Whether they were brought in at the last minute or just didn't feel like doing the required reading,
these actors found themselves unprepared for their iconic — or infamous — performances.
Taika Waititi admitted that he didn't prepare much to play Adolf Hitler in
the quirky 2019 drama "Jojo Rabbit," which he also wrote and directed. In many ways,
this lack of preparation helped characterize his wacky version of the evil dictator.
Waititi told Deadline that the version of Hitler in the film was a child's
imaginary friend, not the detestable historical figure. He elaborated —
"I didn't have to do any research, and I didn't do any research. I didn't base
him on anything I'd seen about Hitler before. I just made him a version of myself that happened
to have a bad haircut and a sh—y little mustache. And a mediocre German accent."
"People used to say a lot of nasty things about me. 'Oh,
this guy's a lunatic! Oh, look at that psycho, he's going to get us all killed!'"
Waititi hadn't originally planned to cast himself in his adaptation of the
children's book "Caging Skies," but the studio pushed for it. He told Variety —
"You start thinking of bigger stars to be part of a film like this or to play an imaginary Hitler.
But at the end of the day, it came down to the simple fact that if we had done that,
that would have overshadowed the heart of the story, which is this beautiful story,
this relationship story between these two kids."
It's hard to imagine a 10-year-old Hitler Youth member as the protagonist of a heartwarming story,
but Waititi walked the tightrope with "Jojo Rabbit." Waititi ended up winning the Oscar
for Best Adapted Screenplay, despite not doing a lick of research while writing his satirical role.
Busy movie stars have to frequently act like air-traffic controllers, shifting
their schedules to accommodate productions that have their own shifting schedules. That's what
happened to Ana de Armas when she found herself caught between Bond and a blonde.
First, the Cuban-born actress spent a year preparing to portray Marilyn
Monroe in Netflix's "Blonde." When production dates shifted,
de Armas jumped at the chance to also appear in the James Bond film "No Time to Die," even if it
meant she wouldn't have time to properly train. She told Entertainment Weekly —
"I went to London, and I only had like 10 days to two weeks of training,
which is not much for everything I had to do, which made me very nervous."
Before long, Daniel Craig suffered an injury, so the "Bond" shoot was
postponed and de Armas went back to playing Monroe in the drama. When it
was time to get back to the realm of English espionage, she had to rely on muscle memory.
"I-I-I forget things when I get nervous… this is the biggest job I've ever had!"
De Armas admitted to Harper's Bazaar —
"I didn't have the time to actually commit to any kind of diet or workout or training because my
schedule just didn't allow for it. Those few days that I did have some training… It was a short but
really intense immersion into the Bond universe, so I quickly transformed into a CIA agent."
Viggo Mortensen had very little time to prepare to play Aragorn in "The Lord of the Rings:
The Fellowship of the Ring." Mortensen was cast after filming had already begun. Director Peter
Jackson fired Stuart Townsend one day before filming began, replacing the Irish actor with
Mortensen at the last minute. Mortensen was initially quite reluctant to take on the role,
as he hadn't read the books and had no time for preparation — but his son Henry,
a big fan of Tolkien's work, convinced the actor to take the role.
Mortensen only really had the flight to
New Zealand to prepare. According to Showbiz Cheatsheet, the actor said —
"I relaxed a bit as I started reading the book
but then once I landed I got very nervous all over again."
He spoke further about the experience in an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, saying —
"I felt unprepared. The other actors had been there for weeks and months in some
cases preparing for the arduous task of shooting the whole trilogy. I also
felt awkward, because I'd never been in a position of replacing another actor."
Mortensen got right to work when he arrived in New Zealand, immediately diving into the art of
sword fighting. Despite playing catch up with the other actors, he became a
consummate swordsman while filming the trilogy, fitting right in with the rest of the cast.
"You have my sword." "And you have
my bow." "And my axe!"
It seemed like everyone was reading "Twilight" in the lead up to its film adaptation in 2008,
but Billy Burke was not one of those people. That was a little strange,
considering he was cast in the movie as Charlie Swan, the father of moody protagonist Bella.
Burke admitted that he hadn't even heard of the Twilight Saga when he
was approached about playing Charlie. He told Collider —
"I had no idea what 'Twilight' was, at all. Catherine Hardwicke had seen
a movie that I did a number of years ago, called 'Dill Scallion,' and she
requested to have me in. I came in and we talked a little bit about it,
and we read a couple of scenes. In the movie sense, we both fell in love, at that moment."
In another interview, this time with MTV, Burke stated —
"I read bits and pieces of 'Twilight' as we were making it. I'm just not a good reader,
so I haven't been able to sit down and get myself through an entire book in my whole life."
Burke also wasn't prepared for the franchise's rabid fan base. The actor told The Independent —
"I've been working in this business for a long time and these kind of
things only come along once in a while where it becomes a part
of popular culture. There are a lot of worse things to be than Charlie Swan."
"He wanted to meet you… officially." "Alright. Bring him in."
Christopher Plummer had essentially no time to prepare for his role in "All
the Money in the World." The reason? No one in its crew had time to prepare for
the revelations about Kevin Spacey that came out during the film's production.
In the thick of the #MeToo reckonings that rocked Hollywood in 2017,
Spacey was fired from the film about the 1973 kidnapping in which oil tycoon J.
Paul Getty refused to pay the ransom for his grandson. What complicated matters
was that Spacey played J. Paul Getty — and the film had already wrapped production.
