Dustin Hoffman once tried to keep things real -- really real -- by making fun of his co-star's
dead boyfriend, and slapping her in the face -- allegedly.
If that wasn't shocking enough, his co-star was Meryl Streep.
Naive daddy's girl Baby and macho dancer Johnny are not immediately in sync when they first
meet in the 1987 smash hit Dirty Dancing.
She thinks he's rude, he thinks she's immature.
This matched the tone of the relationship between stars Grey and Swayze offscreen, too.
Swayze later told the American Film Institute that much of the film's training montage was
taken from sessions in which Swayze, a trained dancer, really was trying to teach Grey the
right moves.
All that frustration on his face is pretty much real.
Grey later described their relationship on the Dirty Dancing set as "a very complex dynamic."
It didn't help that the two had previously spent eight weeks in a military training camp,
preparing for their roles in the World War III movie Red Dawn.
Grey felt Swayze took his group leader role too seriously in that production, ordering
everyone else around.
When she was cast in Dirty Dancing, she even secretly hoped he wouldn't get the part of
Johnny.
"I'll never be sorry."
"Neither will I."
However, the two ultimately found a level of professional respect.
Grey appreciated that Swayze promised he would protect her, which helped the nervous actress
through their big lifts.
And to AFI, Swayze described Grey as "one of the most gifted actresses around."
He added:
"That's what made [...] her character really, really special."
Shakespeare once wrote that "the course of true love never did run smooth" — and neither
did the relationship between the two actors who brought one of his greatest plays to the
screen.
Claire Danes was only 17 when she appeared in Baz Luhrmann's [BAHZ LUR-mun] 1996 Shakespeare
adaptation Romeo + Juliet ["Romeo and Juliet"].
Her co-star Leonardo DiCaprio, meanwhile, was 21.
However, Danes was said to be put off by what she saw as DiCaprio's immaturity, particularly
the pranks he would pull on the cast and crew.
Between takes, they totally ignored each other.
DiCaprio maintained his prankster reputation after moving on to play a now-equally famous
star-crossed lover.
During production on Titanic, he and his co-star Kate Winslet even bonded over pranks.
As DiCaprio's Titanic co-star Billy Zane put it:
"If he wasn't rolling back his eyelids, he was making objets d'art out of bodily fluids."
While Winslet apparently found this hilarious, Danes had had more than enough after the Romeo
shoot ended.
She was even approached to star in Titanic opposite DiCaprio, but turned the part down.
She later claimed that she wasn't ready for the attention such a big project would bring.
There may have been more to those awkward silences than hatred, however.
Miriam Margoyles, who played Juliet's nurse, has since claimed that Danes had a big crush
on her older co-star, who handled it insensitively and simply tried to stay away from her.
Although it takes a World War and a broken engagement for the central couple in The Notebook
to get together for good, the sparks between Noah and Allie are immediate.
Unlike their characters, however, it took years for the actors to fully warm up to each
other.
Neither Rachel McAdams nor Ryan Gosling were the studio's first choices for their roles.
Their chemistry helped them land the parts, but it didn't guarantee an easy shoot.
Director Nick Cassavetes later recalled that while they were shooting a big scene with
lots of extras, Gosling asked him to have a different actress stand out of shot and
read McAdams' lines.
He allegedly said:
"I'm just not getting anything from this."
Cassavetes ultimately pushed the pair to resolve their conflict for the sake of the shoot — by
letting them air their respective issues in a shouting match.
Cassavetes remembered:
"The rest of the film wasn't smooth sailing, but it was smoother sailing."
The Notebook was released in summer 2004 and became an instant classic.
By 2005, Gosling and McAdams weren't just on speaking terms: They were officially dating
for real.
That year, they even won the MTV Movie Award for Best Onscreen Kiss, for that rain-drenched
moment in The Notebook.
Gosling's and McAdams' romance ended in 2007, however, and it sounded stormy to the bitter
end.
Gosling told GQ:
"We both went down swingin' and we called it a draw."
Despite spending much of the late '90s and early '00s as the go-to charmingly bumbling
rom-com hero, there's no love lost between Hugh Grant and most of his co-stars.
Grant himself once freely admitted on an episode of Watch What Happens Live:
"No, I'm a nasty piece of work, and I think people should know that."
Grant's self-awareness about his real-life negative effect on women potentially peaked
in an interview with Elle in 2009.
Asked to give three adjectives about several of his former co-stars, he said that Julianne
Moore, Rachel Weisz, and Drew Barrymore loathe, despise and hate him respectively.
Grant added another name to that list in 2015 on Watch What Happens Live, too, saying that
Julia Roberts might also hate him, because:
"I've probably made too many jokes about the size of her mouth."
At least one person appears to have forgiven Grant's rudeness, however.
Although Grant made Barrymore cry on the set of Music and Lyrics, he guested on her talk
show in 2021.
During the segment, they revealed that, a few years after the movie had come out, they
had accidentally made out in a New York restaurant.
Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl got on well during the filming of their unplanned-pregnancy
comedy Knocked Up.
Rogen even said on a 2016 edition of The Howard Stern Show:
"As we were making the movie, honestly, I was like, 'I would make a dozen movies with
her.'"
Heigl had a slightly different take, though.
Her problem wasn't with Rogen, but with aspects of the character she was playing: an uptight
career-driven reporter who gets pregnant after a one night stand with a slacker played by
Rogen.
