Actors have to say the lines that are written for them in scripts. Sounds like a pretty simple and uninteresting sentence, right? That’s the number one job of an actor! Whether on stage or on screen, actors have lines they must read, stage directions they must follow, and marks they must hit to make a production go smoothly as planned and led by a director.

But actors don’t always say the lines in their scripts just as the writers intended. In fact, sometimes, actors refuse to say their lines at all! The reasons behind those refusals can be wacky at some times and weirdly inspirational at others. And in this post today, we’ll take a look at ten of the most legendary of those instances.

In this list, we’ll explore the real stories behind ten infamous times when actors refused to say the lines in their scripts. Writers wrote these lines intending for the actor to deliver them as expected. But when it came time for the director to call “action,” these actors surprisingly backed off!

Related: 10 Actors Who Turned Down Movie Roles and Regretted It

10 Patrick Warburton

One episode of Family Guy was so unbelievably offensive that actor Patrick Warburton flat-out refused to say any of the lines. Of course, Warburton was the one who voiced Joe, who was Peter Griffin’s wheelchair-bound friend on the show. And it’s not exactly a secret that Family Guy is filled with all kinds of off-color jokes and highly offensive humor. But sometimes, things can go too far, even for the actors who signed on to do the show and agreed to portray the raunchy characters. And for Warburton, that’s exactly what happened.

While the world doesn’t know exactly which episode the offending lines came in (the episode itself was completely scrapped rather than going through a rewrite), Warburton has talked candidly about why it was so bad. And it had something to do with religion—and Jesus Christ himself. “The episode was so offensive that I can’t repeat it now,” the voice actor said in an interview after the controversy died down. “It had to do with Christ on the cross, but there was no humor in it, and it was just so, so horribly offensive.”

Warburton continued, explaining that it wasn’t one of Joe’s lines that set him off but rather the entire thrust of the episode that failed to hit the mark on telling jokes and moved straight into the territory of being brutally offensive. “It wasn’t a Joe line,” Warburton explained, “but I said, ‘Guys, I can’t participate in this episode if that line is in it. It’s a personal thing.’ I know what I signed up for. I signed up for a really offensive show, and it is satire, and there are different rules that govern satire… because of what they’ve gotten away with.” Ultimately, it didn’t matter, as the producers eventually admitted the joke would have never gotten approved anyway, so they killed the entire thing.^[1]

9 Robert Downey Jr.

At the end of The Avengers, Robert Downey Jr.’s iconic character Tony Stark is shown to be unconscious—until he suddenly wakes up. In the script, as he awoke, he was supposed to say, “What’s next?” RDJ didn’t really care for that line as it was written, though. He felt it wasn’t right for his character.

So he brainstormed with the screenwriters to put down a few other options on paper. Several new ideas came to the forefront, including Stark coming out of his unconscious period by saying, “Please tell me nobody tried to kiss me.” Which is very funny! But it wasn’t the iconic (and altered!) line that everybody really remembers.

Of course, the line we’re referring to is, “And then shawarma after?” RDJ felt like that goofy line was more on brand for Tony Stark, so he delivered it in his patented way. And it delighted theatergoers! In fact, fans loved the line so much that an end credits scene was later added to the movie in which the group of “Avengers” characters is shown grabbing food together after their big-screen adventure. Gotta go get that shawarma after a hard day’s work, ya know?^[2]

8 Crispin Glover

Crispin Glover originally turned down the role of the Thin Man in Charlie’s Angels after he was offered it by producers. He felt that the character’s dialogue was absolutely terrible and not believable, so he didn’t want to be a part of the movie. In his opinion, the dialogue was far too expositional, for one. But he did have ideas to improve the film—and the villain. Luckily, the movie’s producers took the time to listen to him. And they eventually cast him in the role… after Crispin wiped out ALL the character’s lines! Every single one!

Of course, if you’ve seen Charlie’s Angels, you know Glover’s character was written as a mute. That was his idea—to go that far with the character and make him come off in an unsettling way. And the director went along with it! So Crispin accepted the role by being allowed to play the character without saying a word.

Recalling the phenomenon after the hit movie’s success, Glover explained his decision to change (really, eliminate) all of his dialogue. “In the case of Charlie’s Angels, it was a very active character that had to do with a lot of physicality. When I read the screenplay, it was quite expositional; it didn’t need to be said. So it made it much stronger for the character not to say anything.”^[3]

7 Joyce Dewitt

One episode of the sitcom Three’s Company called for people to mistake Chrissy (played by Suzanne Somers) for a prostitute because she had a friend on the show who was a prostitute, and they looked similar. In the episode, that friend was supposed to call Chrissy “priceless.” And in response, Janet (played by Joyce Dewitt) was supposed to deliver a line about how “she’s going to stay that way.” But the real-life Dewitt hated the line, hated that it seemed as though it was devaluing women who are forced into sex work for lack of other options, and flat-out refused to say it.

Things got so contentious during a table read that fellow co-star John Ritter actually offered to have his character say the line instead. However, screenwriters refused to change the script to accommodate that! They REALLY wanted Dewitt’s character Janet to deliver that line. And Dewitt kept refusing. When it was time for the cast, producers, and writers to hold their table read in preparation for that controversial episode, Dewitt blew up at a producer named Mickey over the prostitute line.

Recalling the fight about the script years later, Dewitt said, “I leaned back in my chair and took the deepest breath. And instead of answering his idiotic question [about saying the line], I said, ‘Mickey, I’ll tell you what the deal is with this line. You can come out with a gun during the five-thirty show and hold it to my head, and I still won’t say that line for you. Is that clear enough?’ That’s what it took.” And indeed, the line was removed from the script and Dewitt got her way. Good for her!^[4]

6 Robert Reed

When Robert Reed played Mike Brady on The Brady Bunch, he was notorious among producers and screenwriters on the sitcom for fastidiously fact-checking all of his scripts. The most notable case in which Reed fact-checked a script and demanded a line change came during an episode where his TV co-stars Carol and Alice were cooking with strawberry preserves. The script called for Mike (played by Reed) to enter the room and say that the house smelled like “strawberry heaven.” There was just one problem with that line: Strawberries don’t have a smell when they are being cooked.

Reed was skeptical that anything could smell like “strawberry heaven,” so he did his research. And sure enough, he confirmed that strawberries smell like nothing while being cooked into dishes! So he decided he couldn’t say the line since it wouldn’t be true and accurate. He told screenwriters that he wouldn’t say that line since it wasn’t actually true, and he didn’t want to pass along misinformation. In an era like the modern one where fake news seems to be rampant, it sure is a breath of fresh air to hear of an actor so committed to telling the truth in every one of his lines!^[5]

5 Matthew Perry

Forget about just changing one or two lines in a script—sitcom star Matthew Perry once got an entire episode of Friends nixed! The episode was all about Perry’s character, Chandler Bing, going to a male strip club. The premise of the ep was that Chandler would go to the male strip club and even become a regular there because he liked the sandwiches—and not the men dancing on stage. However, the real-life Perry didn’t think that was a very wise episode for the long-running hit show to churn out. So he used his influence to kill the episode.

Perry read the script after it was first put in front of him for a table read. While the screenwriters were hopeful it would be a hit, he balked at it right from the start. Years later, Perry recalled how he killed the episode in an interview with Andy Cohen. And at the time, the legendary sitcom star needed just one line to do it! Perry told Cohen how he telephoned the executive producers with his simple demand: “And I called up [the producers], and I said, ‘Let’s not do this one.’” And that was that! The premise was rejected, and the male strip club plotline never came up in any future Friends episodes.^[6]

4 Ian Wright

Famous soccer player Ian Wright had the thrill of a lifetime when he appeared in the hit television series Ted Lasso with a minor cameo. However, Wright’s small but memorable appearance hit a major snag when he was asked to say something nice about the professional soccer club Tottenham! He had spent his entire career on the pitch playing against Tottenham (most notably as part of both Crystal Palace and Arsenal). So he simply couldn’t muster up the desire to say something nice about a club he had opposed so aggressively during his time in the game!

As it was originally intended, the line was supposed to be Wright saying in his guest-starring shot, “You know, it’s gonna be a tough game for Richmond because Tottenham are a great side.” But when it came down to it, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t even act like he was saying anything good about Tottenham because he wouldn’t have meant it! Ted Lasso star Phil Dunster recalled what happened when Wright was handed the line in a script: “He was really lovely. He was just like, ‘You’re going to have to change it because I can’t say that.’” And they changed it! The line was removed altogether.^[7]

3 Meryl Streep

The line was supposed to be, “Everybody wants to be me.” But in the end, Meryl Streep made a game-time decision to change it to “Everybody wants to be us.” And when an actress as talented as Meryl Streep makes a call like that, well, what are you going to do? Tell her NOT to change the line? I don’t think so!

We’re talking here about the film The Devil Wears Prada, of course. Streep’s character, Miranda, was the aggressive and intimidating boss of the fashion empire in the flick. In the very last line of the film, screenwriters set it up so that her character could sum up her overly confident attitude by claiming that everybody wanted to be like her, sitting atop the fashion world in New York City. But during the table read for the movie, Streep didn’t like the vibe of that line as it was. So, she altered the “me” to “us” and gave the world an equally memorable final delivery of her own accord!

Actress Anne Hathaway looked back on that table read and the subsequent change in the movie itself years later. During her nostalgic analysis of Streep’s off-the-cuff change, Hathaway reasoned, “I think we all had an idea of what Miranda would sound like. It was a strident, bossy, barking voice. So when Meryl opened her mouth and basically whispered, everybody in the room drew a collective gasp. It was so unexpected and brilliant.”^[8]

2 Jane Fonda

Later in her career, Jane Fonda starred in the sitcom Grace and Frankie. During her run on the show, the legend was held in obvious high regard. In fact, she was so highly thought of that when she balked at delivering a line that the script had called for based on her religious beliefs, writers quickly took out the offending line at her request!

The context was an episode in which Grace, Fonda’s character, had to say, “Jesus Christ” at one point as an exclamation of shock. Fonda quickly informed show creator Marta Kauffman that she wasn’t comfortable with saying those words due to her strong Christian faith. Kaufmann relented and quickly made the change.

Speaking later about the incident and Fonda’s steadfast faith, the show creator explained, “These four actors are the most professional, glorious people I’ve ever worked with. I love them. So when they have an issue, it’s not that they’re being divas. It’s not that they’re being self-important. They have a real issue.”^[9]

1 Harrison Ford

In the original Star Wars script, Harrison Ford’s character Han Solo was supposed to say, “I love you, too,” after Princess Leia, played by Carrie Fisher, delivered her memorable “I love you” line. But when it came time to do the scene, Harrison went off-road with the improvisation and changed the line completely! Instead of saying, “I love you, too,” when Fisher dropped the monumental admission, Ford’s Han Solo replied, “I know.” And the whole thing was completely off the cuff!

Years later, Star Wars fans came to learn that Harrison hadn’t told anyone about his intention to change the line at the last minute. In fact, he didn’t really know that it would play out like that until he did it on the spot. He felt like “I know” fit Han Solo’s cocky personality much better than dropping an “I love you, too” on Princess Leia.

So he went with his gut and delivered the unscripted line. Thankfully for Ford, filmmaker George Lucas loved the ad-lib and kept it in the movie. It quickly became one of the most memorable lines of the whole damn thing, too. Turns out Ford had some pretty good instincts working in his favor on that one!^[10]

It may seem like there’s a ton of money to be made in the film industry, but that’s actually not the case. Not always, at least. In many instances, actors stick their necks out to do a movie they are very passionate about or are very inspired to produce, and they come away broke! Forget the multi-million dollar salaries, the huge box office totals, and the massive marketing budgets. Some movies just suck money out of the room. Even for the stars who sign on to do them, hoping it’ll propel their A-list profiles to even higher heights!

In this list, we’ll take a closer look at ten Hollywood movie stars who actually lost money producing hit movies seen by millions of people. From marketing costs stretching the budget thin to paltry low salaries after agreeing to get on set, these ten stories prove that the movie biz isn’t all sunshine and rainbows!

