14 Actors Who Were Actually Very Afraid While Filming These Movies

From getting buried alive to being covered in bugs, Fear Factor's got nothing on these guys.

1. Just like Ron Weasley, Rupert Grint has a serious case of arachnophobia, which led to the production team making some changes to the making of The Chamber of Secrets – the initial plan was to use real spiders, but after Rupert had a panic attack when one was on his leg, the team went down the visual effects route.

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Despite his fears, he managed to make it through the filming with Aragog, but he avoids watching that scene. In Creating the World of Harry Potter, he revealed “It really made me feel uneasy. I didn’t like looking at it at all. We saw that scene in the cinema, they kind of added visual effects — all these kinds of moving ones of the ground. I still can’t watch that scene. Absolutely terrifying.”

Check out Rupert following the spiders:

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2. As a child, Kristen Stewart fell off a horse, resulting in a broken and dislocated elbow, so it’s no surprise that she wasn’t too keen on the prospect of riding a horse in Snow White and the Huntsman.

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Kristen really wanted to take on the challenge for the film, so she powered through and faced her fear head-on, saying, “I wanted so badly to do this that it was just like, ‘Alright, well, if I perish by horse, that’s all good.” She admitted that it was a struggle, and there were some injuries, but she was proud of persevering, Snow White style.

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at Kristen working with the horses:

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3. We can all agree that Katniss’ performance of “The Hanging Tree” was a moving moment in Mockingjay, but Jennifer Lawrence was so horrified at the prospect of singing, she cried before filming the scene.

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According to director Francis Lawrence, Jennifer was so against singing she didn’t even want to practice. She opened up about her fear of singing publicly on The Late Show, telling David Letterman, “I do not like singing in front of other people. It’s like my biggest fear. I’m like, scarred from my childhood because I have a Southern mother who would just tell me that I was amazing at everything, that I could do everything. But, I can’t.” Well, it turns out her mum was onto something – her performance was so flawless they didn’t have to do any pitch-shifting!

Jennifer's flawless performance:

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4. If you’ve seen Crazy, Stupid Love, you’d imagine the filming of the Dirty Dancing lift scene would be pretty straightforward, but that wasn’t the case for Emma Stone – an internalised fear of being lifted high up caused her to have a meltdown on set.

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She opened up about the experience on The Graham Norton Show, revealing that, as a child, she fell off the parallel bars in gymnastics class and broke both her arms. She wasn’t aware that she’d internalised the fear, but it all came out when she jumped into Ryan Gosling’s arms (he described it as being like, “if a possum fell out of a tree and tried to scratch your eyes out”), and they eventually ended up using a body double for the lift. 

Watch the Dirty Dancing homage in action:

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5. When she signed on to star in Top Gun: Maverick, Jennifer Connelly was under the impression that her character wouldn’t be leaving the tarmac. She was reluctant to admit her fear of flying to Tom Cruise, but it was his presence that helped her through the scene.

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Jennifer admitted that although she was trying to be cool around Tom Cruise, ultimately, filming on the vintage P-51 was a special experience, “If it weren’t for Tom being the pilot, I think that would have been very frightening for someone like me, who isn’t a huge fan of flying.”

Here's the cast breaking down the P-51 scenes:

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6. A childhood incident left Jennifer Aniston with a big fear of going underwater, which made filming the water therapy scene in Cake – which took 30 takes to get right – an experience she described as the hardest day in her life.

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Jennifer explained that, as a kid, she drove her tricycle into a swimming pool, which naturally left her with an aversion to water. The role in Cake was the kind of part she’d been wanting to do for years, calling the pool scene a catch-22, explaining: “It's you know, ‘Please let me play this part. I know I can do it.' But then they won't give you the part because they don't know if you could do it.”

The pool scene in action:

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7. Despite being THE scream queen, Jamie Lee Curtis is so deeply afraid of horror movies she refuses to watch them, but she’s managed to work the lifelong fear to her favour.

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Jamie said that scaring so easily is part of why she’s such a pro at delivering her believable performances – it’s a natural response. She avoids watching anything scary, but she did force herself to watch the final instalment of Halloween, confessing; "The parts of the movie I didn't watch being filmed – seeing it for the first time, I had the volume down and I had my face behind my hands."

