From Stanley Kubrick to Alfred Hitchcock: 10 directors that actors hated working with
If you watch any mainstream movie about Hollywood or consume every Disney release that is churned off the shelves, you may understandably believe that the industry is a land of magic, wonder, superstars and success.
While this is true to some extent, it’s also a fact that the world of filmmaking is a nasty beast, with actors and directors falling out all the time over creative differences or just personality clashes.
This is by no means a recent phenomenon either; ever since the dawn of Hollywood, actors and directors have butted heads. It comes naturally in an industry that is fueled by creative ego, with such stars as Marlon Brando, Joan Crawford, Chevy Chase, Mike Myers, Sean Penn and Katherine Heigl being notoriously difficult to work with.
Alfred Hitchcock once offered a glimpse into what can be a tricky relationship between actor and director when he blurted out, “I never said actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle”.
Explore our list of ten directors whom actors hated working with below, with the rundown ticking off some surprising additions, including Stanley Kubrick, who is known for making some of the greatest movies of all time, as well as Wes Anderson, who often works with the same tight-knit group of actors.
Discover just how toxic Hollywood can truly be in the following list, exposing the truth behind some of cinema’s most beloved productions.
10 directors that actors hated working with:
Wes Anderson / Jeffrey Wright
If you’ve ever seen a Wes Anderson movie, you will know that one undercurrent carries his filmography – a meticulous attention to detail. Whether it be his extensively researched colour palettes or his preference for symmetrical framing, Anderson’s iron grip on the visual aspects of his movies means he’s a particularly difficult taskmaster when in the director’s chair.
Despite an always impressive roster of actors joining his wide-ranging projects, in recent times, Anderson has admitted that many actors turn him down, “some do say no to me,” he told Metro. One reason might be the notoriously low salary he offers actors or, indeed, his desire for them all to eat dinner together in character after each day’s shooting, as he did on Asteroid City. But, in reality, it is Anderson’s Kubrickian attention to the smallest details that makes him a tough customer for actors on set.
Jeffrey Wright noted, “We did an insert for this film in which my hand touches the gun holster, flips up the flap and grips the weapon. That took about 60 takes and four hours”.
Paul Thomas Anderson / Burt Reynolds
“I wasn’t crazy about being (directed) by a guy who’s younger than some sandwiches I’ve had,” was the response of Burt Reynolds when discussing his work with Paul Thomas Anderson on the set of Boogie Nights. The director may be regarded as one of the best in the business, but he’s achieved such acclaim with a tough stance on how he wants his movies to be created.
Paul Thomas Anderson has also been known to create chaos on set in the hope of capturing human imperfections that make his movies so brilliant. From swapping gas canisters in Licorice Pizza or completely reshooting a scene in Inherent Vice after previously noting his love for the original. It’s a confusing stance on conducting a movie, but it provides exquisite results.
David Fincher / R Lee Emery
There are many accounts of actors hating the process of working with David Fincher. The director is notorious for having a tight grip on the scripts at hand, as R Lee Emery noted: “He’s afraid to take chances. He’s afraid to let anybody change one word in the script…He wants puppets.
“He doesn’t want actors that are creative. If you’re not worth a shit at acting and you’re not creative, then I would recommend that you go work with David Fincher, because he won’t let you act, even if you are a fucking good actor”.
In Fight Club, David Fincher also frequently clashed with his leading man, Edward Norton, and in Zodiac, he had a conflict with both Robert Downey Jr and Jake Gyllenhaal, leaving the latter in tears after seeing hours of footage deleted in an instance of Fincher’s exclusive control.
Werner Herzog / Christian Bale
While many of the directors on this list have a nasty habit of controlling every facet of a movie’s production, part of the problem of Werner Herzog is creating perilous productions in the first place, perhaps typified when he had a 320-tonne ship carried over a mountain. This stressful set-up exudes through the production of the project, too.
Christian Bale is one actor who suffered at the hands of Herzog, who had the actor dragged behind a buffalo, eat live maggots and even suffer torture devices. That’s without considering the constant confrontations he had with leading man Klaus Kinski.
“He was just trying to push my buttons and see how I reacted,” Bale said of his time with Herzog. “He just wanted to see if I flinched, basically. He does that a lot with people.”
Alfred Hitchcock / Tippi Hedren
He’s regarded as one of the greatest directors of all time, but Alfred Hitchcock was also a serial prankster. Gerald du Maurier suffered a joke at his expense when Hitchcock had a horse delivered to his trailer without warning, while he had two tonnes of coal sent to a cameraman who boasted about his new all-electric kitchen.