Related: Top 10 Tremendous Wastes Of Money

10 Dwayne Johnson

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was incredibly hopeful that moviegoers would love to see Black Adam (2022). The brains behind the DC Comics Extended Universe were hopeful that audiences would connect with the character, too. After all, the franchise was sputtering at the time, and they desperately needed to turn over a new leaf. So they signed Johnson on in large part because all of his movies have always been massive hits. Well, until this one! The superhero story about an Egyptian slave from 2600 BC who was granted great power by the ancient Gods simply failed to connect with audiences in the biggest and worst way.

For one, the film’s production was marred by the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, when it came time to release it, Johnson himself put his money where his mouth was and stepped up as both a producer and a promotional mouthpiece. Sadly, it didn’t work. Despite all of Johnson’s other films raking in dough, this one lost tons and tons of money for both him and Warner Brothers. According to reports, the film’s funders lost as much as $100 million after fans failed to show interest in the story and its off-shoot title character. Oops!^[1]

9 George Clooney

George Clooney believed so much in his 2008 sports comedy film Leatherheads (2008) that he invested a lot of his own money to make it work. But while the production got off without a hitch, and the film did live long enough to see theaters and be sold to moviegoers, the public mostly panned the flick. Sure, George may have written the film, starred in it, directed it, and even produced it by taking in the bigger picture with marketing and funding. However, he forgot the most important part: to make a movie the public wanted to see.

Ultimately, the film came to life on a budget of $58 million, which was put up by George’s own production company, Smokehouse Productions. Unfortunately for the ER alum and his Smokehouse brethren, they didn’t come anywhere close to making back their money. According to film industry watchdog reports, the film only brought in just a shade over $41 million in box office receipts. So it left George about $17 million in the hole. Ouch!^[2]

8 Kevin Costner

Kevin Costner isn’t afraid of investing his own money into his films. There’s just one problem with that strategy, though: When he misses, he misses REALLY big. Take The Postman (1997) as the perfect example of this. Costner himself helped fund the flick, but unfortunately, audiences didn’t go see it nearly enough to earn the star his money back. The film’s budget topped $80 million, according to reports, but it only turned around and brought in $17.6 million in ticket receipts. Worse yet, it didn’t even get an international release, preventing Costner from scoring big on foreign money after its disappointing American run.

But is Costner upset with losing so much money on the movie? Nope! Speaking to HuffPost about it after the film bombed, Kevin called The Postman a “really good movie.” Defending his decision to fund and produce it, he added: “If you revisit the movie, that’s a good thing to do. You can go back and revisit some movies that made well over $100 million and you might not care anything about them. And you can go back and maybe review a movie like that—you know, it was a pretty big, epic movie.” Hey, as long as he’s proud of it and okay with it losing so much money, who are we to criticize?^[3]

7 Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt felt so strongly about his 2007 movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford that he put up his own money to get it off the ground and out in theaters. The issue came when he found out how fans didn’t feel nearly as passionately about the movie. Pitt and his production team spent more than $30 million on the film—much of which came out of the A-list star’s own deep pockets. But the movie only returned about half of that total in gate receipts, making it a complete failure on every financial level.

Don’t count on Pitt regretting the process, though. “The way producers get us actors on is if it’s something we love and have to do, we do it for a price and get the movie made,” Pitt explained to Variety five years after the movie came out, in 2012. “It actually cost me money in the end. I paid to work on that one, and I think the film still lost money, but it was one of my favorites and one of the most rewarding to me.” Of course, there isn’t a price to be put on emotional satisfaction. Still, the thought of losing tens of millions of dollars is a tough pill to swallow!^[4]

6 John Travolta

John Travolta took a big risk when he decided to take Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s book Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 to the big screen. He had trouble nearly from the very beginning, too. Most notably, Travolta couldn’t find funding for the 2000 movie! So he had to fund it himself if he wanted to see it get made—and that’s exactly what he did.

The A-lister put in millions of his own dollars to fund the film and even agreed to forfeit the majority of his normal paycheck to make it. In turn, he hoped to see a major return on his investment with a popular showing at the box office. But he didn’t! Not even close. The film’s budget ended up soaring higher than $73 million in the end. And as for how much it brought in? Well, it didn’t even clear $30 million in returns. Ouch!

Still, even though he took a $43 million haircut, Travolta has no regrets about it. Speaking to the Daily Beast about losing so much money on Hubbard’s book-turned-film, Travolta argued: “Why would I ever regret that? I had the power to do whatever I wanted, and I chose to do a book that I thought was worthy of making into a movie. It’s a beautiful film. It’s a good movie.”^[5]

5 Sharon Stone

Sharon Stone had one of the most iconic film roles of all time with her work in Basic Instinct (1992). But it might surprise you to learn that she didn’t make any money on the film! Her co-star, Michael Douglas, may have commanded millions of dollars with his role in the flick, and he came away as a clear financial winner. But Sharon didn’t make that kind of money for her role, which catapulted her into true superstardom. Then, to make matters worse, she had to do the awards show run because the film was so successful—and so she lost money spending big on dresses, makeup, and stylists!

Between promoting the movie as it hit theaters and then doing the Oscars dance after it started to gain traction, Stone ended up bottoming out in the red. After looking back on her Basic Instinct experience in a chat years later with the CBC, Stone reminisced. “I didn’t get paid [well] to do Basic Instinct. I made a little bit of money. Michael made $14 million and has points. I made not enough money to buy my dress to go to the Oscars the next year. I was in this weird limbo where I was suddenly famous, but didn’t have any money.”^[6]

4 Jack Black

Jack Black thought so highly of Tenacious D that he used up all his willpower and goodwill with producers and Hollywood movers and shakers to bring it to the big screen in 2006. The result was the funny and bizarre movie Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. While he may have loved that the film was even greenlit and produced at all, his adoration for his band didn’t translate into a financial windfall. In fact, it went completely in the other direction! Things got so bad that Black even had to forgo his usual $12 million per movie salary that he had been accustomed to drawing in other productions.

In the end, the movie was made on a $20 million budget. That’s not huge compared to the costs of some films nowadays. However, the issue was that Jack’s passion project only made back $13.9 million in theaters. So that’s quite a significant loss compared to what he and Tenacious D co-creator Kyle Gass had been hoping to get. Oh, yeah, and that’s the other thing: being partners on the musical side of things, Gass and Black had agreed to split their movie money evenly in the end. So each one ended up netting about $500,000 on a movie that cost $20 million of their own money and privately raised investor funds to make. Yikes!^[7]

3 Will Smith

Will Smith and his production company Overbrook Entertainment took a big chance in 2013 when they took the sci-fi flick After Earth to theaters. The film wasn’t cheap at all to make. In fact, they spent $150 million to produce the film—and then another $100 million to market it. Those numbers are massive in any context! And they are even more massive when you consider how much the film didn’t make! In the end, After Earth only brought back $234 million during its theatrical release. A big number out of context, obviously, but when you spend north of $250 million to get it out there, falling $17 million short doesn’t feel good. Smith himself later called it “the most painful failure in my career.”

“What I learned from that failure is how you win,” Smith told Esquire after the movie bombed so badly, and he took some time to reflect on its losses. “I got reinvigorated after the failure of ‘After Earth.’ I stopped working for a year and a half. I had to dive into why it was so important for me to have number-one movies. And I never would have looked at myself in that way.”

And he continued: “That Monday started the new phase of my life, a new concept: Only love is going to fill that hole. You can’t win enough, you can’t have enough money, you can’t succeed enough. There is not enough. The only thing that will ever satiate that existential thirst is love. And I just remember that day I made the shift from wanting to be a winner to wanting to have the most powerful, deep, and beautiful relationships I could possibly have.”^[8]

2 Patricia Arquette

Patricia Arquette was paid so little to be in Boyhood that the movie nearly wasn’t worth it to do. Financially, she came away with just a few thousand dollars for her trouble. Which, when you factor in time spent on set, time preparing and learning lines and blocking, and the costs of having assistants and helpers keep up her home and pets when she was gone to film, it just wasn’t worth it! Well, that is until she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Acctress for her role in it.

“It’s important to me as an actor to be able to make a living, but I’m going to tell you something,” Arquette revealed after the movie hit theaters and turned into a massive critical and award-show success. “I paid more money to my babysitter and my dog walker than I made on ‘Boyhood,’ and to be in Boyhood.” That seems kind of backward to us, considering popular movies make bank. But again, she won an Oscar for her role, so we have a feeling that she’s not too upset by the outcome.^[9]

1 Rebel Wilson

Rebel Wilson revealed in her memoir that the early career-defining role she had in Bridesmaids netted her just $3,500 in salary. That’s a remarkably small salary for a movie that turned out to be so popular and well-known. Not only that, but Rebel actually had to wait more than a year before the check cleared and was sent to her! We hope she wasn’t counting on paying rent or anything with the proceeds. She did use the money to join the Screen Actors Guild, at least, so that’s a nice move to make. But she ended up in the red on it overall because she had to dish out dollars for dresses and beauty bills when it came time to premiere and promote the film!

“I basically made no money,” Rebel wrote about the financial reality behind Bridesmaids in her memoir. “I lost money because I had to pay to go to the premiere, like to buy my dress and everything. That was a really skint year where I was living on $60 a week in L.A. once I’d paid my rent and my car hire. I wasn’t partying or living this [movie star] life. It was basically having that focus, trying to write for myself, like going to auditions.”^[10]

As any insider knows, Hollywood is a dog-eat-dog place. With financiers and bullish studios twisting artistry into cold hard dollars, the dreams—and careers—of many an actor are regularly chewed up and spat out. But the few big-screen performers who make it don’t always have the full picture, even at the top of their game. Friends, agents, writers, directors, producers, and studios all go out of their way to pull the wool over actors’ eyes, landing the glitterati in performances they didn’t realize they had signed up for and often would love to get out of…

Related: 10 Films That Were Rescued by the Editor

10 Tyler Perry—Gone Girl (2014)

A master craftsman of the novel adaptation, director David Fincher aimed his lens at Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl in 2014 and delivered an icy-cold psychological thriller for the ages. While pretty much everyone involved was thrilled to be on the project, not least because of the impact it had on their respective careers, there was one cast member who wasn’t pleased when he found out what he’d signed up for.

A minor yet crucial role in the movie, Tyler Perry plays Tanner Bolt, a lawyer known for representing men suspected of killing their wives and who represents Ben Affleck’s Nick Dunne. Despite being involved in the industry as a filmmaker in his own right, Perry was unaware of the kinds of films Fincher is in the business of making. If he had known, he would have turned the part down.

But Perry’s agent knew this and so spun him a line, keeping his client in the dark about the kind of movie it would be—and that it was an adaptation, something Perry was equally perturbed about making—long enough to get him over the line.^[1]

9 Linda Blair—Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

While The Exorcist (1973) is recognized as one of the greatest horror movies of all time on pretty much every front, the undeniable star of the show is Linda Blair, the young actor who played possessed child Regan MacNeil. Nonetheless, after being overexposed at a young age, she wasn’t keen to hop back on board with a sequel.

Despite this, Exorcist II: The Heretic plowed ahead just a few years later, using an impressive, exciting, well-written script to get Blair signed on. Excited to work with Richard Burton and a host of Academy Award-nominated actors (all of whom also thought the movie was going to be a big deal), Blair was willing to return to a movie franchise that had taken over much of her life.

Unfortunately, the script she was given at the beginning of production was not the one they shot. Blair and all her castmates just had to roll with the blows, adapting to the new material as it got progressively worse. It was rewritten five times in total, and the movie they made was a disaster, leaving all the cast’s hopes in ruin.^[2]

8 Chris Rock—Bee Movie (2007)

The subject of a near-infinite number of memes, Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie has lived far beyond its original premise as a family-friendly animation in the years since its release. And while its voice cast—which includes Seinfeld himself, Renee Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, John Goodman, and Chris Rock—is stacked with enough talent to have made it immortal, it wasn’t easy getting all of them on board.

Indeed, Seinfeld himself had to make the case directly to Rock to get him on the cast. He had a tough time of it, with Rock initially being resistant about joining what he saw as the next Shrek. But Jerry had one ace up his sleeve: Steven Spielberg.

