No one said being a Hollywood star was easy.
Most films have a few hiccups: production snafus, casting changes, rewrites.
It's all in a day's work, and actors tend to roll with the punches — but this isn't
always the case.
After all, what's Hollywood without a little bit of drama?
Over the years, some movie and television scenes have proved so grueling that stars
nearly quit in the middle of production, but the results later proved tremendously successful.
Those tough shoots were rewarded with critical acclaim in some cases; in others, the actors
were inspired to find their true calling outside Tinseltown.
These stories prove that sometimes a diva is merely someone with an other-worldly amount
of patience that finally ran out.
Let's relive these life-changing on-set stories together.
Lauren Cohan
It's no secret that The Walking Dead is one of the most violent shows on television.
The Federal Communications Commission has fielded numerous complaints since its inception
in 2010.
Throughout the show's lifespan, many have questioned whether or not AMC went too far,
including one of The Walking Dead's own actors.
Lauren Cohan, who plays Maggie Greene, almost quit the series over an extremely graphic
C-section scene in which Maggie is forced to give the character Lori a do-it-yourself
C-Section in order to save her baby.
Lori succumbs to blood loss, and her young son Carl then has to shoot her in the head
to ensure she doesn't become a zombie.
This grim, blood-soaked scene made Cohan question her involvement in the series.
During her appearance on Inside the Actors Studio, she revealed that she went to a castmate
and told him she had to leave the show.
"It affects you so deeply to the core, um... to touch on, to dive into so much of this
material."
In the end, she realized that getting in touch with those heavy emotions is exactly why she
needed to stick with it.
Salma Hayek
For her portrayal of the title role in the 2002 film Frida, Salma Hayek was given an
Oscar nomination, but behind-the-scenes, the actress was living a nightmare.
In late 2017, Hayek bravely penned an op-ed in The New York Times outlining the alleged
abuses she faced at the hands of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein while filming the bio-pic.
Hayek claimed that over the years she repeatedly said "no" to Weinstein's advances, and he
allegedly threatened to fire her from Frida, both as a producer and actress.
Hayek said the harassment stopped when she got lawyers involved and started filming.
He later allegedly threatened to fire her again unless she filmed a full-frontal love
scene with a woman.
She wrote,
"It was clear to me he would never let me finish this movie without him having his fantasy
one way or another.
There was no room for negotiation.
I had to say yes.
By now so many years of my life had gone into this film."
The thought of doing this for Weinstein was so traumatizing that Hayek repeatedly vomited
and had to take a tranquilizer.
Jim Carrey
When he signed up to play the grouchy green monster in How the Grinch Stole Christmas,
Jim Carrey bit off a little more than he could chew.
In fact, he almost didn't make it past the first day of filming.
To become the beloved villain, Carrey's hair and makeup process was so grueling that it
allegedly turned him into a real-life Grinch behind-the-scenes.
"The first day was eight and a half hours, and I went back to my trailer and put my leg
through the wall, and I told Ron Howard I couldn't do the movie."
He went on to explain that to solve the problem, producer Brian Grazer hired a former CIA specialist
to help Carrey learn how to withstand literal torture.
Some of the crew probably could have benefited from the same training; The Grinch's special-effects
makeup artist admitted to Vulture that he started seeing a therapist after dealing with
Carrey's erratic behavior on set.
Mike Myers
There are few '90s films as classic as Wayne's World, with its slapstick comedy and big hair.
The film, which was developed out of a Saturday Night Live sketch with the same name, helped
launch the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" into infamy.
According to Rolling Stone, after Wayne's World, the song hit an all-time high in the
US, hitting number 2 on the Billboard pop charts — but this classic scene almost didn't
happen at all.
At the time, producers were pushing for a Guns 'N' Roses song.
Myers told Rolling Stone that he almost quit over that scene, saying,
"At one point I said to everybody, 'I'm out.
I don't want to make this movie if it's not Bohemian Rhapsody.'
I just love the song.
It's ballsy that it's that long.
It's ballsy that it's two songs in one, that it's opera.
[…] I didn't think of another possibility."
Producer Lorne Michaels eventually caved, and we can all agree that the world is a better
place for it.
Daisy Ridley
There were some pretty big shoes to fill when Daisy Ridley signed on to play one of the
last Jedi in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
And on the very first day, the newcomer almost cracked under the pressure of filming in the
scorching desert.
In an interview with Glamour, the star admitted that an unfavorable critique from director
JJ Abrams after a particularly difficult day of filming completely broke her down.
She shared,
"[JJ] probably doesn't remember telling me that my performance was wooden.
This was the first day!
[...] I thought I was gonna cry.
I couldn't breathe.
[...] And there were loads of extra crew making sure everyone was safe because it was so hot.
It was awful."
Thankfully, the Force was with Ridley, and she went on to slay the Dark Side in both
The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
Michelle Rodriguez
A huge action-star opportunity landed in Michelle Rodriguez's lap when she nabbed the role of
Letty in 2001's The Fast and the Furious.
