Dangerous driving, falling for the wrong person, and dancing with cartoon birds.
These movies really tested the limits of how much an actor could take!
The dark, claustrophobic sets and constantly gushing water made for some difficult days
on the set of James Cameron's 1989 sci-fi flick The Abyss.
But one day stands out for Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
While filming a scene in which Ed Harris performs CPR on her, Cameron directed Harris to actually
slap Mastrantonio.
He had to repeat the slap when the take was obstructed by Harris' arm.
After the next take was botched when the camera ran out of film, Mastrantonio actually got
up and left the set.
She stayed away for hours, leaving Harris to practice with a sandbag until she was ready
to finish filming the scene.
Captain America: Civil War focuses on the rift between the Avengers as the U.S. government
tries to limit their reach.
This new oversight is partially inspired by the exploits of the Winter Soldier, aka Bucky
Barnes, who is being pursued by various factions.
In an attempt to keep his old friend out of harm's way, Steve Rogers — played by Chris
Evans — tries to get to him before anyone else can.
In a dramatic chase scene, Bucky attempts to escape by flying away in a helicopter.
This prompts Rogers to try to keep the powerful vehicle grounded with his own two hands.
In an impressive feat of strength, he actually manages to bring the helicopter crashing down.
However, filming this scene was so intense that it left him injured.
Speaking to ET Online, Evans remarked,
"I actually messed up my arm doing it, I really did."
According to Evans, this stunt wasn't created through special effects: He's truly straining
to keep this helicopter under control.
He explained,
"It's a fake helicopter, obviously, but it was drifting beyond the ability of control.
I tweaked a little something.
To this day, I'm still messed up."
While on the set of his 2002 thriller Panic Room, director David Fincher told The New
York Times,
"I felt like I needed to be more attentive to watching the actors."
He put that theory into motion for his next film, Zodiac — a period piece about the
search for the "Zodiac Killer" who murdered their way through Northern California in the
1970s.
Jake Gyllenhaal, who starred as cartoonist-turned-crime reporter Robert Graysmith, bore the brunt
of Fincher's commitment to putting his actors through the wringer.
According to Gyllenhaal, for one scene, Fincher required 70 takes; for another, he asked for
90.
Plus, because the film was shot digitally, Fincher could spontaneously delete a slew
of takes all at once.
Gyllenhaal said,
"But there is a stopping point.
There's a point at which you go, 'That's what we have to work with.'
But we would reshoot things."
Although it was far from her first major role, Kate Winslet's performance in Titanic launched
her to worldwide stardom, but filming the movie was not a pleasant experience.
The Telegraph reports that there were multiple issues on set that caused both the cast and
crew to question whether they wanted to remain part of the project at all.
"But this ship can't sink."
"She's made of iron sir.
I assure you, she can."
One particularly troubling moment came when Winslet filmed a scene in the water.
According to The Times, she genuinely feared she might drown in the set's gargantuan water
tank.
Things were so rough, she even expressed a desire to steer clear of director James Cameron
in the future.
As reported by The Guardian, Winslet said,
"He has a temper like you wouldn't believe.
[...] You'd have to pay me a lot of money to work with Jim again."
Years later, however, she softened her stance: The pair collaborated on Avatar: The Way of
Water.
Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" movies follow Beatrix Kiddo, aka the Bride, as she seeks
revenge on the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.
Years earlier, the group betrayed her by killing her groom-to-be and putting her in a coma.
Now she's back on her feet and ready to dispense justice.
Uma Thurman shines as the deadly Kiddo, earning international acclaim for her performance.
In the second movie, a scene in which Kiddo drives a car with steely determination proved
to be problematic.
As The New York Times eventually revealed, Tarantino pushed Thurman to drive the vehicle
herself, despite her well-founded concerns that it would be unsafe.
Those fears were soon justified when the car hit a tree, causing serious injuries that
Thurman still deals with to this day.
She revealed that immediately after the incident, she was scared she would be unable to walk
again.
Thurman remarked,
"I went from being a creative contributor and performer to being like a broken tool."
After a 15-year battle to get footage of the crash, Tarantino finally surrendered it to
Thurman.
But, as Thurman herself noted, this can't undo the damage that was done, or the pain
that still lingers.
In the 1993 film What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, Johnny Depp starred as the titular Gilbert
— a guy stuck in a small town caring for his developmentally disabled younger brother
and their housebound mother.
Cast as the mom was Darlene Cates, an acting novice that director Lasse Hallström spotted
on The Sally Jessy Raphael Show discussing her own struggle with obesity.
Depp was going through some personal stuff during the film's shoot and was using alcohol
to cope.
Hallström later told Entertainment Weekly that he also empathized with his character
a bit too much:
"It was more that he could relate to the troubled family life and the desire to get out of a
small-town situation."
Depp was in such a sensitive place that he had trouble filming scenes where his character
had to make disparaging comments about his mother.
Cates recalled that each night after those scenes were shot, Depp called her to apologize.
She explained,
"Here he is the professional; he's done all this stuff before.
But I thought, 'What a tribute to his kindness that he would take the time to consider that
I might be hurt by what he said.'"
"You're my knight in shimmering armor.
Did you know that?"