Seinfeld talked up the apparent involvement of the legendary filmmaker to get Rock to sign on the dotted line. However, when Rock turned up to record his part, there wasn’t a trace of Spielberg to be found. While the Jurassic Park director had helped Seinfeld get his foot in the door with Dreamworks and featured in a couple of live-action trailers to promote the film, that is where his involvement ended.^[3]

7 Paula Abdul—Bruno (2009)

Despite having enjoyed a successful career as a singer, dancer, and actress in her own right, Paula Abdul was better known in the 2000s for judging American Idol. This is what put her in the crosshairs of prankster Sacha Baron Cohen, who followed up his hit mockumentary Borat (2006) with another, less successful outing in the genre.

Starring as gay Austrian fashion journalist Bruno, Cohen travels to the U.S. in the hopes of becoming a Hollywood celebrity. Along the way, he interviews and irritates a host of famous faces—Abdul included. The only thing is, Paula didn’t know she was starring in the movie until after the fact.

Having been told she was receiving the International Artist of the Year award, the American Idol judge arrived for an interview with Bruno. Cohen’s team kept all of Abdul’s stylists and entourage out to maintain secrecy and put the star in an interview that included sitting on and being served sushi from the bodies of live men. Abdul didn’t realize the full extent of what had happened—or the German-language agreement her publicist had signed—until the media called asking what it was like to work with Cohen…^[4]

6 Bill Murray—Garfield: The Movie (2004)

The first major Garfield feature arrived two decades before the most recent one, inserting a CGI fat cat into the real world, with Bill Murray providing a sardonic voice to match the comic strips. Despite this ingenious casting, Garfield has been the bane of Bill Murray’s career ever since he agreed to do it—but it’s his own fault.

When Murray received the script for the movie, he mistook writer Joel Cohen for Joel Coen of Fargo (1996) and Big Lebowski (1998) fame. Thus, the actor signed up on name recognition alone, figuring the guy who made some of the smartest, funniest films of the past decade would steer him right.

Nobody was quick to correct his mistake, not least because it meant they got to keep one of Hollywood’s funniest men on an otherwise run-of-the-mill production. It wasn’t until Murray turned up to record his lines that he realized something was wrong—namely, a lack of gags and good writing. He watched the film to get a feel for what had gone awry, and this was when they told him who was behind it, but by that point, it was too late.^[5]

5 Bill Murray—Ghostbusters II (1989)

Garfield was not the first time Murray had been stung on the run-up to a film. While some would say he should have known better, somehow, his experience with Ghostbusters II didn’t leave him with any lasting vigilance.

After the success of the first movie—itself essentially a series of skits by SNL cast members that nobody expected to be so big—Murray was reluctant to do a sequel. But given not just the nine-figure box office numbers but the infinite merchandise and branding potential, nobody else involved was going to let this stand. Someone (possibly director Ivan Reitman) rounded up the cast, got them laughing and having fun again, and pitched a sequel story idea that made Murray think it might just work.

As these things go, however, the film that was pitched, and even the one that was written, was not the film they shot. Murray figured that as the ink was dry and they were already shooting it, there was nothing to do but grin, bear it, and try to make the most of things.^[6]

4 Halle Berry—X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

X-Men: The Last Stand is nobody’s favorite X-Men movie, having brought the franchise to its knees. This fate would last five years before Matthew Vaughn set it back on its feet with prequel/reboot X-Men: First Class (2011). But for all the film’s more obvious failings, its worst ones happened behind the scenes.

Vaughn was originally in 20th Century Fox’s sights as the director for The Last Stand. However, one fateful meeting, in which he uncovered the studio’s plan to trick Halle Berry into returning, made him walk away.

Berry was lured back to the franchise with a padded, false script that put her character—Storm—front and center rather than (as things turned out) a much smaller part of a large ensemble. While Berry never found out about this before the contract was signed, Vaughn did. While visiting an executive’s office in Tinseltown, he saw the fake script. When he discovered what they were doing with it, he washed his hands with the project altogether. Thus, the studio went with Brett Ratner, and the rest is history.^[7]

3 Sylvester Stallone—Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992)

The 1990s saw a lot of ’80s action stars turn to comedy, pivoting with a new decade and trying to broaden their appeal. And while results varied wildly, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot—in which Sylvester Stallone stars as a police sergeant whose mother (Estelle Getty) tags along on a brutal murder case—is a certified dud.

Why, then, did Stallone put himself up for it? It has everything to do with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had been Sly’s cinematic rival during the ’80s action era and was gunning for him in the ’90s.

Schwarzenegger was offered the script first and recognized it as a flop. Still, knowing the part was being offered to Stallone, he decided to lay a trap. Certain Stallone would want the role if he heard Arnie was interested, Schwarzenegger called his agent and director Roger Spottiswoode feigning interest. They reported back to the Rocky star, and true to form, Stallone jumped at the opportunity. It wasn’t until years later, after the film had bombed and the two stars had become friends, that Sly found out he had been duped.^[8]

2 Ryan Reynolds—X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

When Fox was trying to breathe life back into the X-Men franchise with their Origins series, they presented Ryan Reynolds with an ultimatum. If he wanted to play Deadpool, he’d have to be in this one.

He wrote and ad-libbed every line of his own dialogue, as the script had nothing prepared for him. Still, even this couldn’t save him, as Fox decided to destroy the character, sewing his mouth shut and making him unrecognizable. Despite promising that if Reynolds didn’t play the character, they would have someone else play him, this is what happened anyway. When Reynolds’s shooting time was up, they had Scott Adkins play the transformed version of the character in the film’s final sequence.

Despite this ostensibly being the first step on Reynolds’s path to a standalone Deadpool movie, the studio then shelved this idea. Had it not been for test footage being leaked five years later—confirmed via lie detector to have been assisted by Reynolds himself—it might never have been made at all.^[9]

1 The Entire Cast—Movie 43 (2013)

An anthology comedy that everyone would rather forget, Movie 43 took all the excesses of gross-out filmmaking from the preceding decades and wrote them across an excruciating 94 minutes. Featuring an ensemble cast of, among others, Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Halle Berry, Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, and Emma Stone, this is a rare occasion where the entire cast was duped into starring.

Halle Berry dumps her breasts in a bowl of guacamole; Hugh Jackman has a pair of testicles on his chin; and Gerard Butler is a foul-mouthed leprechaun—these are just a few of the scenarios these Hollywood A-listers found themselves in throughout Movie 43. However, they didn’t realize it would be like this.

Most of the cast were convinced in small, casual pitches at parties and weddings by producer-director Peter Farrelly and his producing partner Charlie Wessler. Few of the stars knew what they would be shooting—and neither did the filmmakers, clobbering the movie together as they went. When the time came, Farrelly knew the actors wanted out of the project, and while a few slipped the net, he wouldn’t let most of them go.^[10]

You would think that an actor who rose to fame (and enjoyed all the riches) after a major hit television show or movie might remember everything about their experiences on set. But surprisingly, that’s not the case! Acting is a brutal job, with lots of auditions and rejections and plenty of downtime and self-doubt. But even when it’s good, it can be challenging, apparently. Because some actors don’t remember anything about the hit productions that they starred in years after the fact! We’re not talking about missing a detail here or there; we’re talking about every little thing!

If you don’t believe us, just read on. In this list, we’ll tell the tales of ten actors who enjoyed unimaginable success from amazing career-defining roles only to promptly forget everything about the experiences they’d had. They may have reached the heights of Hollywood’s competitive career ladder, but they’ve forgotten some of the things that got there in the first place. Oops?

Related: 10 Things Famous Filmmakers Regret About Their Classic Movies

10 Michael J. Fox

The early ’80s were a crazy time for everybody. The age of the yuppies had dawned on the world and given us a whole host of new things. Fast cars, the nascent computing industry, fast money, and the go-go style that would be en vogue for the next decade and then some. It also gave us the incredible rise of Michael J. Fox. The actor became a household name for two reasons in the 1980s: He starred in the popular sitcom Family Ties and moonlighted as the likable leading man in the Back to the Future trilogy. But oh, yeah, it’s actually that moonlighting which is the issue here!

Fox acted simultaneously in the sitcom and the movie series. He’d film the sitcom all day long, then head to a different studio and do the movie. And in between, he was barely sleeping at all! Because of that—and likely also at least in part because of the major health challenges he has faced related to Parkinson’s Disease, too—he doesn’t remember filming the movies at ALL! Yes, seriously!

“When I did the movie, I was doing Family Ties at the same time,” he remembered years later during an interview with Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan. “So, I was doing Family Ties in the daytime and Back to the Future at night. So a lot of it is a blur to me. I mean, I saw the movie, and I was like, ‘Oh! That’s what we were doing?’”^[1]

9 Brie Larson

Brie Larson had to film a few very emotional scenes when she shot the movie Room. One scene, in particular, was extremely difficult to film: a shot in which her character is released from the custody of police officers and reunited with her son. To film that scene, Larson had to run away from actors playing cops as though she were in horrible fear. And the adrenaline that built up in her body to do that affected her body. Then, it was all made worse when she slipped and fell on ice during the struggle with those actors. The sum total of all that meant that Larson’s brain somehow blocked out that scene and much of her other work in the movie!

“I was in such an adrenaline rush,” Larson told the Denver Post about filming the scene and forgetting it afterward. “I was running through the snow in socks with just those track pants and a tank top and no bra. And I guess I was fighting [the police officers] off and hitting them, and then I slipped and fell on the ice, and then, when I went to dive into the police car. I guess I hit my head.” Scary!^[2]

8 Avan Jogia

Avan Jogia was one of many child stars who rose to fame on the Nickelodeon sitcom Victorious. He spent his teenage years working on set there alongside many other people who would go on to be big stars—including, most notably, Ariana Grande, Victoria Justice, and Elizabeth Gillies. But there was a dark undercurrent attached to Victorious during its television run. While the stars seemed innocent and wholesome on screen, they were actually partying extremely hard while away from the camera. And for Jogia, the partying affected his memory considerably.

Years after filming wrapped and the show faded off into the sunset, Jogia popped up on TikTok to recall just what it had been like. Commenting on a video on that popular social media app, he admitted that he did not remember filming one single episode. Not one! He was partying too hard at night to recall anything he’d done on the show over several seasons! “When you don’t remember the plotline to a SINGLE victorious episode,” Avan wrote on the social media site, “but you remember going out partying every night.” That’s when you know you’re partying hard… maybe a little too hard.^[3]

7 Colin Farrell

Colin Farrell struggled with drug addiction during much of the height of his Hollywood career, so he now can’t remember a lot of the projects he worked on at the time. While the actor was known on screen as being both an incredible hunk and a total badass, things were fast falling apart off-screen. Take the project Miami Vice, which he filmed right before he went to rehab to get clean from drugs. Because he was in such a low place at the time, he now can’t remember anything about that project. Not one scene, not one line of dialogue, not one set-up or shot—nothing.

“I couldn’t remember a single frame of doing it,” Farrell told the Irish Mirror years later about the memory loss he suffered from drug addiction while filming the movie. “I was at the premiere and didn’t know what was happening next. But it was strange because I was in it. The second [the film] was finished, I was put on a plane and sent to rehab as everyone else was going to the wrap party.”^[4]

6 John Boyega

John Boyega once blacked out during the filming of a scene in his anthology series Small Axe. But it wasn’t drug-induced or something like that—instead, he was so upset at the content of the scene and the difficult and emotional portrayal he had to give on camera that his mind somehow blocked it out. The scene came with John portraying a British police officer fighting to reform racism within the department in the 1980s. In the shot, John’s character discovers sickening graffiti messages and slurs painted on his police locker by other racist cops. The set-up and the content of the scene enraged him so much that he went into a fury.

“I don’t remember filming that scene,” Boyega later told the Radio Times. “I just remember fuming and being angry. I didn’t see the locker room or the locker door until those cameras were rolling. So that reaction was all natural to the character and the choices I thought he would make.” Jeez. That’s how you know it was a powerful scene—and a masterful acting job—about a very difficult subject.^[5]

5 Courteney Cox

Times were so hectic, and life was so busy during her run on Friends that Courteney Cox doesn’t remember filming most of the show. It was her highest-profile project by far, and it brought her an insane amount of wealth, stardom, and public adulation. But if you asked her about it now, her mind would draw a blank on nearly everything about that iconic ’90s sitcom and the role she played as Monica Geller!