Hitchcock had a far darker side, too. Actor Tippi Hedren asserted that Hitchcock engaged in sexual misconduct towards her and other actors during the filming of The Birds. The issue extends beyond just instances of sexual harassment, as the director also instilled fear in Hedren during a scene intended to involve mechanical birds. Instead, Hitchcock opted to use real birds, adding an unexpected and unsettling dimension to the production.
Hedren would later comment, “Being the object of Alfred Hitchcock’s obsession was horrific, but while he ruined my career, he could never ruin my life.”
Stanley Kubrick / Shelley Duvall
Studied by film students across the world and revered by burgeoning directors, Stanley Kubrick is undoubtedly one of the best to ever grace the silver screen, creating such classics as A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey, but he notoriously wasn’t the easiest person to work with.
His tricky personality came to a head on the set of the 1980 horror film The Shining, where he clashed with lead actor Shelley Duvall.
Comparing the role to “torture”, Duvall later discussed how she got in character for her testing role, stating: “You just think about something very sad in your life or how much you miss your family or friends… but after a while, your body rebels. It says: ‘Stop doing this to me. I don’t want to cry every day.’ And sometimes just that thought alone would make me cry”.
“For a person so charming and lovable (as Kubrick,) he can do some pretty cruel things when you’re filming,” she revealed in an interview. “It was a very difficult role. It was a long shoot, and I had to cry and hyperventilate and carry a little boy for most of the time we shot. And that was about a little over a year.”
Frank Oz / Marlon Brando
Best known for his work behind the scenes on countless Muppets projects, as well as for being the director of such classic movies as Little Shop of Horrors and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Frank Oz is something of an underrated Hollywood filmmaker. But he didn’t always work with puppets on comedic projects, back in 2001, he created The Score, a crime drama starring Robert De Niro, Edward Norton and Marlon Brando.
Known for being difficult to work with, especially later in his career, Brando formed a strong dislike of Oz, even going so far as to call him ‘Miss Piggy’ after the iconic Muppets character he voiced. The director later blamed himself for fueling the conflict, admitting it was tough to handle Brando, but the actor was known for being a difficult talent.
“I was confrontational,” Oz admitted to the Los Angeles Times. “I should have been more generous, and I think that’s what caused the rift between us (Brando),” he added.
Kevin Smith / Bruce Willis
The filmmaker and movie fan Kevin Smith is largely known as one of the nicest and most approachable directors in the Hollywood system, but that’s not to say that he got on with everyone he worked with. Back in 2010, he made the awful and highly forgettable action comedy Cop Out with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, with the former coming to blows with the likeable director.
Admitting that he didn’t handle the actor well, Smith recalls: “I was going at it like, ‘Bruce, do it like this.’ I was directing Bruce the way I direct everybody else. And Bruce was like, ‘I’ve been acting like Bruce Willis for 25 years, do you really think there’s anything you’re going to tell me that I don’t know?’”.
Joel Schumacher / Val Kilmer
One of the greatest products of the 1990s, the American filmmaker Joel Schumacher is known for making such beloved movies as Flatliners, Falling Down and A Time to Kill.
Modern audiences will better know him for his contributions to comic book cinema; however, he created the dismal Batman movies Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, with the latter becoming known as one of the worst movies of all time.
But, it was during the making of Batman Forever that the director would come to blows with Val Kilmer, with Schumacher later admitting: “(We) had a physical pushing match. He was being irrational and ballistic with the first AD, the cameraman, the costume people. He was badly behaved, he was rude and inappropriate. I was forced to tell him that this would not be tolerated for one more second. Then we had two weeks where he did not speak to me, but it was bliss”.
David O Russell / George Clooney
The American filmmaker David O Russell might be known as being the most volatile director in all of Hollywood, with countless actors having a problem with his controlling style, despite having made some of the best movies of the new century, including Silver Linings Playbook and The Fighter.
His many controversies go back to the start of his career and to the making of Three Kings in 1999, when George Clooney severely clashed with the director. “Will I work with David ever again? Absolutely not,” Clooney stated, “Never. Do I think he’s tremendously talented, and do I think he should be nominated for Oscars? Yeah”.
Clooney went further when talking about how his attutude have changed as he gets older, aiming a not so subtle did at Russell: “And so it’s not just like, ‘Oh, I’m going to go do a really good film, like Three Kings, and I’m going to have a miserable f*** like David O Russell making my life hell. Making every person in the crew’s life hell,’” Clooney said. “It’s not worth it. Not at this point in my life. Just to have a good product.”
This is only one of many run-ins with his actors, too.