To do his job killing bad guys and foiling terrorist plots, 007 needs to use a firearm
on occasion.
(Shoots guy in chair, guy falls over)
(shoots at sled guy)
(sleeve gun!)
(Iconic opening shoots-at-you scene)
One of the actors who portrayed Bond onscreen had a really hard time with those moments.
Roger Moore starred in seven 007 movies, including The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, and, ironically,
The Man with the Golden Gun.
While he doesn't regret playing James Bond, according to the BBC, Moore once said,
"I regret that sadly heroes in general are depicted with guns in their hands, and to
tell the truth I have always hated guns and what they represent."
It all goes back to his childhood.
In his memoir "My Word is My Bond," Moore said that as a boy, he was rendered deaf for
a few days when a gun "blew up" in his hands.
A few years later, a friend shot a BB gun into the future star's leg.
When he'd have to use a firearm onscreen, Moore would squeeze his eyes tightly in discomfort
as he pulled the trigger on his prop Walther PPK firearm.
By the time he filmed his final Bond movie, he publicly lamented that the film series
had, quote, "turned so violent."
In Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, Jamie Foxx plays Django Freeman — a formerly enslaved
man who joins Dr. King Schultz to rescue his wife from fearsome plantation owner Calvin
J. Candie, played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
As you would expect from a Tarantino movie, "Django Unchained" contains lots of stylized
violence, gory fight scenes, and plenty of foul language, including a number of racist
slurs.
DiCaprio took issue with his dialogue, which required him to use these ugly terms multiple
times.
As Metro.co.uk revealed, the actor needed outside advice to move forward with the brutal
script: Both Foxx and Samuel L. Jackson urged him to perform the dialogue as it was written
for the sake of authenticity.
Though he did manage to move forward, DiCaprio said that he found playing Candie incredibly
tough.
The actor remarked,
"It was this incredibly interesting horrific character.
I mean, there was absolutely nothing about this man I could identify with."
The psychological horror film Black Swan is memorable for many reasons.
It was a huge box office hit, earning more than $300 million against its budget of $13
million.
It also won a vast array of awards, including five nominations from the 2011 Oscars.
Natalie Portman stars as promising ballet dancer Nina Sayers, who struggles to cope
with the demands of portraying the dual role of Odette and Odile in Tchaikovsky's "Swan
Lake."
She soon forms a rivalry with fellow dancer Lily, played by Mila Kunis, and slowly begins
to lose touch with reality.
At one point in the film, Kunis and Portman's characters lock themselves in a room and end
up in bed together — a scene that was something of a trial for both actresses.
In an interview with Parade, Kunis revealed that she and Portman knew the scene would
be a hot topic.
"It wasn't done for shock value, but we weren't looking forward to it.
I don't think we were laughing between takes.
I think we were like, 'Let's just get this over with.'
It's uncomfortable doing a sex scene.
It's just bizarre."
Portman confirmed this in a conversation with MTV News:
"It was pretty awkward.
I almost feel like it would be easier to do it with someone you didn't know."
That said, both Portman and Kunis agreed that their friendship made the whole process smoother.
Before Horrible Bosses, there was 9 to 5.
This dark comedy from 1980 centered on three overworked, overlooked female secretaries
enacting brutal revenge on a chauvinistic pig of a manager, played by Dabney Coleman.
Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda headed up the cast, with Fonda also producing.
But a mere week after filming began, Tomlin tried to quit.
What set off the legendary comic actress?
She watched the raw footage of herself and was embarrassed by her performance — particularly
the scenes for a Snow White-inspired animated fantasy sequence where she acted opposite
a yet-to-be-created cartoon bird.
On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Tomlin explained,
"I was talking to the birds that weren't there and I was not doing a good job.
"And I thought, 'Oh I'm going to be horrible in this.'"
Despite her reservations, she stuck with the film, and an '80s classic was born.
During production of the first Fast and Furious movie, series regular and all-around badass
Michelle Rodriguez actually considered walking away over concerns with the way her character,
Letty Ortiz, was written.
Specifically, Rodriguez took issue with the way the script called for Letty to betray
her true love Dom and fall for undercover cop Brian.
She felt this betrayal made no sense for a woman who clearly preferred, in her words,
"the alpha-est of alpha males" to a pretty boy.
Refusing to compromise her vision of Letty, Rodriguez put her foot down, telling producers
she'd quit the movie if she had to.
Fortunately for Fast and Furious fans, the storyline was tweaked to Rodriguez's liking,
and the rest is blockbuster history.
Marvel's The Avengers was such a huge, ambitious project that it attracted actors who usually
don't do comic book movies — including two-time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye.
While some of the more famous heroes in the movie got to do more interesting things, Hawkeye
spent most of The Avengers as the brainwashed servant of villain Loki.
This did not please Renner.
During a Q&A event, he said,
"I was just getting to know who Hawkeye was, and then zap, I go round like a zombie, I'm
like Loki's minion."
Renner claimed that he wanted to give the crew an easy out for Hawkeye, so he pretended
to have a heart attack while cameras rolled in a number of scenes.
He explained to the filmmakers,
"I'm giving you an option, if you just want to kick me out of this movie.
Just you know, at any given moment, if you wanna kill me off, daddy's gonna be having
a heart attack."