Things got so hazy for Courteney during filming that she actually went back and re-watched the entire show during the pandemic to try to jog her memory. But it didn’t really work! “I don’t remember even being on the show,” she told Jimmy Kimmel after revealing her pandemic-related binge-watching move. “I have such a bad memory. I remember obviously loving everybody there and having fun, and I remember certain times in my life that I was there, but I don’t remember episodes.” Really?! We get that they all run together a bit after you do a few hundred of ’em, but damn!^[6]

4 Raven-Symoné

Raven-Symoné has spent her entire life on television. She grew up on The Cosby Show, and the whole world saw her go from a child to a teenager every week on that sitcom. She was beloved by pretty much all of America from the very start of that run. But the problem for her wasn’t the gig itself—it was that she totally failed to remember it afterward! During her teenage years, Raven-Symoné first started realizing just how much of filming the show she’d forgotten. Confused about why she couldn’t remember anything, she went to a therapist for help. Eventually, the expert figured out that Raven-Symoné had been dissociating during filming due to her training as an actor and her push to get through the job.

“I don’t remember a scene,” she told TV One years later about her memory lapses. “I don’t remember anything while it’s a rehearsal or a camera… I do not remember as soon as the cameras start. Something clicks off, and I do what I’m trained to do. When I turned 18, I knew something was going on, so I started going to therapy, and it’s disassociation. I just black out, I turn into who I’m supposed to be when the camera is on, and then, I come back to when normal life resumes.”^[7]

3 Matthew Perry

Before Matthew Perry tragically passed away, he admitted that persistent substance abuse and troubles with addiction had radically altered his memory. Among the first things to be wiped out of his brain were any memories he had of filming episodes of Friends during its run. Sadly, the man who brought joy to so many people across the world as Chandler Bing doesn’t remember a single thing about the sitcom—and that blank space carried out over multiple seasons.

While appearing on BBC’s Radio 2 in the UK for an interview, Perry was asked whether he has a favorite or least favorite episode of the hit series. He admitted that he couldn’t really answer that question because substance abuse problems had wiped entire seasons out of his mind, so he was drawing a permanent blank. “Oh, my goodness. I think the answer is I don’t remember three years of it, so none of those,” he told the interviewer. “I was a little out of it at the time—somewhere between Seasons 3 and 6.”^[8]

2 Frankie Muniz

Frankie Muniz spent five long years of his life—and of his impressionable childhood, no less—filming Malcolm in the Middle. But when it came time to recall those moments years later, his mind completely drew a blank. While appearing on Dancing with the Stars as an adult, Frankie revealed that he’s been dealing with memory loss for a long time. DWTS producers had been hoping that he would share memories of moments like when he attended the Emmys as a teenager. But he disappointed them when he told them that he couldn’t remember anything about events like that.

“They were going to ask me those questions, and I told them, ‘To be honest, I don’t remember going to the Emmys when I was nominated,’” he told EW about the unfortunate interaction. “I don’t have any stories or anything cool for the package. I don’t specifically remember being nominated, or what I felt, or what we did. My mom told me we went to the dentist that day.” Wow. As for the cause behind the lapse? Frankie isn’t exactly sure why it happened, but he thinks it’s due to suffering from several concussions during his life, as well as more than a dozen mini-strokes. Scary!^[9]

1 Rainn Wilson

Rainn Wilson starred in The Office as the unforgettable Dwight Schrute, but when it came time to recall those moments years later, well, they proved to be pretty forgettable indeed. The actor admitted during a podcast appearance recently that he remembers “so little” of working on the hit television show. Even when he watches back episodes to try to jog his memory, there are scenes that he can’t remember filming at all. The occasion was the “You Made It Weird” podcast with Pete Holmes, and Wilson revealed to him on it: “Do you know what happens to me when I watch The Office? I go, holy f**k, I’m 57, I’m almost 60. I don’t remember anything about shooting any of that.”

He wasn’t kidding about that, either. The television star continued: “There will be a scene where Dwight is pushing a shopping cart down the stairs and then falls out a window and Creed throws up and… it’s some big thing, and I’m just like, ‘We shot that? I have no memory of that.’ I don’t remember, like, what month it was, what year, what season is this? It’s crazy how little of 200 episodes over nine seasons that I actually remember.”^[10]

Actors aren’t too different from us in that when they see themselves in photos or on camera, they are hyper-critical of their looks. We’ve all been there. Somebody takes a video of you doing something, and when you look back at the clip, you are overly sensitive about your mannerisms, your facial expressions, or the way you act. To the rest of us, it’s an entirely forgettable thing—if it’s even noticed at all. But when you watch yourself on camera, every little criticism is heightened.

It’s the same way with actors… mostly. Many of them refuse to watch the things they star in, if only because they are so embarrassed and annoyed with their own appearance in them. And others won’t watch those shows because, well, they starred in them! They already know the lines, the plot, and the themes. No need to rewatch something you saw happen the first time when you filmed it, right?

But every now and then, a rare actor comes along who absolutely loves to watch the things they starred in. Call it commitment to the craft, or maybe a touch of narcissism—or a bit of both—but when their movies hit the screens and their shows air on television, they tune in. These are the stories of ten actors who absolutely love to rewatch their own projects after filming is completed so they may bask in the glory of their job well done!

Related: 10 Actors That Are Polar Opposites from Their Characters

10 John Goodman

John Goodman has had some absolutely incredible on-screen roles. His big body (well, until he lost all that weight) and his booming voice certainly attest to it. We can’t ever see him and not think of his iconic sitcom role in Roseanne. And we really can’t ever see him and not think about what is perhaps his most iconic movie role, as the loud-mouth know-it-all Vietnam War veteran bowler Walter in The Big Lebowski. Thankfully, according to John himself, he enjoys watching that movie whenever it comes on! But not necessarily much of his other stuff.

During a press run chat for his role in the 2017 movie Kong: Skull Island, Goodman admitted to an interviewer that he actually does go back and watch some of his old movies! The key word here is “some.” He said: “Some, yeah, some I watch, and some are irritating and tedious.” Sadly, he didn’t say which ones he felt were tedious, though we’d be very curious to know about that. But he did mention two that he always watches whenever they come on television: “If it’s The Big Lebowski or Barton Fink, I’ll stay and watch a little bit, yeah.” We will, too, John! No matter how many times we’ve seen them, we will, too!^[1]

9 Bryan Cranston

When Breaking Bad was on television, most of Bryan Cranston’s co-stars didn’t watch the show when new episodes were released. They had filmed the episodes, the stars reasoned, and so they didn’t need to see how they turned out. Cranston felt very differently, though. He has seen every episode at least once on TV. Not only that, but he wants to watch them all again one day—with a friend or family member who has never seen the show! What better way to introduce somebody to his life’s work, ya know?

“I actually look forward to watching the whole series again with someone who hasn’t seen it who’s close to me, and it’s like, ‘well, let’s sit down,’” Cranston explained during a podcast interview. He even admitted that it would be fun to replay all the best and most memorable parts over and over again for the new viewer. What a way to be introduced to one of the world’s most famous television shows that would be—eagerly, and by the man who starred in it!^[2]

8 Terry Crews

Terry Crews is not afraid to watch himself on screen. In fact, he goes further than most celebrities on this list and watches himself perform in pretty much any format and venue he can get! That means watching and reliving the memories from filming his reality show, The Family Crews. But it also means re-watching his old scripted television and movie roles before that. And it means watching himself in memes and GIFs that have come to populate the internet. Seriously! But Terry doesn’t even stop there. He makes his family watch him work, too!

Speaking to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show one evening, Crews admitted that he forces his poor family to re-watch his appearance on Lip Sync Battle when he needs a pick-me-up. “I could not stop watching my own performance,” Crews bluntly admitted to the late-night host. “You know what I mean? I was like, ‘Y’all want to see ‘Lip Sync’ again?’ and my kids were like, ‘Aw man.’ I was like, ‘No, really, it’s good! Look at this part!’ My wife finally grabbed me like, ‘Give me the remote! I’m going to erase it off the DVR if you don’t stop.’” That’s a pretty funny story, but honestly… we think his wife had it right!^[3]

7 Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L. Jackson isn’t one of those stars who hates to see themselves on the big screen. Rather, he seeks out the films he’s been in and likes to watch them over and over again. And not only that, but he likes to buy tickets to his movies for other people, too! Typically, Jackson buys $1,000 or more worth of tickets on the opening weekends of his films and then gives those tickets away to his church and other friends. He even prefers to watch his movies in theaters with real folks—and not just at premieres with other actors and Hollywood people—so that he can gauge the honest reaction of the public after the film.

“I watch them at home; I go to the theater,” Jackson explained in an interview on the Graham Norton Show once. “I know, when I have a movie that’s opening, it’s going to make at least $1,000 that weekend because I buy $1,000 worth of tickets. I give them to the church, or I give them to somebody, and their kids go.”

He also watches his movies at home when they pop up on television! He added this reveal to Norton, too: “If I’m sitting at home and if I’m channel surfing, there’s nothing else on, I go into the search engine and go, ‘Samuel Jackson.’ Boom. It’s the truth.” That’s a pretty wild revelation. But if we had Samuel L. Jackson’s acting talent, we might do the same thing!^[4]

6 Keanu Reeves

Of all the stars who enjoy watching their past films and productions, Keanu Reeves’s reasons for it are perhaps the most profound and sentimental. Rather than just watching the films to enjoy his own acting talents, Keanu looks back at old movies with one intention: to recall the memories and enjoyable times he had behind the scenes during production. He enjoys thinking back to where he was at that point in his life and what his world was like. And more often than not, the walk down memory lane gets him smiling again.

“Watching old films from the past, it kind of is, for me, like thinking about the memories of making it,” Reeves admitted in an interview once. “It’s kind of like a photo album, so it takes me back to the people that you worked with or the experiences of making it. And once in a while… especially with a certain amount of time between the performing of it and then watching it, you know, you can go, ‘Oh yeah, that movie was pretty good.” In our opinion, he’s been in a lot of movies that we can say that about!^[5]

5 Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino was once asked by radio shock jock legend Howard Stern to pick his favorite movie of his own that he ever made. And the legendary filmmaker didn’t hesitate to levy a surprising (or maybe not so surprising) choice on the radio DJ: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Tarantino may have picked pretty quickly. But just because that was his favorite of his own movies, it doesn’t mean that he’s one of those stars who doesn’t go back to watch his other films, either. In fact, Tarantino very regularly watches the movies that he’s made. He’s proud of them, and he enjoys them, and he wants to see how they come out on the big screen.

“I love them,” he told Stern. “I love my movies. I’m making them for me, everybody else is invited. Anytime my movies are on the TV, I’m like, ‘Oh hey! Now I’m watching Jackie Brown for a while.’ I’m very happy with my work.” Honestly, that’s probably how we would react, too, if we made movies. After all, what’s the point of doing all that work if you’re not going to enjoy the finished product, right? (And not to mention, but if YOU don’t enjoy your movie when it’s done… other people probably won’t, either!)^[6]

4 Ice Cube

Funny enough, Ice Cube watches all of his old movies—but he doesn’t want anybody to know it! Instead, it took actor Jonah Hill to call him out on it once before that fact bubbled up to the surface. According to Jonah, he was once on a flight with Ice Cube and their 21 Jump Street co-star Channing Tatum when the duo noticed that the rapper was watching one of his old films. They figured it out because they saw Ice Cube watching something and hysterically laughing. But for the longest time, they couldn’t figure out what he was laughing about! Until they finally walked by and saw that the gangster rap aficionado was tuned in to Friday and loving every minute of it!

“We walked by the computer screen, we walked by to go to the bathroom, we looked, and he’s watching Friday,” Hill admitted to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. “He was watching his own movie. He couldn’t get enough of it.” Jonah and Channing couldn’t get enough of it, either, and they found themselves laughing very hard at how much Ice Cube was laughing at his own past acting performance.^[7]

3 Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston starred in the sitcom Friends for a decade. And she came out of the show as perhaps the most well-known of its six main characters. She was so popular throughout the ’90s, in fact, that women started going to their hairstylists and asking for the “Jennifer Aniston” cut to look just like her! So it makes sense that she would want to relive her old glory days from time to time by watching past episodes of Friends. Every now and then, when an old episode comes up, she happily takes the time to watch it and think back to the memories she made while on set acting in it.

