10 movie scenes actors absolutely hated starring in
As part of their profession, actors regularly have to perform scenes that cover subject matter deemed uncomfortable. At the end of the day, they’re only pages on a script that have to be recited verbatim, but it’s when things take a turn for the physically unpleasant that disdain begins to creep in.
Whether it’s long and exhausting days on set, countless takes and re-takes of the same scene, complicated action sequences not going exactly according to plan, or having to confront their fears head-on for the sake of an audience’s entertainment, countless stars have put themselves through the wringer for the sake of cinema.
There’s no doubt plenty of instances that the people involved have remained tight-lipped about ever since the director first called “cut,” but there have also been many more cases where the on-camera talents have come forward in the aftermath of their disheartening experiences to make it clear just how much they hated that moment in particular.
Actors might seem like they are generally happy to shut up and take the money, but once the movie is over and the promotional tour put to bed, they are more than happy to complain about some of the less glamorous sides of making movies. Being a part of uncomfortable or difficult scenes is par for the course.
Whether it’s an intimate drama, effects-heavy superhero blockbusters, sequels to fan-favourite franchises, or one of the biggest hits in history, the following ten actors have all suffered for their art, and it includes some of the industry’s biggest hitters, with Denzel Washington, Harrison Ford and many more making their opinions known.
10 movie scenes that actors hated:
‘Deadpool’
It would be reasonable to expect that the intensive fight sequences – or being stuffed into a skin-tight costume all day every day – would cause the biggest headaches for the headliner of a comic book movie, but it was something as seemingly simple as a montage that left Ryan Reynolds “horrified” on Deadpool.
As he explained to The Fix, shooting the rapid-fire sequence where he and Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa indulge in all sorts of saucy shenanigans sounds fun on paper, but it was anything but: “It’s not as titillating as it is just sort of funny, and horrifying at times. It was a year’s worth of sex in one day. Which sounds a lot more romantic than it is, trust me.”
‘Water For Elephants’
Robert Pattinson has developed a habit for perhaps oversharing what goes into his performances on occasion, with Water for Elephants marking just one of many times where the actor’s bodily fluids have ended up getting the better of him.
Set to get up close and personal with Reese Witherspoon’s character, the combination of his running nose and her wig did neither of them any favours, giving the rundown to MTV: “I was doing it when I had a really bad cold. My nose is running all over the place, and it was in one of the additional photography scenes, and Reese had this wig on, and literally, I was wiping my nose on her wig.”
‘The Equalizer’
Denzel Washington’s dispatching of bad guys in a blaze of rain-soaked brutality looked every bit as cool as it sounds in Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer, but the legendary star reached the end of his tether, spending 13 hours a day shooting the scene as the crew watched on wrapped up in their warmest clothes.
When Cinema Blend praised the fight in question for its aesthetic value, Washington joked that “by the third day at 11 o’clock at night, I disagree. They had their raincoats on. They’re dry.” Coincidentally, the rain was notably absent from any major set pieces in the following two Equalizer adventures.
‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’
For somebody who wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of working with insects, Kate Capshaw must surely have known what she was letting herself in for when she was cast as Willie Scott in future husband Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
And yet, the star needed medicinal assistance just to get through the scenes in question. Speaking to Empire, Capshaw confirmed “the bugs were really gross, really bad”, and as much as Spielberg “wasn’t gonna make me do anything that he wouldn’t stand next to me for,” she did note that she took Valium just to get within proximity of her creepy-crawly co-stars.
‘Suicide Squad’
Having to spend countless nights shooting exterior scenes in a crop top and short shorts probably should have been Margot Robbie’s biggest concern during the shooting of Suicide Squad, but it was the scene showcasing Dr. Harleen Quinzell’s transformation into the Joker’s partner in crime that caused her the most consternation.
Aghast at the “gluggy paint stuff” she was plunged into, the counterfeit chemicals proved to be a nightmarish experience: “That was so far in my ears and up my nose, and I was choking on it underwater, and I couldn’t breathe, and I tried to open my eyes, and it would glaze over my eyeballs, and I could only see white,” she confessed to The Washington Post. “It was horrible.”
‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’
As if being plunged into combat to emerge as the sole survivor wasn’t a harrowing enough ordeal, Jennifer Lawrence additionally had to be content with sinking her teeth into raw fish on the set of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which “tastes exactly how it smells”.
The Academy Award winner couldn’t have been clearer that it was “not like a sushi raw fish”, just a regular run-of-the-mill denizen of the sea: “I held a fish and had to eat it,” she told Times of India, braving its cold and scaly exterior with her gnashers for the sake of posterity.
‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’
Those with an active fear of water would be best advised to stay away from the world of high fantasy, something that would have stopped aqua-averse and fish-phobic Adam Brown from living a nightmare during the Laketown infiltration in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit sequel.
Comparing his experience to I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here in conversation with Metro, the actor came clean. He said: “I’ve always had a phobia of fish, so when we did the barrel scene in Laketown it was like doing a bush tucker trial! With all the CGI used in the film, you would have thought it would be a barrel full of computer generated fish… Oh no,” but it go worse as he ended up “covered in fish juice, head to toe.”
‘Now You See Me’
There’s not enjoying your work on any given day, and then there are genuine brushes with death, and Isla Fisher ended up barely escaping the latter when confined to a tank for sleight of hand caper Now You See Me: “Everyone thought I was acting fabulously. I was actually drowning,” she said.
In the same interview on Chelsea Lately, Fisher explained how her chain got caught, leaving her with no option but to “really swim to the bottom”. While the crew were presumably left impressed by her performance, the actor was facing a very real battle to avoid being drowned.
‘The Green Mile’
William Sadler has made a lot of movies throughout his career, but none affected him on the same level as Frank Darabont’s The Green Mile, which was driven by the most traumatic scene in the film, coupled with his own feelings as a relatively new father at the time.
Naming it to CinemaBlend as “the hardest scene I think I’ve ever done,” the moment his character Klaus Detterick discovers Michael Clarke Duncan’s John Coffey with the bodies of two young girls in his arms devastated him: “I was a young father at the time we shot it. I had a little girl about that age. And just to even go there was horrifying. But, to spend a whole day going there, seeing them, it was just awful.”
‘Titanic’
It’s clear that water can be a dangerous adversary on any film set, and Kate Winslet’s near-miss on Titanic was just one example of a torturous shoot that pushed its team to the limit. Clarifying to Stephen Colbert that she didn’t catch pneumonia; she actually ended up with hypothermia instead.
That was hardly the only incident to have affected Winslet during the exhausting process of bringing Cameron’s epic to realisation, and spending months being confined to freezing cold water tanks is something she’d happily never experience again.