Here's Jamie Lee showing us exactly why she earned her title:

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8. The idea of being buried alive is terrifying, so it’s not really a surprise that Ryan Reynolds – who’s claustrophobic – had a pretty terrible ordeal while filming Buried.

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Ryan played Paul, a truck driver who winds up buried alive with just a few tools to break out. Ryan had to work through a lot for the role, which he took on because he felt the film (directed by Rodrigo Cortés) was reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock. He spent two weeks filming in a prop coffin, during which he suffered from insomnia, panic attacks, and he even passed out between takes. He told David Letterman, “There was one sequence in the movie where I had a paper bag and I would breathe into this paper bag as much as possible before the take, and then when I came to, somewhere in the middle of the take I would grab it, breathe, breathe, we'd wait for a beat and then keep going.” Damn.

This is the trailer for Buried – watch if you wanna feel uncomfortable.

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9. When he started filming Batman Begins, Christian Bale felt so claustrophobic inside the bat suit that, at first, he felt like they made a mistake and needed to recast the role.

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On putting on the costume, Christian felt as if he couldn’t breathe, but facing the suit helped him overcome the terror, saying, “I took some time and breathed deeply and asked to be left alone for 15, 20 minutes, and just sat with it and eventually got used to it.”

Here's Christian donning the suit for the first time:

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10. Lupita Nyong’o’s character in The 355 courageously tackles challenges with ease, but behind the scenes, Lupita had to overcome her own fear of heights when it came to filming the stunts.

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Despite being afraid of heights, Lupita ultimately enjoyed the physical aspects of the movie, admitting that it was fun to challenge her body. The experience taught her a lot, and she passed on these words of wisdom, “Courage is action in spite of fear. It’s not about not being afraid. People who do courageous things — it’s not that they don’t have fear, it’s that they work with their fear to do the things they need to do.” 

Check out some of Lupita's impressive stunts in the trailer:

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11. Sandra Bullock is a self-described white-knuckle air passenger, and while she faced her fear of flying head-on in Gravity, it wasn’t an easy ride.

Warner Bros.

Sandra didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to work with Alfonso Cuarón, and even agreed to ride on a reduced gravity aircraft terrifyingly named the Vomit Comet, which she felt would help her conquer her fear, telling herself; “It’s time to just get over it and this is how we’re going to do it.” 

Luckily, they ended found ways to film without the Vomit Comet experience, but filming in isolation for up to 11 hours at a time left Sandra feeling very claustrophobic.

Sandra Bullock in action:

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12. We all know that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom had that one scene where there were loads of bugs. What you might not know is that Kate Capshaw had to take a valium to get through the sheer amount of bugs that were crawling through her clothes.

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Frank Marshal, the film's producer pointed out that, unlike other animals, you can't really arrange or contain bugs, so they were all over the place.

Here's the shiver-inducing scene:

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13. Landing the lead role in role in the Spider-Man movies led to Tobey Maguire facing a plethora of personal phobias, including his fear of heights and an aversion to insects.

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While there aren’t that many bugs in the movies, Tobey took prepping for the role as an opportunity to face a lifelong fear after crossing paths with a grasshopper in his house. Retelling the moment, he said; “I considered putting a glass over it and carrying it outside. But I just freaked out and had to drop it. I was really disappointed with myself and I was pacing back and forth thinking: 'I'm gonna be Spiderman and I gotta be able to grab this bug and take it outside.' So I grabbed it again but it turned around in my hand and I freaked out again and dropped it, and decided to work on that part of my character another day. It was like psychological warfare.”

Playing Peter Parker was far from smooth sailing – getting his spidey suit made involved him spending half an hour with his head encased in layers of plaster, a process that made him feel so claustrophobic that he freaked out and the team had to remove it. And while Tobey was fine with all the swinging, when it came to Spider-Man 2, he hated filming on the edge of the tall buildings.

Check out Tobey facing terrifying heights here:

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Know any more actors who faced their fears? Let us know in the comments!