“I have to say that when I’m channel surfing, whenever I do watch television, which is not often, but if I land on it, I do stop and watch,” she shared during an interview a few years back. “Absolutely. It’s very nostalgic. It makes me laugh. It always made me laugh. When we were shooting it, we would laugh; we couldn’t get through it half the time. That was something great to be able to do for 10 years—just laugh.”

Then, in 2020, she put her money where her mouth was, as they say! During an interview with Variety, the longtime actress had a mini Friends reunion with former co-star Lisa Kudrow. The duo went onto YouTube to look for old episodes of their sitcom and watch a bunch of compilation clips that had been uploaded by fans. Truly feeling the nostalgia of their time in the spotlight and their run in primetime television—and carrying a lot of pride through it all!^[8]

2 John Boyega

John Boyega may have had the break of a lifetime when he got involved with the Star Wars franchise. And so it would make sense that he loves to rewatch the Star Wars films as often as he can—including the ones he’s been in! But it’s not exactly what you think. See, he’s not watching the movie to reminisce about his own performance. It’s more that he wants to see all the other scenes in the movie that he wasn’t around to film. He’s fascinated by how they came together and what the story looks like. So, when those movies hit theaters, he wants to be a part of the viewing experience!

“I’m not just interested in my performance because there’s a whole bunch of the film I actually don’t get to experience,” Boyega once said in an interview. “So, I like watching all of it. I like to see the visual effects come together and all that stuff. You judge yourself on the first watch, but I feel like the more and more you watch it… you get to experience it in a much more natural way.” Makes sense to us. There is a lot of a movie that actors don’t get to see if they are only asked to show up to film their own scenes!^[9]

1 Kaley Cuoco

Even though she hasn’t been on that show for years now, and even though it’s been more than two decades since it first premiered (time flies!), Kaley Cuoco still rewatches 8 Simple Rules on a regular basis. For her, it’s not only a show that she loves to watch because of the fond memories she has of filming it, though. There’s also the emotional side of things—namely, her time working with the late John Ritter early in the show’s run before his sudden and tragic passing. In that way, rewatching the show allows her to think back to her time with John and how much he lit up the set with his personality.

“Once in a while, if it is on in the background, yes,” Kaley admitted to Us Weekly about deciding to rewatch old episodes. And she does that on a very regular basis! “Once in a while, I peek at it, and it brings me a lot of fond memories. Especially when we do the Three’s Company episode. That is still something that gets me to this day.” We can only imagine what it’s like seeing the much-respected Ritter alive and well on screen in that sweet moment stuck in time. No doubt it makes her emotional every time she sees it!^[10]

Expanding your horizons is a natural part of life. That even goes for actors. Although their job is to simply perform the lines, these thespians spend hours surrounded by the creative process. Some brave souls might want to steer that ship, telling their own stories and bringing their visions to life. As such, many actors have gone on to direct, which often leads to good things. Artists like Mel Gibson, Sofia Coppola, Jackie Chan, Kenneth Branagh, Kevin Costner, and Avery Brooks have distinguished themselves as able filmmakers. Of course, not everyone is cut out for it.

Some performers have tried directing only to crash and burn. Granted, that failure sometimes comes down to the material, but it also stems from not understanding the filmmaking craft. Problems arise in cinematography, editing, tone, and a wealth of aspects. Managing all that sounds overwhelming, but it’s part of the director’s job. If these hopeful performers can’t do it, then they should stick to what they know.

Related: 10 Franchise Movies That Needed a Different Director

10 William Shatner

William Shatner is an icon in more ways than one. His pause-filled, theatrical acting style has amused countless viewers over the years. That said, he’s also turned in plenty of genuinely engrossing work, such as T.J. Hooker and Boston Legal. His best-known role, however, is Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek. He’s lent commanding weight to this flawed leader across both TV shows and movies. His co-star, Leonard Nimoy, successfully directed two of those movies. That led Shatner to try his hand at the next one.

He took the reins for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Unfortunately, many fans consider this one of the worst movies. The story completely jumps the shark at numerous points, and the manufactured drama falls flat due to silly sight gags and cringe-worthy jokes. Considering Shatner also wrote the script, it’s impossible not to hold his feet to the fire.^[1]

9 Elizabeth Banks

To be frank, Elizabeth Banks isn’t exactly the most versatile actor. She’s primarily made her name on comedies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Pitch Perfect, and The Lego Movie. Even in series projects like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy and the Hunger Games series, she’s usually a quirky side character undercutting the drama. That’s not to say she hasn’t tried to expand her wheelhouse. She fancies herself as an action director, but she’s not good at it.

Banks has helmed four projects thus far. They include Pitch Perfect 2, the Charlie’s Angels remake, Cocaine Bear, and a segment of Movie 43. These films range from mediocre to abysmal in quality. Granted, much of that comes down to the script, but the movies frequently suffer from sloppy choreography and camerawork. Most filmmakers hone their craft with each project. Sadly, Banks only seems to get worse.^[2]

8 Chris Evans

Chris Evans mirrors Elizabeth Banks in carving a comedic niche. His forte is playing egotistical idiots in stuff like Fantastic Four, Not Another Teen Movie, Knives Out, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. However, many people also know him for his dramatic work as Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Curtis in Snowpiercer. He’s capable of being an action lead if not all that charismatic. That relative success led him to expand his horizons further.

Soon, Evans tried his hand at directing with Before We Go. It’s a small story about two people getting to know each other over one night. That modest premise breeds an utter lack of style. The shots, blocking, and editing are so bland that they have virtually no identity. Like his action roles, Evans fails to stand out from the pack.^[3]

7 Steven Seagal

Certain careers are pure anomalies. Steven Seagal is one such example. He’s starred in countless action flicks over his long career, but many of these are direct-to-video flops with laughable scripts and cartoonish characters. Seagal himself sleepwalks through these turkeys like he’s embarrassed to be there. Of course, you can hardly blame him, given the material, but what’s his excuse after taking the top spot?

On Deadly Ground is Seagal’s sole directing credit. It attempts to be an environmental thriller, peppered with corny dialogue and a nonsensical plot. Action flicks are known for set pieces more than scripts, but these present more problems. Fight scenes are sparse and underwhelming, and the explosions are amateurish. Apparently, Seagal’s lack of enthusiasm applies to both acting and directing.^[4]

6 Jean-Claude Van Damme

A slightly more expressive action star is Jean-Claude Van Damme. He’s also appeared in numerous popcorn flicks. Many of them aren’t of any higher quality than Seagal’s work, but at least the star puts in some effort. His cheesy performances go hand-in-hand with the silly scripts. If nothing else, he elevates the projects to ironic enjoyment. Sadly, the same can’t be said when he’s behind the camera.

Van Damme has directed two movies: The Quest and The Eagle Path. Although both films feature decent landscape shots, they also try to emulate the brutal violence found in the actor’s action films where he only acted. It’s here where these two fall flat on their faces, as Van Damme’s choppy cinematography severely undermines the impact. That weakness is all the more noticeable since the films have nothing else going for them.^[5]

5 Sally Field

Here, you have one of the most acclaimed actresses in Hollywood. Sally Field has countless classics to her name. Smokey and the Bandit, Forrest Gump, Steel Magnolias, Mrs. Doubtfire, Homeward Bound, and Lincoln are just a few of her winners. Throughout her career, she’s displayed an aptitude for both irreverent comedy and heavy drama. You might think that proud history translates to a confident direction, but you’d be wrong.

After a few gigs directing television, Field moved up to a theatrical project: Beautiful. The outcome is a mess. The flick suffers from an uneven tone and ludicrous storytelling, and Field doesn’t do anything to mitigate that. She directs it like any of the other pseudo-shocking comedies of the time. Nothing distinguishes her work, visually or otherwise, from bargain bin trash. For someone being around film as long as she has been, that’s inexcusable.^[6]

4 Forest Whitaker

In terms of acting, Forest Whitaker’s pedigree speaks for itself. He excels at character roles, delivering dramatic turns in projects like Platoon, The Last King of Scotland, The Crying Game, and The Great Debaters. Sure, he occasionally misfires with scenery-chewing idiocy in Battlefield Earth, and a few Star Wars entries, but his performing record is mostly solid. Of course, his directing exploits are another story.

Like Banks, Whitaker’s had several chances to prove himself as a director, but he fumbles the ball every time. Movies like Strapped, Waiting to Exhale, Hope Floats, and First Daughter are generic at best and embarrassing at worst. The way that scenes play out, you can tell that Whitaker desperately wants you to take them seriously as arthouse pieces. His efforts bog the films down in melodrama and schmaltziness. In the end, none leave the impact he’s hoping for.^[7]

3 Nicolas Cage

Speaking of artsy aspirations, Nicolas Cage fits that phrase to a tee. He’s experimental in both his films and acting method, leading to some truly bizarre choices. Many of these techniques send his acting over the top, so he’s often the subject of ridicule. Despite that inconsistent quality, though, you just can’t look away. It’s honestly surprising that he hasn’t attempted directing more often.

Then again, if Sonny is anything to go by, that’s for the best. This tragic tale falls into the same traps as Whitaker’s films. It tries to explore difficult subject matter, but it can’t decide how explicit it wants to be. To compensate, it wallows in melodrama in a desperate bid for awards. That sounds cynical, but the story doesn’t seem to have any other points to make. Because of that, Cage’s directing debut is somehow overly cautious and embarrassingly bold at the same time.^[8]

2 Eddie Murphy

Many of the best comedians came from Saturday Night Live in its glory days, and Eddie Murphy was one of them. He mixed rapid-fire energy and pure shock value without missing a beat. Not only was this approach hilarious in his standup, but it also translated well to movies like Beverly Hills Cop and Shrek. On the other hand, Murphy has occasionally aimed for drama, and it’s there where he’s stumbled. Given that uneven record, you can understand his problems with directing.

The actor takes the helm for Harlem Nights. Considering he co-stars with fellow comic Richard Pryor, you expect this period piece to be a lighthearted affair. That’s partly the case, but it also wants to be a hard-hitting crime drama. Murphy haphazardly juggles these tones while never achieving any organic balance. That inability causes the film to feel painfully disjointed. Such a description is sadly indicative of Murphy’s career.^[9]

1 Tommy Wiseau

Feast your eyes on the epitome of awful. Tommy Wiseau emerged from nowhere, bringing with him a passion project known as The Room. Starring in this horrific film, he redefines what constitutes a terrible performance. Not one line or expression is the least bit convincing, and the obvious dubbing is so thickly accented that it’s hard to understand. The acting alone is enough to turn heads, but Wiseau pulls quadruple duty on his debut.

In addition to producing and writing, the would-be artist directs the film. The result is just as laughable. He doesn’t know the first thing about staging a scene or framing a shot, leading every exchange to feel awkwardly unnatural. That’s if the stars aren’t standing in front of an obvious green screen or boring you with the fifth uncomfortable sex scene. Everything about this movie is absolutely horrendous, and it all comes back to Wiseau.^[10]

Nostalgia is a powerful tool. As Hollywood relies more and more on the franchises of yesteryear, studios bring back treasured characters from across fiction. That pattern obviously leads to many familiar faces as actors sign contracts for endless sequels. Audiences get used to seeing the same guys over and over. Not every appearance is so predictable, though.

Certain stars revisit their characters years after their debut. They might spend upward of a decade on other projects while the franchises evolve in their absence. Despite those diverging paths, these actors somehow find their way back to their onscreen icons. That time away from the roles usually results in tremendous fanfare upon their return. Good things are far more satisfying after a long wait, and the same goes for fan service.

Related: 10 Actors Who Wanted to Be Killed Off Popular TV Shows

10 Claudia Wells

Although the Back to the Future trilogy largely maintained the same cast for multiple characters, one of the few changes occurred with the hero’s love interest. Claudia Wells played Marty McFly’s girlfriend, Jennifer, in the 1985 original. She didn’t have many scenes, but her warm charisma provided an endearing contrast to all the wacky misfortune. Sadly, her mother’s cancer diagnosis prompted Wells to step away from the role. Elizabeth Shue replaced her in the sequels, and that seemed to be the end of her tenure.

