The hills are alive with… the sound of mucus?
That's according to one actor in the movie, anyway. Plus, why does James Bond make his
actors so miserable? Sean Connery wanted to kill the character, and Daniel Craig felt even worse.
"Shaken or stirred?"
"Do I look like I give a damn?"
Kate Winslet placed herself firmly on Hollywood's radar when she made her debut in
Peter Jackson's Oscar-nominated psychological thriller Heavenly Creatures — but it was
her turn as troubled socialite Rose in James Cameron's Titanic that made her a global star.
The film won a record-tying 11 Academy Awards and opened up some big doors for Winslet,
though she also admitted that she actively avoided "big" movies later, fearing she would,
quote, "burn out by the age of 25" if she didn't. Looking back on Titanic 15 years later, Winslet
revealed that she hated her performance and would love a do-over. In 2012, she told The Telegraph:
"Every single scene, I'm like 'Really, really? You did it like that? Oh my God.'
Even my American accent, I can't listen to it. It's awful. Hopefully it's so much better now."
Winslet continued:
"It sounds terribly self indulgent but actors do tend to be very self-critical.
I have a hard time watching any of my performances,
but watching Titanic I was just like, 'Oh God, I want to do that again.'"
Harrison Ford has always had a complicated relationship with the Star Wars franchise
and his character Han Solo, who he once mockingly referred to as "Ham Yoyo."
Still, he's been known to change his tune periodically.
One Star Wars actor whose negative opinion of his character never faltered during his
lifetime was Sir Alec Guinness, who hated the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi with a passion.
His authorized biography contained some telling notes that Guinness
exchanged with an associate during the casting and filming process.
Guinness wrote novelist and friend Piers Paul Read to tell him he'd been offered a role in
a "Paul Lucas" film — he was apparently bad with names, also referring to Harrison Ford
as "Tennyson Ford". Guinness' biggest concern, it seemed, was with the movie's genre. He wrote:
"[It's] science fiction, which gives me pause. Fairy-tale rubbish,
but could be interesting perhaps."
Later correspondence shows that he didn't find
the experience interesting — far from it, in fact. Guinness wrote:
"Can't say I'm enjoying the film. New rubbish dialogue reaches me every other
day on wadges of pink paper, and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable."
"Bond… James Bond."
Ever the charmer, Sean Connery once said:
"I have always hated that damned James Bond. I'd like to kill him."
Connery made his debut as the British spy in 1962's Dr. No and would go on to reprise the
role on six occasions — the last movie of his original run as the spy, You Only Live Twice,
left him thoroughly disgruntled. Connery already felt as though he
wasn't being paid handsomely enough to make up for all the amount of work
and intense media attention. But when photographers followed him into a public
bathroom while he was shooting on location in Japan, he decided that he'd had enough.
Connery quit the role, although he also returned to it twice,
once for 1971's Diamonds Are Forever and again for 1983's Never Say Never
Again, which was made independently of producer Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli.
The two had a bitter disagreement over salary and royalties, and Connery didn't even attend
Broccoli's funeral. An associate of the actor once told the New York Daily News:
"Sean still feels aggrieved by how he was treated by Cubby over the years.
He felt that he was never well financially rewarded for his early work,
and after his departure his work was used to generate tens of millions of dollars."
Sean Connery often tops polls ranking the best Bonds, but there's no doubt as to who's been
the most successful in terms of box office returns. Daniel Craig's outings as 007 have
pulled in giant stacks of cash worldwide and his name is now synonymous with the
character — though his overall experience with the franchise may have been less than positive.
In 2015, when he was asked if he'd be interested in returning for a fifth outing,
Craig didn't mince words, telling Time Out:
"I'd rather break this glass and slash my wrists.
I'm over it at the moment. We're done. All I want to do is move on."
Craig explained that playing Bond had become "a drag" for him because he was expected
to be smooth and smart at all times, which became a distraction for him on set. He said:
"The best acting is when you're not concerned about the surface. Bond is
the opposite of that. You have to be bothered about how you're looking. It's a struggle."
Still, Craig admitted one thing could entice him back to the role, saying:
"If I did another Bond movie, it would only be for the money."
Craig's fifth Bond movie, No Time to Die, hit theaters in October 2021.
The hearts of teenage girls everywhere shattered collectively when news broke that
Twilight star Robert Pattinson couldn't actually stand playing Edward Cullen,
the franchise's 108-year-old sparkly vampire. Once the cat was out of the bag,
R-Patz didn't exactly let up when it came to venting his frustrations.
"I hardly get to do any vampire stuff.
I mean, you don't get to kill anyone. I really wanna kill some people."
Twilight author Stephenie Meyer told MTV that she and Pattinson disagreed
about how Edward should be portrayed from the moment they met, and the actor would
later air his grievances publicly. He once told fans at an event in Brussels:
"Girls often say that Edward's 'sooo perfect,' but he's not. I do not like people who try to
exert control in a relationship, when there is an imbalance. This is very wrong and very strange."
