Five rom-com co-stars who hated each other in real life
Romantic comedies live and die on the chemistry of their stars. If the two actors at the centre of the film aren’t creating sparks in front of the camera, it doesn’t matter how well-written the script is – the audience won’t buy it. Luckily for those of us who love rom-coms, actors are usually professional enough to fake it, even when they can’t stand their co-stars in real life.
On-set feuds are nothing new. Any time you put movie stars with big egos on the same soundstage, there is bound to be tension. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford even managed to leverage their famous distaste for each other into a hit film when they co-starred in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? in 1962. Most of the time, however, battling actors just avoid each other as much as possible and look forward to the end of production.
With romantic comedies, avoidance is easier said than done. Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron could rely on their stunt doubles to do most of the interaction during the contentious production of Mad Max: Fury Road, but Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze had to be up close and making out during the filming of Dirty Dancing.
Some of these movies suffered from the mutual hatred of their co-stars. There is no chemistry whatsoever between Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte in I Love Trouble, for example, and Laurence Olivier has all the passion of a block of ice when wooing Marilyn Monroe in The Prince and the Showgirl. But other movies are a testament to the wonders of great acting. Dirty Dancing remains one of the steamiest rom-coms of the ‘80s, while Shirley MacLaine and Anthony Hopkins make a charmingly spiky duo in A Change of Seasons. More than an Oscar statuette, this is proof of a masterful actor.
Five rom-com co-stars who hated each other:
Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte in I Love Trouble
Julia Roberts is one of the least controversial actors in Hollywood. Her megawatt smile has been melting hearts since she stepped on-screen in Mystic Pizza, and she became one of the most bankable actors of the ’90s with hits like Pretty Woman and Notting Hill. She starred in a lot of films during that decade, which makes it blissfully easy to forget the 1994 romantic action comedy I Love Trouble, in which she played opposite a craggy Nick Nolte. Both stars would probably like to keep it that way.
In the film, Roberts and Nolte play reporters from rival publications who are covering a train wreck. She’s a novice, and he’s a veteran, and they share incredibly dull banter before devolving into a love affair in which zero sparks fly. The stars have no chemistry whatsoever, which wasn’t helped by the fact that the script lacks a credible sense of humour, and Roberts and Nolte despised each other. Nolte would later claim to have only made the film for the paycheck and described his co-star as “not a nice person”. Meanwhile, Roberts was even more scathing, calling him a “disgusting human being.” It was, in short, a trainwreck all ’round.
Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing
It’s hard to think of a more definitive ’80s rom-com than Dirty Dancing. Released in 1987, it stars Jennifer Grey as Baby, an uptight teenager who, while vacationing at an upscale resort with her family, falls for a humble dance instructor played by Patrick Swayze. The soundtrack and climatic lift have become iconic, and the stars’ chemistry is smouldering.
Off camera, however, Grey and Swayze did not enjoy each other’s company. They had already worked together in the 1984 film Red Dawn, and Grey recalled in her memoir, Out of the Corner, that she begged the producers to cast anyone but Swayze in Dirty Dancing. “I spent every day for two months with him,” she told them. “Trust me. It’s not right.”
Her issues with Swayze were manifold. She accused him of being drunk on the set of Red Dawn and playing merciless pranks on her, including setting off firecrackers near her tent at night in the remote New Mexico desert where they were filming. She couldn’t fault his dancing skills (he was a trained ballet dancer, after all), but from the beginning, something was lacking. “The sexual chemistry between Baby and Johnny was everything,” she wrote, “And I was not feeling it.”
For his part, Swayze found Grey challenging. In his memoir, The Time of My Life, he described his co-star as immature, saying that she would “slip into silly moods,” which forced them to shoot the same scenes over and over. “She seemed particularly emotional,” he said, “Sometimes bursting into tears if someone criticized her.” Based on Grey’s account, those tears might have had something to do with him.
Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl
There is no shortage of stories about Marilyn Monroe’s challenging on-set behaviour. Many people point to her troubled relationship with Tony Curtis, who played her love interest in Some Like It Hot and famously (and bizarrely) compared kissing her to kissing Hitler. However, one of the lesser-known feuds that the star found herself in was with none other than Sir Laurence Olivier, who directed and co-starred with her in the 1957 romantic comedy The Prince and the Showgirl. In the film, he plays a prince regent who pursues Monroe’s American showgirl.
It was a turbulent time in the star’s life. Her marriage to Arthur Miller was in turmoil, and she had grown dependent on medication to get her through productions. She was chronically late to the set (sometimes by four hours) and often deferred to her acting coach rather than Olivier when it came to filming. In a highly detailed and patronising critique of the star years later, Olivier sounded both diplomatic and damning, calling his co-star “a very curious little person” and saying that she was, by nature, a model who, by “villainy of nature” was doomed to be an actress.
“When I first met her, I thought she was the most enchanting thing I’d ever met in my life,” he said, explaining that he had been dying to work with her and long admired her wittiness. Unfortunately, he said, working with her “didn’t turn out to be either exciting or enjoyable”.
Shirley MacLaine and Anthony Hopkins in A Change of Seasons
Opposites did not attract personally or professionally when Shirley MacLaine and Anthony Hopkins joined forces for the 1980 comedy A Change of Seasons. Directed by Richard Lang, it stars the actors as feuding spouses who bring their respective lovers on a skiing vacation. Their teenage daughter and the father of Hopkins’ mistress also show up, leading to a comedy of errors that is full of sex, arguing, and double standards.
MacLaine and Hopkins were like chalk and cheese, which may have aided their performances as enraged spouses but didn’t do much for the production as a whole. Hopkins later referred to his co-star as “the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with.” In her memoir, My Lucky Stars, MacLaine said that he was “insecure” about playing comedy and even claimed that he came to her trailer to ask for guidance. She eagerly complied, but rather than helping, it only seemed to hurt, and MacLaine wondered if perhaps she had been “too” helpful.
“Our relationship became subtly tense and hostile,” she wrote. “I didn’t like Tony and he didn’t like me. He thought I was aggressive, opinionated, insensitive, and in general obnoxious. I felt the same way about him.”
Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando in The Countess from Shanghai
If you’ve heard anything about on-set strife during the production of the 1967 romantic comedy The Countess from Shanghai, it probably has to do with Marlon Brando’s outspoken hatred of its director, Charlie Chaplin. The actor found the legendary filmmaker to be a short-tempered bully and even said it was the worst experience he’d ever had as an actor. This story conveniently casts Brando as the victim and Chaplin as a tyrant. For Brando’s co-star Sophia Loren, however, it was he who was the aggressor.
In the film, he plays an American diplomat on a ship who falls in love with a Russian refugee, played by Loren. Their chemistry barely registers, and for good reason. In her memoir, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life, Loren provided a dramatic account of her co-star’s inappropriate behaviour on set and alleged that he groped her at one point.
“All of a sudden, he put his hands on me,” she wrote. “I turned in all tranquillity and blew in his face, like a cat stroked the wrong way and said, ‘Don’t you ever dare to do that again. Never again!’”
He didn’t, but Loren said it was “very difficult working with him after that.”