A scrambling Ridley Scott tapped Plummer to replace Spacey, with plans to reassemble the cast
for nine days of reshoots alongside the new Getty. Scott offered to let Plummer watch the scrapped
Spacey footage, but the "Sound of Music" legend declined. He explained to The Hollywood Reporter —
"It doesn't do an actor any good to watch someone else. When you take over a part in the theater,
it's better that you don't go and see it first so you're not influenced in any way,
the role comes from you. I saw some of the kidnapping stuff, which I thought was very well
done, but that's all I saw. Bits and pieces that didn't involve J. Paul Getty at all."
Plummer, who died in 2021, played several notable historical figures during his career,
including writer Rudyard Kipling, journalist Mike Wallace, and acclaimed Russian novelist
Leo Tolstoy. It makes sense, then, that he had developed a method for such roles. He elaborated —
"Try and look and move like the creature you're playing, and try to get their voice if you can,
but don't over-makeup or do too many tricks because then it looks like an imitation."
Despite having almost no time to prepare,
Plummer was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the film.
Marlon Brando turned in numerous astounding performances in films
like "On the Waterfront" and "The Godfather" from the '50s to the
'70s — but by the time the '90s rolled around, he was mostly checked out.
Brando reportedly didn't bother to read the script of the 1996 sci-fi adventure
"The Island of Doctor Moreau." He arrived a week late for filming after the suicide
of his daughter, insisted on changes to the script that he hadn't even studied,
and relied heavily on a stand-in to do many of his scenes. When he was on set, the film
legend simply refused to memorize his lines — they were relayed through an earpiece by an assistant,
which resulted in confusion at least once when his signal was interrupted by a police scanner.
The actor's bizarre demands further disrupted an already troubled production that lost its
original director, Richard Stanley, within days of beginning production. Brando did his own makeup,
hid in his trailer, and insisted that a particular extra become Moreau's constant
companion in the film. When all was said and done, the 1996 "Doctor Moreau" remake
would earn the notoriety of becoming one of the most disastrous film productions of its time.
"This is the most outrageous spectacle I have ever witnessed. Look at yourself!"
Stanley and the director who replaced him, John Frankenheimer,
both were excited to work with Brando, but the actor's antics and lack of preparation
contributed to the culture of hostility that the cursed production maintained.
Ewan McGregor didn't read Jane Austen's novel "Emma" before taking on the role of
Frank Churchill in the 1996 adaptation alongside Gwyneth Paltrow. He also thought he was terrible
in the role — and even some of his biggest fans would agree. McGregor told The Guardian —
"I made the decision to do that film because I thought I should
be seen to be doing something different from 'Trainspotting.' My decision-making
was wrong. It's the only time I've done that. And I learned from it."
Typically, McGregor is an actor who prepares thoroughly for his roles. For "Trainspotting,"
the Scottish actor lost 30 pounds and shaved his head to look convincing as an Irish drug
addict. For "Moulin Rouge," he joined the rest of the cast for a two-week dancing and singing
workshop six months before production began. McGregor was equally dedicated to portraying
Curt Wild and embodying the swagger of a rock star in Todd Haynes' glam-rock
fantasy "Velvet Goldmine." That made "Emma" something of an outlier: the actor joked —
"It's a good film, 'Emma.' But I'm just... not very good in it."
Arriving on set intentionally unprepared for a role may not seem like the best game plan — but
for "Girl Meets World" veteran Sabrina Carpenter, it was a way to help her play an
equally unprepared character in the 2020 Netflix dancing flick "Work It." She told Elle in 2020 —
"A lot of the times, I would half-learn the choreography. I'd learned it,
but not to the point where it was muscle memory."
Playing a character learning how to dance to get into her dream college,
Carpenter needed to make it look like she had two left feet. It was a big ask,
considering that Carpenter herself grew up dancing. Her solution? Learn
just enough to be able to convincingly act like someone who knows nothing. She joked —
"I'd learned it to the point where I wouldn't run into people,
but I didn't always know what move was coming next."
Carpenter participated in a two-week training workshop before filming began,
but her hesitancy to take it further rendered her character awkward and clumsy throughout the
film. When she finally does find her rhythm, she discovers that life is full of pleasant surprises.
Upon replacing the late Richard Harris as Albus Dumbledore for "Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban," Michael Gambon didn't read the novels the films were adapted from
before arriving on-set for the third film in the franchise. While promoting "Harry Potter
and the Half-Blood Prince" in 2009, he said to The Los Angeles Times —
"You'd get upset about all the scenes it's missing from the book, wouldn't you? No point
in reading the books, because you're playing with [screenwriter] Steve Kloves' words."
Gambon also pointed out that his co-stars Ralph Fiennes and Alan Rickman also chose
not to read the books. While this might be the norm for the "Potter" films,
Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen, who portrayed
the wizards Saruman and Gandalf in "The Lord of the Rings" deeply loved Tolkien's novels.
Some fans were not happy with Gambon's portrayal of the wizard,
pointing out how the character became more fierce and loud once Gambon took on the role.
"Harry! Did you put your name in the goblet of fire?!"
"No, sir!"
However, Gambon has always contended that his portrayal of Dumbledore in
the film franchise was intentional. He continued —
"He's got to be a bit scary. All headmasters should be a bit scary, shouldn't they? A top
wizard like him would be intimidating. And ultimately, he's protecting Harry. Essentially,
I play myself. A little Irish, a little scary. That's what I'm like in real life."