That was until Back to the Future: The Game in 2010. Assisted by series co-creator Bob Gale, this episodic adventure title continued the heroes’ time-traveling exploits. Their actions inadvertently led to an alternate version of 1985, where the town was a totalitarian police state. Wells returned to voice Jennifer, who was now a punk rock anarchist. Such a radical shift suited her surprising reprisal.^[1]

9 Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy accumulated a vast character catalog over his career, but he was practically synonymous with Spock. With dry humor and meticulous nuance, he played the Vulcan science officer for numerous entries in the Star Trek franchise. His tenure across the TV shows, movies, and games initially lasted until 1993. At that point, the focus shifted to other crews across the galaxy. Later years saw a drastic reset, however.

Star Trek (2009) altered the series’ history and took the focus back to the original Enterprise crew. Obviously, new actors assumed these roles, but Nimoy also joined in the fun. He appeared as the future version of Spock, who partly caused this new timeline and strove to guide his younger friends. The position was a symbolic passing of the torch—both for the character and the franchise.^[2]

8 Harrison Ford

Though limited as an actor, Harrison Ford has headlined some of the biggest movies in cinematic history. The most famous was Star Wars. His turn as the roguish Han Solo charmed audiences in the original trilogy from 1977 to 1983. He seemed done with the franchise until 2015 when The Force Awakens brought back the old cast as backup for the younger players. The franchise’s sister series had gotten a grand return a few years earlier.

Arguably as iconic was Indiana Jones. Ford played this plucky archaeologist for three historic adventures from 1981 to 1989, but he made two belated returns: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008 and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in 2023. Of course, he didn’t stop at Lucasfilm properties.

Blade Runner was nearly as iconic. The 1982 neo-noir film positioned Ford as Rick Deckard, a detective tasked with hunting down rogue androids. The dystopian world was more interesting than the star, leading the 2017 sequel—Blade Runner 2049—to focus on a new cast. That said, Ford showed up as an elderly Deckard in the third act. Revisiting past hits has become a habit of his, possibly due to his lack of range.^[3]

7 Linda Hamilton

Few action heroines have matched the heights of Sarah Connor. With her son destined to lead the humans to victory against genocidal machines, this unassuming woman had to grow up fast to defend herself and her child from time-traveling assassins. Linda Hamilton lent intense pathos to that journey in The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

Unfortunately, subsequent films marginalized or omitted Sarah entirely, so Hamilton’s only contribution afterward was a vocal cameo in Terminator Salvation (2009). With other actresses taking over the character, her turn seemed to be firmly in the rearview mirror.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) surprised everyone in that respect. The sequel/reboot altered the timeline to feature a new robot apocalypse along with a new savior. Despite those changes, Hamilton stepped back into Sarah’s shoes as a guiding figure. Her presence provided valuable perspective on the temporal struggle, cementing how eerily familiar it all was.^[4]

6 Michael Keaton

Michael Keaton has mirrored Harrison Ford in revisiting multiple roles, albeit with more varied results. Many comic fans came to know him as Batman. His dark, gothic take in Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) redefined the character’s onscreen image and ushered in countless other portrayals. As many as there were, Keaton always maintained a special place in fans’ hearts.

That esteem led to an eventual return in The Flash (2023). This movie tossed multiple DC eras into a blender via time-traveling antics. The multiversal premise enabled Keaton to play an elderly Dark Knight. His gruff demeanor contrasted wildly with the speedy superhero at the center, but he got to have far more fun with his other major return.

Nearly as beloved in Keaton’s filmography was Beetlejuice. He first played this clownish ghoul in the 1988 film of the same name. His unpredictably sleazy energy made for equal parts horror and comedy. What’s more impressive is that he maintained that energy years later. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was a 2024 sequel where Keaton once again donned the grotesque getup. Even amid ever-crazier undead hijinks, he didn’t miss a beat. These distinct icons cemented his strength as a character actor.^[5]

5 Stephanie Nadolny

Goku is one of the most beloved anime heroes of all time. Considering his storied history, he’s had numerous actors voice him at various stages of his life. For his younger years, though, the mainstay English portrayal came courtesy of Stephanie Nadolny. Her slight rasp made her convincing as a little boy, but she also perfectly captured the wholesome enthusiasm inherent to this energetic fighter. Beginning in 1999, she played the child version of Goku (and his son, Gohan) in Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, and all the accompanying movies and games.

Dragon Ball Z Kai appeared to end that run in 2010. This show abridged and remastered DBZ, recasting several characters in the process. Thus, Colleen Clinkenbeard took over as Kid Goku/Kid Gohan and remained in the role for fourteen years.

2024 saw a radical shift in the series’ story with Dragon Ball Daima. This show turned the seasoned heroes into kids as an ode to the IP’s long history. To complement that legacy, the English dub brought back Nadolny as Goku. This shocking return was an inspired move. Many longtime Dragon Ball fans grew up with her portrayal, so her presence was fitting for such a tribute.^[6]

4 Wesley Snipes

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) brought back several legacy characters, but the one with the longest absence was Blade. Wesley Snipes played this vampiric hero in three films: Blade (1998), Blade II (2002), and Blade: Trinity (2004). His cool, stoic performance solidified the Daywalker in pop culture and spearheaded the modern age of superhero blockbusters.

Sadly, the films’ declining quality and the actor’s legal troubles made a continuation less and less likely. The announcement that Marvel would reboot the character with Mahershala Ali seemed to be the final nail in the coffin. Imagine fans’ surprise when the immortal slayer showed up in the Deadpool sequel.

In a typically meta twist, he’s one of the heroes in purgatory after 20th Century Fox’s acquisition by Disney, but he’s no less effective at killing bad guys. He even took a shot at the reboot in development hell, saying that there’d only ever be “one Blade.” After over twenty years of costumed crime-fighting flicks, his triumphant return was a full-circle moment for the genre.^[7]

3 Willem Dafoe

Another multiverse misadventure saw another slew of happy returns. Spider-Man (2002) was equally instrumental in jumpstarting the superhero movie boom. Not only did it faithfully adapt the web slinger’s origin, but it also did justice to his greatest enemy. Willem Dafoe seamlessly embodied the deranged duality of Green Goblin, his manic talents brilliantly fitting the baddie’s twisted menace. Plenty of Spidey villains came afterward, but none left quite the same impact.

That’s why the Goblin once again took center stage in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). This movie combined the three live-action Web Heads (and their villains) into one chaotic adventure. Dafoe was the antagonist with the longest absence. Sure, he’d popped up for cameos in Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007), but he hadn’t suited up as the crazed killer for almost twenty years. That said, his maniacal laugh made it seem like yesterday.^[8]

2 Ghostbusters

Pop culture has given us several paranormal investigators, but the Ghostbusters succeeded in star power. The 1984 classic brought Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and Ernie Hudson together as quirky exterminators. Their comedic talents bounced beautifully off each other, turning these no-name losers into household names. Although the actors only returned for one sequel in Ghostbusters II (1989), fans constantly clamored for more spooky escapades.

They got their wish twice over. First came Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009). Not only was this title an approved sequel from the series’ creators, but it sported the voices and the likenesses of all four actors.

2021 saw an additional follow-up in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Although this film introduced a new generation of supernatural fighters, the old guard appeared to aid them in the climax. The only exception was Harold Ramis, who had sadly passed away by then. Regardless, he and his teammates left a palpable impact.^[9]

1 Miranda Otto

The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) was full of unassuming souls stepping up to fight evil. Éowyn was a fine example. A shieldmaiden of Rohan, she was desperate to prove herself and protect those she loved. That love drove her to fight fiercely on the front lines.

Miranda Otto brought enormous empathy to that journey, blending bravery and vulnerability to create an endearing heroine worthy of song. As engaging as she was, though, Éowyn was mortal. That fact meant that Otto was absent as the fantasy franchise dove into other periods of Middle-earth history. Thankfully, fleshing out the heroine’s homeland found a way for the actress’s return.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024) fashioned a prequel tale about Rohan’s heroic king, Helm Hammerhand. Though not a major player, Éowyn bookended the story as a narrator. The film’s anime format meant that Otto could voice her character. Her inclusion was appropriate for the setting and provided palpable authenticity, settling fans into this new format.^[10]

Filming a movie can get more emotional than you might expect—and we don’t just mean on camera when actors are required to show their emotions based on the scenes they’re in. Behind the scenes and away from the camera, tensions often rise to the point of creative differences polluting working relationships. Actors, producers, screenwriters, and directors can have heated arguments about where a film or television show is going or how they see a script playing out. And sometimes, that can lead to some extremely aggressive and contentious moments.

That’s what this list is all about, in fact. Today, we’ll tell the sordid tales of ten actors who got so angry at their co-stars and/or other co-workers that they stormed off set in the middle of filming. It’s obviously incredibly unprofessional to leave a project right in the middle of it. But for these ten actors, tensions got so high that they couldn’t help it. So, in each case, we’ll leave you to be the judge: were they being divas? Or were they justified in walking away from filming in the middle of a gig?

Related: 10 Actors That Are Polar Opposites from Their Characters

10 Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio

Back in 1989, James Cameron was busy directing The Abyss, which starred Ed Harris. Alongside that veteran actor was the talented actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. In one scene in the film, Mastrantonio’s character is called to sacrifice herself. Then, she is revived by Ed’s character. It’s a heavy scene and one in which Cameron directed Harris to scream at Mary Elizabeth and slap her during the revival. The duo filmed the scene over and over again—to the point where Cameron’s camera actually ran out of film. But the scene didn’t stop!

Even though there was no film rolling, nobody told Ed or Mary Elizabeth. They both continued the scene involving the awful slapping and screaming for an audience of no one. And when they found out that the emotionally challenging moment hadn’t even been filmed, Harris and Mastrantonio were both livid. Mary Elizabeth was so mad about it that she (understandably) stormed off the set.

Years later, Harris recalled the difficult moment—and Mary Elizabeth’s strong reaction to it—in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I was slapping her across the face, and I see that they’ve run out of film in the camera—there’s a light on the camera—and nobody had said anything,” Harris said. “And Mary Elizabeth stood up and said, ‘We are not animals!’ and walked off the set. They were going to let me just keep slapping her around!” Wow. Pretty brutal!^[1]

9 Patrick Stewart

While he was working on the very first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, legendary actor Patrick Stewart once got so angry that he had to storm off set to contain himself. That seems unlikely based on Stewart’s impeccable reputation in Hollywood and among his fans, doesn’t it? But the incident really happened. And Stewart himself was the one who confirmed it while providing the context for the runaway!

Looking back on that difficult moment as part of his memoir Making It So, Stewart said that at the time, he was becoming mad over how he felt like his co-stars weren’t taking their work seriously. “I grew angry with the conduct of my peers,” Stewart wrote in the memoir, “and that’s when I called that meeting in which I lectured the cast for goofing off and responded to Denise Crosby’s, ‘We’ve got to have some fun sometimes, Patrick,’ comment by saying, ‘We are not here, Denise, to have fun.’” Whoa! And then he was gone—he stormed off to take a much-needed breather!

Stewart then went on to add: “In retrospect, everyone, me included, finds this story hilarious. But, in the moment when the cast erupted in hysterics at my pompous declaration, I didn’t handle it well. I didn’t enjoy being laughed at. I stormed off the set and into my trailer, slamming the door.” Hey, even the most beloved actors sometimes have moments of deep frustration.^[2]

8 Diana Rigg

While Diana Rigg was working on Game of Thrones, her frustration level at on-set antics was set to a hair trigger. It all started one day when she arrived on set to film her scenes when the crew was still setting up the shot. She recited her lines twice and then was asked to film a close-up as part of the scene. According to her former co-star Jessica Henwick, Rigg got so mad at the request that she simply walked off the set. And that was that!

Speaking to ET about Rigg’s rude on-set behavior, Henwick claimed: “[Rigg] walked onto the set, and she went, ‘I’m ready now!’ A cameraman came over and went, ‘Well, okay, but we haven’t finished setting up.’ She interrupted him and said, ‘Roll the cameras!’ And she just started doing her lines. She did two takes, and then the guy came over and was like, ‘Great, now we’re going to do a close-up.’ And she just stood up, and she went, ‘I’m done!’”

