Which Batman villain was a nightmare to work with on set? And who punched John Leguizamo
on the first day of rehearsal? Keep watching to learn which actors have been rude, offensive,
or downright abusive to their co-stars.
"Glee" was intended to be a wholesome show, with Lea Michele feeling right at home in
the role of the naïve girl next door. Who would have expected, then, that the actor
behind the lovable Rachel Berry would eventually become infamous for tormenting her co-stars?
Numerous "Glee" veterans have called out Michele for highly problematic on set behavior in
the years since the show went off the air. It all began when season 6 "Glee" star Samantha
Marie Ware replied to Michele's tweet showing support for Black Lives Matter with a since-deleted
comment saying,
"Remember when you made my first television gig a living hell?!?!... I believe you told
everyone that if you had the opportunity you would 's*** in my wig!' amongst other traumatic
microaggressions that made me question a career in Hollywood."
Michele apologized publicly on Instagram, but the potentially career-ending revelations
didn't end there. "Glee" co-star Heather Morris tweeted that Michele was disrespectful, and,
quote, "unpleasant to work with." Dabier Snell, who briefly appeared in the "Glee" episode
"New Directions," was a little less polite, saying,
"GIRL YOU WOULDNT LET ME SIT AT THE TABLE WITH THE OTHER CAST MEMBERS CAUSE 'I DIDNT
BELONG THERE' F— YOU LEA."
Unfortunately, Michele's mistreatment of co-stars wasn't confined to the "Glee" set — or television
in general. Gerard Canonico, who starred alongside Michele in "Spring Awakening" on Broadway,
called her out for constantly playing the victim when addressing bullying claims. Commenting
under Michele's apology post, Canonico wrote,
"You were nothing but a nightmare to me and fellow understudy cast members."
It's not a secret that Daniel Day-Lewis is an extreme method actor, but his co-stars
often suffer as a consequence. Day-Lewis clashed with Liam Neeson on the set of "Gangs of New
York," with the Irish star repeatedly branding his method acting "madness." Speaking with
reporters after the "Taken" premiere, Neeson admitted that he was irritated by Day-Lewis'
insistence that everyone refer to him by his character's name, even when they met up at
the gym during out of work hours. Neeson said of his technique,
"Actors such as Daniel Day-Lewis […] are often held up as 'this is the way to act,'
but I don't go to bed dreaming and sleeping the character."
Likewise, although Day-Lewis' "Phantom Thread" co-star Vicky Krieps enjoyed making the film,
she said the three-time Best Actor winner basically lived as his cold, cruel protagonist
throughout production — and treated his onscreen lover accordingly. As was noted in
The Guardian,
"Preparing his role as Reynolds Woodcock, a London couturier, Day-Lewis – with his
habitual method-actor zeal – learned to think like Balenciaga, sewed 100 buttonholes
and kept Krieps at bay."
Krieps explained that she didn't actually meet Day-Lewis until their first scene together,
stating,
"I think this is what he [Day-Lewis] intended [...] I thought: if that is the rule of the
game, I'll play it. I spent a whole day staring into greenery to avoid him."
"I'm not playing a game. What game am I playing? What game? What precisely is the nature of
my game? You tell me."
Think there's madness to his method? Be prepared: Day-Lewis will drink his detractors' milkshake.
Bill Murray may be a hero to many, but beneath his lovable deadpan persona lies a dark side.
There's been a longstanding rumor that Murray treated Lucy Liu appallingly on the set of
"Charlie's Angels." In a 2009 interview with The Times, the actor pretty much confirmed
that he was a jerk on set, but appeared to place the blame squarely on Liu — a common
tactic used by abusive men. Murray said,
"Look, I will dismiss you completely if you are unprofessional and working with me."
Giving her side of the story to The Los Angeles Times, Liu confirmed that Murray did not treat
her kindly. She elaborated,
"As we're doing the scene, Bill starts to sort of hurl insults, and I won't get into
the specifics, but it kept going on and on. […] Some of the language was inexcusable
and unacceptable, and I was not going to just sit there and take it. So, yes, I stood up
for myself, and I don't regret it."
On "The Drew Barrymore Show," the host confirmed that while Murray was unkind to all his "Charlie's
Angels" co-stars, he "zeroed in" on Liu. The other angels weren't happy with this, though:
Barrymore remembered,
"We all supported her and backed her up."