Pattinson went on to insist he was nothing like the overly serious Edward Cullen in real life
and argued that his character's romance with Bella Swan was "the most awful relationship in
the world." Perhaps unsurprisingly, Pattinson spent a great deal of his
time after the Twilight saga playing weirder, more interesting roles in lower-budget movies.
When Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer sat down with Vanity Fair to celebrate the
50th anniversary of The Sound of Music in 2015, the latter actually had some pretty
good things to say about the film. This marked a pleasant change for the actor,
who once referred to the classic musical as The Sound of Mucus.
The actor was never particularly complimentary about Captain von Trapp, the character that
wound up defining his movie career. Plummer did at least pay respect to director Robert Wise,
who he credited with keeping the film from "falling over the edge into a sea of treacle."
Speaking a few years earlier during a star-studded roundtable chat hosted by The Hollywood Reporter,
Plummer revealed that his role in The Sound of Music was the most challenging
one he'd ever taken, not because of the singing scenes or the fact that he had
to work with a cast of children, but because it was all too cheesy to bear.
"And you had to work terribly hard to try and infuse some minuscule bit of humor into it."
Miley Cyrus still had enough love for Hannah Montana to celebrate the Disney
show's 10th anniversary on social media in 2016, but she's made no secret of
what playing her most famous character cost her. She once told Marie Claire:
"I was told for so long what a girl is supposed to be from being on that show.
I was made to look like someone that I wasn't, which probably caused some
body dysmorphia because I had been made pretty every day for so long,
and then when I wasn't on that show, it was like, 'Who the f--- am I?'"
Playing Hannah Montana also cost Cyrus financially. She revealed during an
interview with Elle that the Mouse House took advantage of her with low wages, underpaying her
in the full knowledge that, as the star of the show, she deserved a lot more. She remembered:
"I did not grow up spoiled in any way, I just wanted to be on TV. I mean, at one point—they'll
probably kill me for saying it — I was probably the least-paid person on my cast because I
didn't know any better. I was just like, 'I can be on Disney? Yeah, I want to do it!'"
The controversial pop star has since shot down
any hopes of a Hannah Montana reboot happening in the foreseeable future.
Grease 2 didn't make anywhere near as big of an impact as the original, but for actor Maxwell
Caulfield, who starred as foreign exchange student Michael, it never really went away.
After appearing opposite a young Michelle Pfeiffer in the sequel, the British theater actor's
promising career in the film business suddenly went stagnant. He later told The Yorkshire Post:
"I learnt a pretty harsh lesson early on. After Grease 2,
the films I'd been promised never materialized."
Caulfield went on to praise Pfeiffer for taking a calculated risk with her next role, saying:
"Michelle was smart. Right afterwards she did 'Scarface' with Al Pacino.
That showed that she had range, that she was versatile. Me?
Well, I was stuck for a while with a reputation as a bubblegum actor."
Times got so bad for Caulfield in the years that followed that he almost quit acting on
several occasions, at one point coming very close to accepting a job at a car dealership.
Thankfully for him it never came to that, but making his breakthrough in
such a widely panned movie meant he'd always struggle to be taken seriously as an actor.
One of the biggest criticisms that the late Marlon Brando faced during his lifetime was
that he only knew how to play variations on himself — an accusation he both denied and
resented. The dedicated method actor first came to the attention of casting directors while playing
Stanley Kowalski in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire that ran for two years
on Broadway in the late 1940s. After receiving an offer he couldn't refuse, he made the transition
to moving pictures and reprised the role of Kowalski in the 1951 film adaptation of Streetcar.
There seemed to be a misunderstanding of what method acting actually was at the time,
and the public blurred the line between Brando's performance as the volatile Kowalski
and his real-life persona. In a 2008 feature on him, The New Yorker said Brando "hated Stanley"
and that he spoke of the character with a sense of disgust. In one interview, Brando once said:
"Kowalski was always right, and never afraid. He never wondered,
he never doubted. His ego was very secure. And he had the kind of
brutal aggressiveness that I hate. I'm afraid of it. I detest the character."
Of all the actors who have reportedly hated the character that made them famous,
perhaps none were unhappier than George Reeves,
whose most well-known role is said to have driven him to take his own life.
The classically trained actor made his credited feature film debut as one of Scarlett O'Hara's
suitors in the 1939 classic Gone With the Wind, and from there he appeared to have a bright future
in the industry. When he was offered the lead role in the 1952 Adventures of Superman TV series,
he accepted, but refused to play the hero's alter ego Clark Kent as the
bumbling reporter of the comics, insisting that the show deal with more adult themes.
The studio initially agreed, but they soon realized that their ideal target
audience was children and decided to alter the show's content accordingly — much to
Reeves' frustration. According to some reports,
he once raised a glass to the actress playing Lois Lane at the time and said:
"Here's to the bottom of the barrel, babe."
It would be the last role Reeves would ever play, as he was forever typecast as the Man of Steel.
In 1959, he was found on his bed with a gunshot wound to the head.
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