've got limits."
“What’s the difference between you and me?”
“I’m not wearing hockey pads.”
Veteran actor Tony Todd has had multiple iconic supporting roles over the years, in movies
like "Platoon" and "Night of the Living Dead."
But it's his part as the titular horror villain in the 1992 film "Candyman" that has become
his calling card.
His booming voice terrified moviegoers in multiple films, and has haunted dreams for
nearly thirty years.
“You’re mine now.”
But it was more than Todd's imposing deep voice, towering physical presence, and razor
sharp hook that scared viewers.
The franchise has depicted swarms of bees crawling out of him — from his sleeves,
his chest, and even his mouth — and keep in mind that in the early '90s CGI was a costly,
rarely-utilized option for horror films.
As a result, swarms of real bees were used on set, and actor Tony Todd endured it all,
receiving more than 20 bee stings during the shoot.
But don't feel too bad for the thespian.
He made a smart deal with the film's producers that ended up putting some good money in his
pocket, alongside all that calamine lotion.
He told Entertainment Weekly while looking back on the film in 2019,
"I negotiated a bonus of $1,000 for every sting during the bee scene [...] And I got
stung 23 times.
Everything that's worth making has to involve some sort of pain.
Once I realized it was an important part of who Candyman was, I embraced it.
It was like putting on a beautiful coat."
The 2012 movie "The Paperboy" didn't make many waves with critics or at the box office,
but at the time of its release the film was nonetheless discussed, albeit for all the
wrong reasons.
Set in 1969, "Paperboy" tells the tale of a reporter who goes back to his childhood
hometown to prove the innocence of a death row inmate found guilty of murdering the local
sheriff.
Matthew McConaughey plays the intrepid reporter, but a tawdry secondary story involves the
film's other two leads.
Zac Efron plays his younger brother, Jack, and Nicole Kidman plays an out-of-towner named
Charlotte Hess, girlfriend of the accused.
One scene in the film has Efron's Jack Ward getting badly injured and stung by a group
of jellyfish.
As pop culture of the last few decades would have you believe, there's only one way to
overcome such pain, and that's by having someone give you an impromptu golden shower.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, this is indeed just a myth, so please don't pee on
friends and family without first consulting a doctor.
For the scene in question, Kidman actually urinated on Zac Efron.
Daniels said in a 2012 interview,
"We just went for it and never thought twice about it, because it made sense for the film
[...] It was what it was."
As the flick made its way through post production, Daniels began getting doubts — but Oscar
winner Kidman encouraged him to stick by his instincts.
Daniels recalled,
"I think that I became more nervous about it in the edit room, and I thought, I'm not
actually going to show this, right?
Is it vulgar?
[...] And I called Nicole and said, 'I don't know,' and she said, 'Lee, you made me pee
on Zac Efron.
If you don't put it in the movie, you need to man up."
And I was like, "All right."
Joaquin Phoenix is known for his eccentric ways, throwing himself into films like "Joker"
and "I'm Still Here."
For Paul Thomas Anderson's 2012 film that flirted with the origins of Scientology and
the struggle between faith and free will, however, Phoenix may have gone to his most
extreme.
Portraying Freddie Quell, a veteran of the second world war suffering from post traumatic
stress disorder, Phoenix got very Method.
So much so that he even wired parts of his jaw shut so he could achieve the character's
awkward speech patterns.
It's a move somewhat reminiscent of how Method hero Marlon Brando used cotton balls to land
the role of Don Corleone, but it also made for a wholly-unique performance in The Master—
one that landed Phoenix an Oscar nomination.
Phoenix explained the story in 2014, saying,
"My dad sometimes would talk out of the side.
He'd clench down one side of his mouth.
And I just thought it represented tension in this way, somebody that's just blocked
and tight [...] So I actually went to my dentist, and I had them fasten these metal brackets
to my teeth on the top and the bottom and then I wrapped rubber bands around it to force
my jaw shut on one side.”
Phoenix went on to explain,
[...] After a couple weeks, the bands, they weren't really strong enough to kind of hold
it so I ended up getting rid of the rubber bands and I still had these metal brackets
in and so it made me constantly aware of my cheek.
You know, they had these pointy tips so they'd tear up the cheek a little bit."
Tim Burton's "Batman Returns" had some unsettling moments, many of them belonging to Danny DeVito's
Penguin.
His grotesque appearance and disgusting eating habits made it a bit unpleasant if you were
attempting to chow down on a tub of popcorn.
But it was the eating habits of the other villain that makes this list, in particular
an infamous scene involving a little birdie.
During the scene in question, the villainous Catwoman puts a live bird in her mouth as
a way of threatening DeVito's Penguin.
Actress Michelle Pfeiffer, who had beat out the likes of Sean Young and Madonna for the
in-demand part, was determined to do more than simply toss a rubber prop into her mouth
and call it a day.
Instead, the actress wanted the full effect — particularly the bird fleeing the coop
when she opened her mouth — and actually put a real, live bird in her mouth for the
scene.
“Nice birdie.”
These days, after special effects and CG have spent decades rendering audiences accustomed
to cinematic trickery, you might not appreciate the lengths Pfeiffer went to for the scene
unless you know the backstory.
Burton told “The Hollywood Reporter” in 2017,
"I don't think I've ever been so impressed [...] She had a live bird in her mouth while
the camera was rolling.
It was four or five seconds, and then she let it fly out.
It was before CG, it was before digital.
It was so quick, it seems like it was an effect."
Pfeiffer said of the scene,
"I look back and say, 'What was I thinking?’
[...] I could've gotten a disease or something from having a live bird in my mouth [...] it
seemed fine at the time.
I don't think the bird was drugged or anything.
We did that scene in one take."
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