The idea of fame can be appealing, but there's a lot of hard work that goes on behind the
glitz and glamour, as actors are often pushed to their limits both physically and mentally.
What does it take to get an actor to quit?
Here are some time when actors thought about cutting out on their plum movie or TV roles
because they just couldn't take it anymore.
Three walkers and a baby
Considering how many characters suffered tragic on-screen endings, The Walking Dead nearly
lost one of its lead actors for reasons that had nothing to do with zombies.
"Look at all this blood, I don't even think you're fully dilated yet!
No amount of pushing's going to help!"
"I know what it means.
I'm not losing my baby.
You've got to cut me open."
Lauren Cohan, who plays Maggie, considered quitting when it came time to shooting this
one particularly stressful scene.
"I read the script where Maggie has to give the character Laurie a c-section."
"So I go two doors down and I knock on Steven's door and I said, 'I have to leave the show,
I don't I think can do it!"
Ultimately, it was that intensity that convinced her to stay.
Recognizing that The Walking Dead is a about people being pushed to extremes, Cohan used
her discomfort to deliver an honest and moving performance.
Gandalf goes solo
You shall not pass if you think Gandalf could have been played by anyone other than Sir
Ian McKellen.
The actor makes his mark as the memorable wizard in all six Lord of the Rings and The
Hobbit films.
However, director Peter Jackson almost had to find a replacement wizard during the filming
of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
Since his character was considerably taller than the hobbits and dwarves, McKellen was
acting almost exclusively by himself or in front of a green screen.
The frustration of this solitude got to McKellen, who eventually broke down on set.
He said:
"It was so distressing and off-putting and difficult that I thought ‘I don’t want
to make this film if this is what I’m going to have to do’.
It’s not what I do for a living.
I act with other people, I don’t act on my own.”
Jackson and his crew held a Gandalf Appreciation Day to take McKellen's mind off the stress,
decorating his tent with Lord of the Rings mementos.
Fortunately, this convinced McKellen to soldier on.
How the Grinch tortured Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey was only cast as the Grinch in Ron Howard's live-action How the Grinch Stole
Christmas after earning the approval of Dr. Seuss's widow, Audrey Geisel.
However, that grueling audition process was a walk in the park compared to the shooting
of the film.
"Literally the makeup was like being buried alive every day."
"How long did it take?"
"The first day was eight-and-a-half hours.
And I told Ron Howard I couldn't do the movie."
On top of prosthetics, makeup and a bodysuit, the Grinch's costume also included green,
round contact lenses, which were supposedly so painful that Carrey told producer Brian
Grazer he was going to give back his salary and leave the film.
"Now pucker up and kiss it, Whoville!"
Instead of letting Carrey quit, Grazer called in a friend who trained CIA operatives to
endure torture.
After his session with the military trainer, Carrey was able to finish filming the iconic
Christmas movie.
"It was horrifying, it was horrifying, it was just like, 'It's for the kids, it's for
the kids, it's for the kids.'"
Crying while pretty
As much as audiences hated Fox's first Fantastic Four movies, nobody hated them quite as much
as Jessica Alba.
Her experiences playing Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, nearly made her quit acting altogether.
"Let's not fight."
"No… let's!"
Alba's frustration stemmed from director Tim Story, who she later claimed demanded that
she keep her facial expressions flat during a crying scene so she still looked pretty.
Alba said:
"He was like, 'Don't do that thing with your face.
Just make it flat.
We can CGI the tears in.'
And so I just said, 'F--k it.
I don't care about this business anymore.'"
After 2007's Rise of the Silver Surfer, Alba became much more selective about acting projects.
She has even branched out of Hollywood to co-found the Honest Company, an ethical brand
for babies and home goods.
The stress awakens
Acting in a Star Wars movie is an opportunity most actors would kill for.
But the pressures of starring in Star Wars: The Force Awakens proved nearly too much for
its breakout star, Daisy Ridley.
The British actress didn't have many credits under her belt before J.J. Abrams cast her
as Rey, and the director said that her performance felt wooden on the first day of filming.
Along with the pressure of starring in the largest franchise in film history, that note
gave Ridley a panic attack.
She told Elle UK:
"I honestly wanted to die.
I thought I was gonna cry, I couldn't breathe."
Fortunately, she pulled it together and delivered a memorable, heartwarming and epic performance.
The precarious rhapsody
One of the most iconic scenes in Wayne's World happens early on in the film.
Wayne and his friends pack into his car and rock out to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, headbanging
to their heart's content.
"For meeeee!"
But Paramount originally wanted to replace the song with something cheaper to license.
Mike Myers, who wrote the film and starred as Wayne, believed that the song was crucial,
and revealed on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron:
"And so I fought really, really hard for it!
And at one point I said to everybody, ' Well, I'm out.
I don't want to make this movie if it's not 'Bohemian Rhapsody'!'"