Despite his marriage to feminist actor Annette Bening, actor and director Warren Beatty has
a lengthy history of alleged harassment towards female co-stars. This harassment reportedly
occurred on the sets of two of his most famous films, "Dick Tracy" and "Reds."
"Blade Runner" star Sean Young, whose acting career began to falter in the late 1980s,
credits Beatty with effectively blacklisting her from Hollywood after she spurned his advances
during production on "Dick Tracy." Young told The Daily Beast that she was fired from the
production for refusing to sleep with Beatty, saying,
"It's not just Warren — it's across the board. Ever since the movie business began,
women have been treated as a commodity. There was always someone grabbing you, and I just
ignored it."
Additionally, British actor Miriam Margolyes, who is openly gay, has claimed that Beatty
made crude remarks about her sexuality during her audition for "Reds." During an interview
with "ITV," Margolyes recalled her creepy encounter with the film's star and director
in his trailer, saying,
"I opened the door, he looked me up, down, up, and said, 'Do you f***?'"
To which Margoyles responded,
"Yes… but not you."
There's a reason why Chevy Chase has become such a controversial figure in recent years:
the "Saturday Night Live" veteran has a long history of treating co-stars appallingly.
When Terry Sweeney became the first openly gay cast member on SNL, he found himself the
subject of homophobic abuse whenever Chase happened to be hosting the show. According
to the book "Live From New York," Chase suggested that Sweeney should be weighed on a weekly
basis to ascertain whether he had AIDS, leading to the comedian being reprimanded. Sweeney
remembered,
"He was really furious that he had to apologize to me."
Chase was reportedly banned from returning to the show after hitting cast member Cheri
Oteri on the back of the head, although SNL showrunner Lorne Michaels has denied these
claims.
While playing the role of Pierce Hawthorne in "Community" years later, Chase allegedly
racially abused Donald Glover, telling him on one occasion,
"People think you're funnier because you're black."
"Is that a new stereotype?"
The show's creator, Dan Harmon, corroborated these claims, explaining to The New Yorker,
"Chevy was the first to realize how immensely gifted Donald was, and the way he expressed
his jealousy was to try to throw Donald off. I remember apologizing to Donald after a particularly
rough night of Chevy's non-P.C. verbiage."
Responding to these claims, Chase remained evasive, simply saying that he was, quote,
"saddened to hear that Donald perceived me in that light."
Leonard Roberts claims that his onscreen wife Ali Larter subjected him to racism behind
the scenes of "Heroes," setting off a chain of events that ended with his character being
killed off in season 2. Roberts wrote in Variety,
"D.L. Hawkins was in an interracial marriage with Niki Sanders, a white woman played by
Ali Larter. The script suggested D.L. and Niki had a volatile relationship — and it
wasn't long before art was imitating life, with me on the receiving end of pushback from
my co-star."
Despite Larter being the instigator, Roberts attempted to assuage the rift by gifting her
a bottle of wine and a heartfelt note, but she refused to acknowledge the gesture of
good will. On another occasion, Larter refused to shoot an intimate scene with Roberts, despite
being happy to film a sex scene with white actor Adrian Pasdar on a later occasion. In
a damning revelation, he claimed that Larter attempted to stop him from ever divulging
what had happened. Variety notes that Roberts' claims were verified by ten people who worked
on the show.
Larter responded to the accusations in a statement to TVLine, saying,
"I am truly sorry for any role I may have played in his painful experience during that
time and I wish him and his family the very best."
There has long been an aura of mystique surrounding Marlon Brando, who is widely regarded as one
of the greatest icons of Hollywood's Golden Age. However, despite his numerous progressive
stances — most notably his support of Native Americans and the civil rights movement — many
of the actor's actions were inharmonious with his compassionate views.
The controversial film "Last Tango in Paris" contains an infamous rape scene — one that
Brando and director Bernardo Bertolucci refused to tell actress Maria Schneider about beforehand.
In a resurfaced interview, Bertolucci admitted,
"I wanted her to react humiliated. […] I think she hated me and also Marlon because
we didn't tell her."
Schneider found the experience to be humiliating indeed, saying,
"So I did the scene and I cried. I cried real tears during that scene. I was feeling humiliation."