Heigl told Vanity Fair that she disliked that:
"[Knocked Up] paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the
men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys."
She added that the movie was definitely "a little sexist."
If this had happened today, Heigl's comments might be praised, but in 2008, she was branded
as ungrateful, rude, and difficult.
Rogen described her comments as crazy, and said he was disappointed not to get an apology
— although Heigl had publicly apologized.
In 2016, Heigl said again that she regretted the comments, and that she would work with
Rogen, if he wanted to work with her.
A few months later, Rogen publicly revealed that he no longer held a grudge against her.
When Hollywood newcomer Sean Young was cast in the sci-fi epic Blade Runner, she hoped
that her co-star Harrison Ford would offer her some support.
After all, Ford was already a household name, thanks to his roles in Star Wars and Raiders
of the Lost Ark.
Young was especially looking for guidance during the pair's love scene.
However, she later recalled:
"Harrison wasn't particularly generous that way."
The scene between Young's replicant Rachael and Ford's replicant-hunter Rick Deckard was
so violent that the crew referred to it as "the hate scene."
It wasn't just Ford that Young took issue with on the Blade Runner set.
She later told the Daily Beast that director Ridley Scott deliberately shot their sex scene
in a way that heightened Young's discomfort, because she'd rejected his advances.
She said:
"I think it was Ridley's none-too-subtle message that he was getting even with me.”
Imagine landing your first lead role in a romantic comedy, opposite one of the most
famous actresses of the moment.
Then you get to set and find out — from her — that she didn't want you to get the
job.
Jay Mohr lived that wonderful scenario in real life, when he was cast alongside Jennifer
Aniston in 1997's Picture Perfect.
On an episode of his podcast Mohr Stories, Mohr recalled that the first scene he and
Aniston had to shoot together involved them making out.
His first encounter with Aniston that day was when she walked past him with director
Glenn Gordon Caron.
According to Mohr, Aniston said to Caron:
"'Six guys, they screentest,' and then she points at me and goes, 'the one fucking guy
I hate!'"
Of course, the issue may have been that one of those other guys was Aniston's then-boyfriend,
Tate Donovan.
Mohr said that this animosity continued for the rest of the shoot.
He later told Elle that Aniston would audibly complain about him to the other actors in
between takes.
He said:
"Jennifer Aniston was so f---ing mean to me that [...] I drove to New Jersey [...] I put
my head in my mother's lap, and I f---ing cried."
Just because you're playing soon-to-be exes doesn't mean you have to treat your co-star
with ex-level hostility.
Dustin Hoffman took his notorious character immersion too far, however, while filming
the divorce drama Kramer vs. Kramer.
On the movie's shoot, Hoffman used real-life bullying tactics to try to intimidate Meryl
Streep, who was playing his onscreen ex-wife.
Hoffman and Streep got off to a bad start when they first met at her audition for a
Broadway play he was directing.
Whatever exactly happened, Hoffman apologized and Streep accepted it.
But the real trouble started when the two made Kramer vs. Kramer.
Hoffman repeatedly made comments about Streep's boyfriend John Cazale, who had recently died
from lung cancer.
He shouted at her when she requested changes to the script.
And, in a scene in which the couple is fighting in an Italian restaurant, he shocked Streep
by suddenly throwing a wine glass against the wall.
In another fight scene, he spontaneously slapped her across the face, leaving red marks.
Hoffman has acknowledged that he was venting emotions brought about by the real-life divorce
he was going through during the shoot.
This weak explanation wasn't helped, however, when, in 2017, multiple women accused him
of sexual assault and harassment.
In Breakfast at Tiffany's, the relationship between the two metaphorical drifters Holly
Golightly and Paul Varjak sparkles like the diamonds inside that iconic jewelry store.
But offscreen, Audrey Hepburn found George Peppard "pompous," according to the movie's
co-producer Richard Shepherd.
He recalled:
"There wasn't a human being that Audrey Hepburn didn't have a kind word for, except George
Peppard."
For his part, Peppard dismissed Hepburn as uptight and prudish, calling her "the Happy
Nun."
As the Breakfast at Tiffany's shoot continued, Peppard constantly tried to make his character,
not Hepburn's, the center of the movie.
He refused to take directions that he thought made Paul unlikeable, and almost came to blows
with director Blake Edwards.
Renowned actor and director Laurence Olivier was initially excited to work with the superstar
Marilyn Monroe on 1957's The Prince and the Showgirl.
He would be directing and starring opposite the actress, who was fast becoming the most
in-demand woman in Hollywood.
And he was initially charmed by her too.
Olivier later recalled:
"When I first met her, I thought she was the most enchanting thing I'd ever met in my life
[...] I thought she was such a witty actress, as well as being so ravishingly lovely."
Monroe certainly had a remarkable quality on screen: not just in the way she looked,
but in her comic timing, too.
Directors were keen to use that magic and the star power it afforded her to boost their
projects.
But the price they paid was putting up with Monroe's maddening habits.
She was often late to set, for example, which would hold up the shoot.
And whereas Olivier was trying to make a straightforward comedy, Monroe, following her training, insisted
on being given a more intellectual meaning for each line.
Monroe didn't care for her co-star and director, either.
She even blamed him for her lateness, saying:
"If you don't respect your artists, they can't work well.
Respect is what you have to fight for."
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