And Rigg really meant it, too—she was DONE! Rigg, who died at 82 years old in 2020, couldn’t walk very fast at that point in her life, but she stormed off set to whatever degree that she could. Henwick explained: “Now, she can’t walk fast. She has to be helped. So basically, we just sat there and watched as Diana Rigg effectively did her own version of storming off the set, but it was at 0.1 miles per hour. She cracked me up.” Now, it cracks us up, too!^[3]

7 Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage was filming the movie The Old Way when he stormed off the set because the crew was putting everyone’s safety in jeopardy. The film’s armorer at the time (the person on set in charge of firearms and weapons) was Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. You may know that name, as she was also the armorer on the set of Rust when a gun Alec Baldwin was holding discharged unexpectedly, wounding the movie’s director and killing the cinematographer. Well, on the set of The Old Way prior to that, Gutierrez-Reed apparently failed to go through proper firearm safety protocols.

According to key grip Stu Brumbaugh, who worked on that film with Hannah, she allegedly fired live ammunition twice on set in a span of just three days—and she failed to warn cast members and crew workers each time. After the second firing incident, Cage flipped out and ran off set. Per The Wrap, he reportedly yelled in anger at Gutierrez-Reed over the two shootings: “Make an announcement, you just blew my f**king eardrums out!” Knowing what happened later on Rust, which eventually led to Gutierrez-Reed being sentenced to 18 months in prison on voluntary manslaughter charges, makes the Nicolas Cage incident that much more alarming.^[4]

6 James Caan

It all came down to choking (or possibly coughing) on a cookie. The late James Caan was busy filming a movie called Nailed when he got into an on-set fight with the director of the film, David O. Russell. At the time, Caan was filming a scene that called for his character to choke to death while eating a cookie. Russell wasn’t convinced about Caan’s portrayal of the choking incident, though. The director asked the legendary actor if he might consider doing both—coughing AND choking—with the cookie lodged in his character’s throat.

Caan pointed out (correctly, by the way) that you can’t exactly cough and choke at the same time. After all, if you’re able to cough, enough air is getting in and out that you’re not literally choking, you know? Russell didn’t see it that way, though. He took umbrage at Caan’s hesitance and then asked the veteran thespian if they could film the scene both ways and see which one turned out better. Caan didn’t care to do that, and he’d had enough with Russell. He stormed off the set and left the project. His part in the film was quickly recast.^[5]

5 Sharon Stone

Back in 2014, news broke that actress Sharon Stone had stormed off the set of the movie A Golden Boy. The film’s director, an Italian man named Pupi Avati, went to the media and took Stone to task for supposedly being unprofessional. He claimed that there had been too many people milling about on set for Stone’s liking while they were shooting. So, in the heat of the moment and after getting mad at all the people watching her work, Stone rushed away from the film and refused to shoot any more scenes until most of the non-essential crew left.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter after the fact, Avati claimed: “She immediately disappeared. We looked for her everywhere, but nothing! Then my brother received a phone call from Los Angeles from her manager: she wouldn’t come back on the set until the photographers and especially that damned TV cameramen had gone away. Obviously, we did so, and she, like nothing happened, shot the scene.” Sounds like diva behavior, doesn’t it?

Only maybe it didn’t quite happen like that. After Avati’s words reached the eyes and ears of media consumers worldwide, Stone’s camp pushed back hard at the allegations. When questioned about it, her reps flatly denied that Sharon had ever stormed off the set of A Golden Boy. That denial left the rumblings to die down well enough to the point where the media buzz was curtailed. But forever after, Stone’s career has been associated with that supposed on-set meltdown.^[6]

4 Chevy Chase

Toward the end of the third season of Community, iconic comedic actor Chevy Chase had such a difficult moment with the show’s creator, Dan Harmon, that he stormed off set. And the bitterness followed Chase so closely that Harmon had him booted from the show after that season! Per Deadline, tensions had been high between Chase and Harmon for a while as the production of the third season got into the swing of things. That included multiple prior walk-outs by Chase, who was protesting the way Harmon ran the show and treated his subordinates.

Then, during the final episode of the season, Chase had it, and he stormed off set one more time. While the specific disagreement that time around wasn’t reported, the continued contentious behavior between the two of them was enough to seal the deal. Chase’s final storm-out was the last straw for Harmon, who booted Chase from future seasons.

To make things even more interesting, at the next day’s cast and crew wrap party, Harmon gave a speech about the incident to everyone assembled. In his remarks, Harmon allegedly slammed Chase with some very harsh words sent out in front of everyone. That enraged Chase even further, and he again walked out—this time, leaving early from the wrap party. The next day, he called Harmon’s phone and left an equally scathing voicemail. Bitterness all around!^[7]

3 Joaquin Phoenix

Scarlett Johansson came across co-star Joaquin Phoenix in a perilous place while the two were working on Her together. Awkwardly, the duo was filming an orgasm scene for the production when Phoenix abruptly had to excuse himself from the set. Johansson could commiserate with him on it, though, as even she thought the scene was “bizarre” and “gross.”

She revealed those thoughts—and Phoenix’s self-removal from the Her set—later in an interview on the Armchair Expert podcast. Explaining the situation to podcast host Dax Shepard, Johansson said: “We tried to get through one take, and he was like, losing it. He left the studio. He needed a break. You definitely don’t want to hear what you sound like having an orgasm. You definitely don’t want to hear what you sound like having a fake orgasm. Ew.” Ew indeed!

Interestingly, that’s not even the only time Phoenix has left the set in the middle of a production over something difficult that was taking place on camera. While filming The Joker, director Todd Phillips revealed that Phoenix was known to very often rush away from set “in the middle of the scene.” Phoenix would just “walk away and walk out” of the studio in certain unpredictable moments if he “wasn’t feeling it” with what was happening in the script. Oookay!^[8]

2 Frankie Muniz

Frankie Muniz didn’t just storm off the set when he was a child starring on the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle.” No, he stormed off set… and then didn’t return for more than two months! The walk-out came in a bid to protest the toxic environment that the show’s producers had supposedly foisted upon Muniz and the other child stars on the show. Years later, while Muniz was starring on the Australian reality TV show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me out of Here, he very cryptically detailed what happened. But he clearly still felt some type of way about it because he only referred to those creating the toxicity as “certain people” rather than naming them by name.

“There were two episodes I’m not in,” Muniz remembered years later as an adult during his time on the reality TV series that filmed Down Under. “I walked off the set. Everyone was so afraid to stand up when certain people were controlling or rude or disrespectful. Like, they walked on pins and needles… I was so mortified by seeing people afraid to stand up for themselves, I was like, ‘Say something.’ I didn’t care if they told me I was never going back because it was worth it to me.” Hey, at least he had a good reason for rushing away. Hopefully, things got better after that!^[9]

1 Emma Watson

Emma Watson’s guest-starring turn on This Is the End created a cascade of rumors that she had stormed off the set in the middle of filming. As the story went, Watson supposedly had a major disagreement with star Seth Rogen and the producers over a last-minute change in the script. And as it turns out, that rumor was true—Emma really did leave the set in the middle of filming. But it wasn’t quite for the reason that the rumor-spreaders initially thought. Oh, and it also didn’t help that Rogen himself fanned the flames of those rumors when he spoke to British GQ about the movie and suggested Watson had run away from production after a heated disagreement.

Once the rumors really started churning online, Rogen was forced to take to Twitter and confirm them while debunking some key details. “The scene was not what was originally scripted,” Rogen wrote when it came to what happened with Watson leaving the set. “It was getting improvised, changed drastically, and it was not what she agreed to. The narrative that she was in some way uncool or unprofessional is complete bull s**t. I, for sure, should have communicated better, and because I didn’t, she was put in an uncomfortable situation. She and I spoke on the night; it was overall a s**tty situation, and it must have been hard for her to say something. And I’m happy and impressed that she did. We agreed on her not being in the scene together.” So she DID storm off set—but apparently had a pretty good reason for doing so!^[10]

Every actor dreams of finally landing the “big role.” It’s the role that will make them stars, earn them millions of dollars, and finally get them those award nominations. Relatively few actors are lucky enough to ever land that role. That’s just the nature of the business. What’s more remarkable is that some actors do land that role and go on to resent it.

For some, those roles end up reminding the actors of bad times in their lives. Other actors later realize that those roles put them on a bad path. Of course, there are always actors who simply feel that their performances in those movies—or even the movies themselves—were simply never that good. For many reasons, these are some of the most notable actors who resent some of their most famous roles.

Related: 10 Things Famous Filmmakers Regret About Their Classic Movies

10 Burt Reynolds–Boogie Nights

After rising to superstardom in the 1970s and early ’80s, actor Burt Reynolds appeared in a series of box office bombs that tanked his name value. When up-and-coming director Paul Thomas Anderson offered Reynolds a role in his 1997 movie Boogie Nights, he essentially gave Reynolds a chance to prove he was still a star. Boogie Nights went on to be a massive hit, and Reynolds received the first and only Academy Award nomination of his career for his portrayal of the fictional porn director Jack Horner.

Yet Reynolds despised working on Boogie Nights and struggled to find anything nice to say about the film even after it earned him an Oscar nomination. Reynolds later said that he had little respect for Anderson and felt that the director was “full of himself.” Some of Reynold’s co-stars think that the actor was simply too out of touch to appreciate the film and understand why it was so successful.^[1]

9 Viola Davis–The Help

In The Help, Viola Davis plays an African-American maid working for a family in the Deep South during the 1960s. Davis’s work in the film garnered nearly universal critical praise and eventually netted Davis her first Best Actress Oscar nomination. Yet Davis describes The Help as one of those movies she regrets being in.

For Davis, the problem wasn’t director Tate Taylor or even her co-stars. Instead, Davis felt that the movie didn’t properly capture the “voices of the maids” and focused too much on the film’s other characters. Some critics at the time echoed Davis’s concerns. Even Abilene Cooper—the real-life maid that Davis’s character was inspired by—sued the producers of the movie over what she felt was an “embarrassing” adaptation of the story. ^[2]

8 Zac Efron–High School Musical

For some, the Disney Channel’s High School Musical movies invoke powerful memories of a time and place in their lives. For others, they invoke somewhat more embarrassing memories of a time and place in their lives. It turns out that High School Musical star Zac Efron belongs to the latter camp.

Efron says that he looks back at himself in the High School Musical films and wants to “kick that guy’s a** sometimes.” Efron goes on to say that those movies may have made him famous but that the kind of fame he received is “not a real thing” and that you can’t “share that with your friends.” This seems to be another case of a breakout role rocketing a young actor to success faster than they anticipated or enjoyed.^[3]

7 Crispin Glover–Back to the Future

Back to the Future is one of those generational hits that helped change the lives of nearly everyone involved with it. While director Robert Zemeckis and stars Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox have embraced the movie’s success, actor Crispin Glover has long been open about his disdain for Back to the Future and its eventual legacy.

Glover always had an issue with the movie’s ending and the ways it suggests the story’s main characters need to be rich to be happy. Glover’s disagreements with Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale over the issue contributed to his decision to not appear in Back to the Future Part II. Glover even sued the producers of that sequel over their attempts to replicate his likeness in the film. Glover later made amends with Zemeckis, though he is one of the only major living cast members from Back to the Future who wants little to do with the movie to this day.^[4]

6 Brad Pitt–Interview with the Vampire

After stealing the show through smaller roles in Thelma and Louise and True Romance, actor Brad Pitt was cast as the co-lead in a major adaptation of author Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. That film went on to gross over $200 million and launch the career of child actress Kirsten Dunst. But if you’ve ever watched that movie and felt that Pitt seems strangely checked out of the whole thing…well, that’s probably because he was.

Pitt has described Interview with the Vampire as a “miserable” filming experience that required him to be abroad in the middle of winter in an old windowless studio for a prolonged period. At one point, he even asked one of the movie’s producers how much it would cost to just leave the production. When Pitt was informed that it would cost him around $40 million to get out of the movie, he decided to gut it out and finish the film.^[5]

5 Gene Hackman–Hoosiers

While Gene Hackman has starred in many memorable movies throughout his legendary career, few are as beloved as 1986’s Hoosiers. Considered to be one of the greatest sports movies ever made, Hoosiers is arguably best known for Hackman’s portrayal of a high school basketball coach named Norman Dale, who helps lead a ragtag group of students to unlikely success.