In a separate incident, Brando yelled at Dennis Hopper on the set of "Apocalypse Now" over
a minor misunderstanding and proceeded to have an overblown tantrum. Hopper remembered,
"He gets up and says 'I don't have to listen to this! I don't have to take this!' And he
is screaming and yelling 'Why do I have to hear it from him? I have to hear it from this
punk!'"
In "Batman Forever," Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones played the iconic villains Riddler
and Two-Face, who team up to take on the Caped Crusader. Behind the scenes, however, it appeared
that Jones may have lived up to his character's two-faced nature a little too much.
Director Joel Schumacher has claimed that Jones acted like a bully towards Carrey on
the set of the heavily-panned '90s flick. In a 2019 interview with Vulture, the late
filmmaker said,
"[H]e wasn't kind to Jim. He did not act towards Jim the way an Oscar winner with a star on
Hollywood Boulevard, being the oldest member of the cast, and having such a distinguished
career and the accolades to go with it, should have acted towards Jim."
During an appearance on "Norm MacDonald Live," Carrey addressed the hostile working environment,
confessing,
"Tommy Lee Jones said to me that he couldn't sanction my performance. […] I was the star.
That was the problem!"
Despite Carrey's best efforts, Jones would not be swayed: the comic continued,
"I went over and I said, 'Hey Tommy, how you doin'?' and the blood just drained from his
face like he had been thinking about me for 24 hours a day. […] [H]e said, 'I cannot
sanction your buffoonery.'"
Holy mackerel! It seems like Jones and Carrey just have incompatible philosophies when it
comes to acting.
"The difference? Showmanship."
Despite his beloved, sensitive performances in films like "The Graduate" and "Rain Man,"
tales of Dustin Hoffman's horrifying mistreatment of co-stars started to arise in 2017, casting
significant doubt on the actor's previously clean-cut public image.
Kathryn Rossetter, who acted alongside Hoffman on the Broadway revival of "Death of a Salesman,"
alleged that Hoffman was a total creep, both in and out of character. In a piece for The
Hollywood Reporter, Rossetter wrote that Hoffman suggested that they go over their lines in
a hotel room, and pressured her into giving him a back rub. She wrote,
"That was the beginning of what was to become a horrific, demoralizing and abusive experience
at the hands (literally) of one of my acting idols."
The abuse took its toll on Rossetter, who continued,
"Night after night I went home and cried. I withdrew and got depressed and did not have
any good interpersonal relationships with the cast. How could the same man who fought
to get me the job, who complimented my work, who essentially launched my career… how
could he also be this sexual power abuser?"
Additionally, Slate unearthed a Time article from 1979, in which Meryl Streep recalled
her first encounter with Hoffman, which was also during theater work. Streep recalled,
"He came up to me and said, 'I'm Dustin—burp—Hoffman,' and he put his hand on my breast. What an
obnoxious pig, I thought."
He may have been a Hollywood legend, but Kirk Douglas had an infamous mean side. Plenty
of actors from Hollywood's Golden Age have shared horror stories of their time on set
with the "Spartacus" star.
If you were acting alongside Douglas, you had to watch out: during the filming of "The
Heroes of Telemark," Douglas appeared to take an immediate dislike to Richard Harris, which
actor David Weston attributed to the aging Douglas being jealous of Harris' youth. Weston
told The Telegraph that the first words he heard Douglas say to Harris on set were,
"Are you going to be as big a b—---d as they say you are?"
Douglas later grew even more bitter when he noticed that Harris was driving a swanky car,
and threatened to delay production until he, too, was given a luxury vehicle.
Similarly, Douglas mistreated Doris Day on the set of 1950's "Young Man With a Horn,"
the filming of which Day described as, quote, "an utterly joyless experience." He was also
cruel to Farrah Fawcett during the filming of the heavily panned sci-fi flick "Saturn
3:" According to The Times, Douglas referred to Fawcett as "Mrs. Majors" — which upset
her, considering she was in the midst of a divorce from actor Lee Majors.
Of course, none of this is as monstrous as the accusation leveled by Lana Wood, who alleges
that Douglas sexually assaulted her sister Natalie during production on "The Searchers"
in 1955.
In his heyday, Rex Harrison was an acclaimed actor, immortalized through his iconic depiction
of grammar snob Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady," both on Broadway and on the silver
screen. Unfortunately, despite the lovable nature of his most iconic performance, Harrison
apparently treated numerous co-stars like absolute trash.