This massive franchise launched a rich career filled with more tough-as-nails roles, such
as Rain in Resident Evil and Ana Lucia Cortez on the acclaimed TV series Lost.
The truth is, this Jersey girl almost didn't take her big break because she felt that her
character's story arc — a love triangle involving Vin Diesel and Paul Walker — didn't
feel realistic.
Rodriguez took the role anyway, but this particular plot point would become her breaking point.
She told the Daily Beast in a 2015 interview that she "basically cried" and begged the
filmmakers not to sue her if she quit.
She explained,
"[The filmmakers] just followed the format without thinking about the reality of it.
Is it realistic for a Latin girl who's with the alpha-est of the alpha males to cheat
on him with the cute boy?
I had to put my foot down.
[...] [I said,] 'I'm sorry, but I can't do this in front of millions of people.'"
Thankfully, Rodriguez's concerns were heard, and she continued her involvement with the
franchise, which pulled in more than $200 million from the first film alone.
But Rodriguez would also go on to cause a walkout just a year later.
Milla Jovovich
After Milla Jovovich landed a role in 1997's The Fifth Element, she became a full-fledged
action star, but by the time Resident Evil rolled around in the early 2000s, there was
a new tough gal in town.
Michelle Rodriguez was cast as Rain, and the problem was that the writers reportedly changed
the whole script to fit Rodriguez's part.
Jovovich told Inverse,
"[Rodriguez] was very hot at that moment, and my hotness had sort of been already four
years old by that point.
So [director] Paul [W.S. Anderson] rewrote the script for her."
Jovovich noted that the changes made Rodriguez the one who got to do most of the big action
scenes, while Jovovich's character was relegated to the sidelines.
She was furious and almost quit the movie.
Anderson and Jovovich quickly reached a compromise, but that's not all that came out of that deal.
They also started dating during production and got married in 2009.
Tippi Hedren
The 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds has been hailed as one of the best horror movies
of all time, but greatness comes with a price.
That famous bedroom scene — the one where Tippi Hedren's character endures a vicious
attack from a flock of birds — looks so terrifyingly realistic... because it was realistic.
According to Hedren's memoir, the actress endured inhuman conditions while filming that
scene.
Hitchcock had allegedly promised the actress that they'd use mechanical birds for the attack,
but she was later informed that the prop birds weren't working, so they had to use live ones.
"With raven and seagull.
Boxes of them, which they just alternately hurled at me for four days, four or five days."
On the final day, Hitchcock loosely tied live birds to her costume, which frantically pecked
at her face.
She wrote,
"I was too focused on my own survival to notice, but I was told later that it was even more
horrifying and heartbreaking for the crew to watch than the previous four days had been."
Hedren's final straw was when a bird pecked her dangerously close to her eye.
She told the director, "I'm done," and sobbed until everyone left the room.
Shelley Duvall
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining remains one of the most iconic horror movies of all time,
but it's not just the script that's frightening.
Apparently, filming was equally as nightmarish for Shelley Duvall.
She was allegedly forced to perform the anxiety-riddled baseball bat scene 127 times and grew so physically
ill that her hair was falling out in clumps.
Duvall admitted to Roger Ebert that the experience was, quote, "almost unbearable," hinting at
the fact that she nearly threw in the towel.
In the book The Complete Kubrick, Duvall also spoke about the severity of the situation,
saying,
"From May until October I was really in and out of ill health because the stress of the
role was so great.
Stanley pushed me and prodded me further than I've ever been pushed before.
It's the most difficult role I've ever had to play."
Was it worth it?
That's up for debate.
Duvall earned a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actress for her role, but she wasn't
sweating it.
In 1981, she told People magazine,
"When somebody recognizes you at a Dairy Queen in Texas, you're a star."
Jessica Alba
On top of playing a superhero in 2007's Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer, Jessica
Alba was also playing a real person — and real people ugly-cry.
Apparently, director Tim Story wasn't having it.
According to the actress, Story kept insisting that she needed to be prettier when she cried
and that they could CGI the tears in after-the-fact.
His comments filled the actress with self doubt and made her feel like she wasn't allowed
to be a real person.
In 2010, she told Elle,
"I wanted to stop acting.
The director was like, 'It looks too real.
It looks too painful.
Can you be prettier when you cry?
Cry pretty, Jessica.'"
The exchange was enough to make her want to shy away from show biz.
She continued,
"And then it got me thinking: Am I not good enough?
[...] Am I not allowed to be a person in my work?
And so I just said, 'F--k it.
I don't care about this business anymore.'"
Alba may have been frustrated with Hollywood after the Fantastic Four sequel, but she managed
to find major success elsewhere.
The actress built a $1 billion dollar company from the ground up — and that's worth a
happy tear or two.
Thanks for watching!
Click the Nicki Swift icon to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Plus check out all this cool stuff we know you'll love, too!