Interestingly, Hackman has always seen Hoosiers itself as an unlikely success. While filming, Hackman told co-star Dennis Hopper to save his money because “we’ll never work again after this film.” It’s not entirely clear why Hackman resents the movie so much, though those around him at the time recall that he was generally grumpy throughout the shoot and seemed to feel that the movie was a pandering mess that was destined to bomb.^[6]

4 George Clooney–Batman

Following the success of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie, the role of Batman became one of the most coveted casting choices in Hollywood. Few were surprised when the producers of 1997’s Batman and Robin revealed that rising star George Clooney had agreed to play the caped crusader in the much-anticipated movie. Unfortunately for Clooney, that film ended up being a box-office disappointment and is widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Clooney doesn’t look back on the role as fondly as other Batman actors.

In fact, Clooney later apologized to Batman fans for his performance in the movie and said that he keeps a photo of himself as Batman around to remind himself to not choose roles solely for commercial reasons. Ouch.^[7]

3 Bill Murray–Groundhog Day

While a modest hit in its day, 1993’s Groundhog Day is now considered one of the best comedies ever made. There are times when it feels like the only person who doesn’t love Groundhog Day is the film’s famous leading man, Bill Murray.

While filming, Murray had a falling out with director—and longtime friend—Harold Ramis over disagreements regarding the film’s tone and messages. Things got so bad at one point that Murray reportedly only agreed to communicate with the movie’s producers via a sign language interpreter. Some theorize that Murray was simply in a bad place at that time and that this movie is a big painful reminder of those times. Regardless, it’s one of the few films in the actor’s legendary career that he never celebrates and rarely speaks about.^[8]

2 Christopher Plummer–The Sound of Music

1965’s The Sound of Music is one of the most successful and acclaimed movie musicals ever made. Yet star Christopher Plummer has rarely found a nice word to say about the picture during his long and illustrious acting career. In fact, in his autobiography, he referred to the movie as “The Sound of Mucus.”

Plummer’s resentment of the film seems to be based on his resentment for his character, Captain Georg von Trapp. Plummer says he quickly grew bored of playing the character and disagreed with some of the studio’s attempts to flesh out the role. Reportedly, Plummer’s boredom seemingly led to him showing up to the set drunk and otherwise enjoying his time away from the production of the movie a bit too much.^[9]

1 Alec Guinness–Star Wars

1977’s Star Wars may be one of the most successful pieces of entertainment ever made, but many people at the time of the movie’s release doubted its potential and saw it as another cheap sci-fi flick. Remarkably, Obi-Wan Kenobi actor Alec Guinness still looked at the film that way even after it became one of the biggest hits in movie history.

While Guinness was reportedly a professional while filming Star Wars, he wasn’t shy about letting everyone know that he thought the script was awful and that he only took the role for the money. According to a popular legend, a child once asked Guinness for his autograph and told the actor that he had already seen Star Wars 100 times. Guinness said he would only give the child an autograph if he agreed to never watch the movie again.^[10]

For many actors, getting into character means more than just memorizing lines; it requires immersing themselves completely in the role. Some actors take this process to remarkable extremes, adopting unconventional and sometimes controversial methods to embody their characters. Whether through physical transformation, intense psychological preparation, or bizarre routines, these actors go above and beyond to bring authenticity to their performances. Here are ten actors who took unique and often extreme approaches to prepare for their roles.

Related: 10 Actors Who Portrayed Real-Life Criminals to Perfection

10 Daniel Day-Lewis Refuses to Break Character on Set

Renowned for his dedication, Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the most intense method actors of his generation. Known for fully immersing himself in his characters, Day-Lewis famously refuses to break character during filming, even when the cameras aren’t rolling. For his Oscar-winning role in My Left Foot (1989), where he portrayed Christy Brown, a man with cerebral palsy, Day-Lewis stayed in character throughout filming. He insisted on using a wheelchair, had the crew feed him, and even let them carry him to avoid walking. His insistence on complete immersion allowed him to capture Brown’s struggle authentically, impressing audiences with his performance.

For Lincoln (2012), Day-Lewis took a similar approach, studying everything from Lincoln’s letters to his speeches and adopting the president’s voice on and off camera. He even requested that everyone, from cast and crew to extras, address him as “Mr. President.” His meticulous preparation included reading about Lincoln’s relationships and health, allowing him to embody the physical and mental toll of the Civil War on the leader’s life. Day-Lewis’s extreme dedication has earned him three Academy Awards and solidified his reputation as one of the most committed actors in the industry.^[1]

9 Heath Ledger Lived in Isolation for the Joker

Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008) is widely regarded as one of the most iconic performances of all time. To prepare for the role, Ledger locked himself in a hotel room for six weeks, isolating himself from the outside world to develop the character’s mindset. During this time, he kept a journal filled with disturbing images and phrases that reflected the Joker’s chaotic nature, helping him tap into the character’s psyche. The entries included lines like “I am an agent of chaos” and drawings of twisted smiles, which shaped his performance’s intensity and unpredictability.

Ledger’s preparation was intense and reportedly took a toll on his mental health. His efforts to embody the Joker extended beyond his hotel stay—on set, he continued experimenting with the character’s voice and mannerisms, even developing the iconic, sinister laugh that would define his portrayal. While some close to him worried about the psychological impact of such a dark role, Ledger’s commitment to his craft was evident, and his hauntingly memorable Joker earned him a posthumous Academy Award.^[2]

8 Christian Bale’s Extreme Physical Transformations

Christian Bale is known for undergoing drastic physical changes to embody his characters, often taking his transformations to an extreme level. For The Machinist (2004), Bale famously lost over 60 pounds (27.2 kg), surviving on a diet of water, coffee, and an apple or can of tuna each day. His gaunt, skeletal appearance shocked audiences and set a new bar for physical transformation, but Bale believed it was necessary to authentically portray the insomniac, mentally unwell protagonist. He reportedly dropped to just 120 pounds (54.4 kg), pushing his body to the brink of its limits.

After The Machinist, Bale quickly gained 100 pounds (45.4 kg) to play Batman in Batman Begins, bulking up to portray the superhero’s imposing physique. His willingness to undergo extreme body changes didn’t end there—he gained weight for American Hustle and then slimmed down again for The Fighter, proving his commitment to each role. Though such drastic weight changes come with health risks, Bale’s dedication to embodying his characters through physical transformation has earned him immense respect in Hollywood, even as it sparks concern from health experts.^[3]

7 Meryl Streep Learns Languages and Accents from Scratch

Meryl Streep is widely regarded as one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood, renowned for her ability to adapt to different accents and languages to bring authenticity to her roles. For her Oscar-winning performance in Sophie’s Choice (1982), Streep learned Polish and German, spending weeks with a coach to perfect her pronunciation. She even adopted a Polish accent in English, adding depth to her character’s background as a Holocaust survivor. The dedication to linguistic detail made her portrayal all the more convincing, deeply resonating with audiences and critics alike.

Streep has continued this rigorous approach in other films. For Out of Africa (1985), she studied Danish accents, and in The Iron Lady (2011), she spent countless hours perfecting Margaret Thatcher’s distinct tone and cadence. Each linguistic transformation reflects her dedication to fully immersing herself in her characters’ worlds, which has helped her create complex, layered performances. Streep’s meticulous attention to voice and accent is an example of her exceptional talent and adaptability as an actress, underscoring her status as one of Hollywood’s finest.^[4]

6 Jared Leto’s Method Acting for the Joker

Jared Leto’s approach to playing the Joker in Suicide Squad (2016) involved some of the most extreme and controversial method acting techniques. Known for diving headfirst into his characters, Leto sent bizarre and disturbing gifts to his co-stars to capture the Joker’s unpredictable personality. These “gifts” included a live rat for Margot Robbie, bullets for Will Smith, and even a dead pig for the entire cast. His goal was to make his presence on set feel as unsettling as the Joker himself, fostering an atmosphere of chaos.

But Leto’s method acting extended beyond gifts. He stayed in character off-camera, using the Joker’s voice and laugh and rarely breaking character, even during breaks. Some cast members were reportedly uncomfortable with his methods, and his performance sparked debate over the lengths actors should go to embody a role. Leto’s approach raised questions about the ethical boundaries of method acting, even though he argued it helped him understand the Joker’s chaotic mindset.^[5]

5 Shia LaBeouf Pulled Out His Own Tooth and Lived on the Streets

Shia LaBeouf’s commitment to method acting has taken him to extreme lengths, with his approach to character preparation bordering on dangerous. For Fury(2014), a World War II film, LaBeouf reportedly refused to shower for weeks, aiming to achieve a realistic look and feel of a soldier enduring wartime conditions. To further embody the character’s experience, he had his dentist pull out one of his teeth, creating a more authentic appearance of someone hardened by combat.

LaBeouf’s dedication didn’t stop with Fury. For The Tax Collector (2020), he reportedly spent time living on the streets and even joined members of street gangs to better understand his character’s environment. LaBeouf’s extreme methods have attracted both admiration and criticism, with some applauding his commitment to realism while others question whether such lengths are necessary. His approach reflects his unique perspective on acting, blurring the lines between fiction and reality to fully inhabit each role.^[6]

4 Natalie Portman’s Ballet Training for Black Swan

To prepare for her role in Black Swan, Natalie Portman underwent an intense year-long training regimen to portray a professional ballerina convincingly. She practiced ballet for five to eight hours a day, training with experienced dancers to understand the physical and mental discipline of the profession. Portman’s commitment to mastering the craft resulted in multiple injuries, including a dislocated rib, but she refused to let the pain interfere with her performance.

Portman’s preparation also included cross-training in swimming and weightlifting to build the stamina and strength required to perform on pointe. Her physical and emotional dedication to the role earned her critical acclaim and an Academy Award for Best Actress. Audiences and critics praised her transformation, which highlighted the grueling demands of ballet. Portman’s experience in Black Swan serves as a testament to the sacrifices actors make to bring their characters to life authentically.^[7]

3 Leonardo DiCaprio’s Survival Skills in The Revenant

Leonardo DiCaprio went to great lengths to bring authenticity to his role as frontiersman Hugh Glass in The Revenant (2015). To portray the character’s brutal survival journey, DiCaprio subjected himself to extreme conditions, sleeping inside animal carcasses and enduring frigid temperatures while filming in remote Canadian locations. He even ate raw bison liver for one scene, despite being a longtime vegetarian, which required overcoming his natural aversion to such an intense experience.

DiCaprio also learned basic survival skills, such as fire-starting, to make his portrayal more realistic. The challenging conditions pushed him physically and mentally, and his immersion in the harsh landscape allowed him to capture Glass’s struggle against the elements. DiCaprio’s performance in The Revenant earned him his first Academy Award, with audiences and critics alike recognizing the raw intensity he brought to the role. His willingness to endure these extreme conditions exemplifies the lengths some actors go to for authenticity.^[8]

2 Jim Carrey’s Intense Transformation for Man on the Moon

To portray comedian Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon (1999), Jim Carrey adopted an intense method acting approach, embodying Kaufman’s unpredictable personality both on and off set. Carrey stayed in character throughout production, channeling Kaufman’s eccentricity in ways that baffled the cast and crew. His immersion extended to portraying Kaufman’s abrasive alter ego, Tony Clifton, who would randomly appear and cause chaos on set, creating a surreal atmosphere that blurred the line between actor and character.

Carrey’s commitment to the role was so all-encompassing that a documentary, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (2017), was later released to show the behind-the-scenes of his extreme preparation. Carrey’s dedication was both a tribute to Kaufman’s unconventional life and a reflection of his own willingness to push the boundaries of acting. His immersive approach to Man on the Moon provided a fascinating glimpse into the world of method acting.^[9]

1 Lady Gaga Immerses Herself in Italian Culture for House of Gucci

For her role as Patrizia Reggiani in House of Gucci (2021), Lady Gaga took method acting to a cultural level, immersing herself in Italian language, customs, and fashion. She maintained an Italian accent for nine months, even when she wasn’t on set, to master Reggiani’s cadence and mannerisms. Gaga also delved into Italian pop culture, listening to Italian music, researching Reggiani’s real-life story, and studying her family background, hoping to capture the character’s motivations authentically.

Gaga’s dedication extended to wearing vintage Italian fashion and observing social norms from Reggiani’s era. The thorough preparation allowed her to fully embrace Reggiani’s persona, and her nuanced performance as a ruthless, ambitious woman received widespread acclaim. Lady Gaga’s cultural immersion and dedication to capturing Reggiani’s complexity is an example of how method acting can involve not only psychological preparation but also a profound understanding of a character’s cultural environment.^[10]