Fortunately for everyone, Paramount backed down.
Tippi Hedren's angry birds
Alfred Hitchcock's reputation for being unkind to actresses did not deter Tippi Hedren from
starring in his film The Birds.
In order to defend herself, Hedren made Hitchcock guarantee that she would be attacked only
by MECHANICAL birds during filming.
Hitchcock, however, wanted Hedren's terror to feel real, so he instructed crew members
to throw live birds at her.
When one bird pecked too close to Hedren's eye, she walked off the set.
Only after a doctor-mandated week off did she come back to finish the movie.
John Cena's fear of falling
12 Rounds, the WWE-produced direct-to-video thriller, featured some of the biggest names
in wrestling.
No name was bigger than that of wrestling icon John Cena who starred as a detective.
Despite his fearlessness inside the wrestling ring, Cena apparently is human like the rest
of us.
One scene that required him to rappel down a skyscraper and hang mid-air from a rope
caused some problems, as Cena admitted in a DVD extra that his fear of heights triggered
intense anxiety.
He even considered walking away from the film before shooting began.
Somehow, though, he managed to get through filming without incident.
Shelley Duvall up at bat
The Guinness World Record for most takes to film a single scene goes to The Shining.
A known perfectionist, director Stanley Kubrick insisted on 127 takes of Shelley Duvall's
character hysterically fighting off her deranged husband.
After around 100 takes, Duvall was exhausted and dehydrated from crying so much.
Kubrick's daughter Vivian was filming some behind the scenes footage when she found Duvall,
completely drained, lying on the floor between takes.
In a 2016 interview with Dr. Phil, Duvall said that the stress from shooting The Shining
made her hair fall out.
"Look at this!
I pulled my hair, pulled hunks of my hair out!"
Russia goes too far
Rocky Four features Rocky's opponent turned mentor, Apollo Creed, staging a comeback.
Played by former NFL linebacker Carl Weathers, Creed gets roughed up in the ring by Soviet
boxer Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren.
One of the boxing scenes got a little too real when Lundgren, according to Sylvester
Stallone, picked up and threw Weathers.
Stallone told fans at a Q&A session that Weathers left the ring and announced that he was quitting
the film.
Weathers ultimately came back, and Drago got his butt handed to him by Rocky, so it was
an all-around happy ending for everyone.
A slap to the face
Dark, claustrophobic sets and running water made filming James Cameron's sci-fi flick
The Abyss a challenge.
But one scene pushed actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio over the edge.
When her character was being given CPR by Ed Harris's character, Cameron directed Harris
to frantically slap Mastrantonio as she lay on the cold, wet floor.
"Fight, fight!
Right now!
Do it!
Fight, goddamnit!"
After filming a couple of takes, a crew member announced that the camera had run out of film,
and they would have to film the scene all over again.
Mastrantonio was so shattered that she walked off the set, leaving Ed Harris to slap a stand-in
sandbag until her return a few hours later.
Betrayal made her furious
During production on the first Fast and Furious movie, series regular Michelle Rodriguez actually
considered quitting the film.
She took issue with the way her character, Letty, was supposed to betray Vin Diesel's
Dom for Paul Walker's Brian.
Rodriguez saw her character as a strong woman who would prefer, in her words, "the alpha-est
of alpha males," so the betrayal made no sense to her.
Rodriguez recalls crying as she threatened to quit the movie if the plot wasn't changed,
saying:
"My whole point in being an actress is that I thought I got to live a dream.
And I don’t dream about being a slut!”
Fortunately, the script was altered to Rodriguez's liking, and the rest is blockbuster history.
What's eating Johnny Depp?
In What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, Johnny Depp stars as Gilbert, a small town guy stuck caring
for his mother and developmentally disabled younger brother, played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
Depp had just split up with his fiancée, Winona Ryder, and was using alcohol to cope.
Director Lasse Hallström told Entertainment Weekly that the troubled family life of the
movie struck very close to home for Depp.
In particular, Depp had trouble filming a scene where he has to yell insults at his
mother.
Darlene Cates, who played Gilbert's mother, recalled that every night after filming those
scenes, Depp would call her to apologize.
She said:
"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.'"
Jake Gyllenhaal's digital nightmare
While filming Panic Room, director David Fincher told the New York Times that he felt he needed
to be more attentive with his actors.
He put that theory into motion on his next film, Zodiac.
Jake Gyllenhaal, who starred as cartoonist-turned-crime reporter, bore the brunt of Fincher's newfound
commitment to putting his actors through the ringer.
According to the New York Times, one scene took 70 takes to film, while another took
90.
It wasn't uncommon for Fincher.
"Particularly with David, he does lots of takes."
Since Zodiac was shot digitally, Fincher didn't have to worry about running out of film.
Gyllenhaal was pretty diplomatic, though, keeping things vague by simply explaining:
"...we would reshoot things."
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