During the Broadway run of "My Fair Lady," Harrison reportedly developed an intense hatred
for Julie Andrews, who played cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, remarking,
"If that b—h is still here on Monday, I'm quitting the show."
Andrews addressed Harrison's difficult behavior in her memoir "Home," writing,
"I don't remember who said this, but someone made a cogent remark: 'No matter how big a
s— Rex was, the truth is he cut the mustard — and for that, one forgave him everything.'"
When "My Fair Lady" was adapted into the classic 1964 film, Harrison was cast alongside Audrey
Hepburn — to whom he took an immediate dislike to as well. He branded Hepburn "bloody Audrey"
and argued that she was the wrong choice for the part. In his memoirs, Roger Moore said
of the grumpy actor,
"Rex Harrison could be a rather mean-spirited man, and he wasn't regarded very warmly by
those who knew him."
Steven Seagal
On the set of "Executive Decision," Steven Seagal acted like a total jerk. According
to John Leguizamo, Seagal had hefty delusions of grandeur and attempted to dominate his
fellow actors. Leguizamo and the other experienced actors on set were hoping to maintain a professional
atmosphere, but Seagal had other ideas.
["He comes in. 'I'm in command. What I say is law. You disagree?' And I started cracking
up, I was like [stifled laughter]"
Unfortunately, Seagal didn't take Leguizamo's insubordination lightly:
"And he aikido'd me against a brick wall, pow, knocked all the ail- air out of me, I
was like… why? Why?"
In a different interview, actor Stephen Tobolowsky said that working with Seagal on "The Glimmer
Man" was a traumatic experience. Tobolowsky told AV Club,
"[Director] John Gray came in and told me in a panic that Steven Seagal wanted to rewrite
the script. He decided it was bad for his karma to constantly be killing people in movies,
so he didn't want to kill me anymore."
Seagal eventually relented, only to end up ad-libbing a line that implied Tobolowsky's
character hadn't died at all.
Actor and stand-up comic David Cross is known for being quite vocal about his left-wing
views, so it was a major shock when stories of Cross hurling horrendous abuse at Charlyne
Yi surfaced in 2017.
Cross and Yi both lent their voices to the lighthearted kids' film "Next Gen," but the
casting seemed to dredge up some negative memories behind the scenes. In a series of
now-deleted tweets, Yi claimed that Cross made racist remarks when the two were introduced
to each other by their mutual friend, Michael Cera, around 2007. Yi wrote,
“[I]t is very uncool that a 40+ man was being racist toward me."
According to Yi, Cross made various offensive jibes and even questioned whether they could
speak English. Responding to the accusations, Cross claimed that he couldn't remember any
of these racist statements, but didn't deny them either, elaborating,
"I would never intentionally hurt someone like that. I do not remember doing this when
I met [them] [...] I am NOT accusing Charlyne Yi of lying and I'm truly sorry."
In a lengthy response, Cross later backtracked on his inability to recollect the encounter.
He admitted that he racially abused Yi and offended his "Arrested Development'' co-star,
Cera. While Cross apologized for upsetting Yi and Cera, he dubiously claimed that he
was in character as a, quote, "a**hole redneck racist."
Just as British actor Noel Clarke was flying high due to the popularity of his TV show
"Viewpoint," the show was pulled right before its final episode in the wake of some alarming
revelations. As reported by The Guardian, 20 women have accused Clarke of,
"sexual harassment, unwanted touching or groping, sexually inappropriate behavior and comments
on set, professional misconduct, taking and sharing sexually explicit pictures and videos
without consent, and bullying."
Jing Lusi starred alongside Clarke in the film "SAS: Red Notice" and alleged that he
propositioned her for sex, telling his co-star that he, quote, "couldn't help it." When Lusi
rejected Clarke's advances, she said he exhibited a terrifying dark side and threatened her.
Lusi recalled Clarke telling her,
"All right, fine, don't tell anyone about this, yeah? 'Cause if you do, it will get
back to me, I will find out."
In addition to the many female co-stars who accused Clarke of sexual misconduct, Adam
Deacon, who starred alongside the disgraced actor in "Adulthood," called out his former
co-star on Twitter, going as far as to call him "sociopathic." Deacon claimed that Clarke,
quote, "continually sabotaged" his career, writing,
"I only wish that everyone had taken more notice of my words. His horrific abuse of
power could have been stopped before it affected so many others."
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit
the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline
at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).