15 Famous Actors Who Did Impossibly Embarrassing Things On Set

It's nice to know that even the rich and famous can look like fools at work, too.

1. Alison Brie peed herself on the set of Mad Men and had to shoot a scene soaking wet.

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In fairness to Brie, she DID make it to the bathroom in time. Unfortunately, the many layers of the 1960s' period clothing she had on did her in. 

As she told Seth Meyers about trying to take off the elaborate clothing in the bathroom, “You’re really working blind. You’re lifting up the skirts, and the girdles are made so you can sort of pull it to the side and use the bathroom. They thought of everything! Except that I had a pair of underwear underneath — this is getting sort of graphic — and I just start peeing, and I can’t hear the pee hitting the toilet, so I realized I missed my underwear, they didn’t quite make it out of the way. And I just did a full pee. It was not a slight trickle, there was no stopping it in the middle. I just got soaked." 

Now here's where this story took a full turn into anxiety dream territory. As Brie tried to desperately pat down the wetness with toilet paper, "Someone outside was like, ‘We have to go!’" Brie recalled. "So I went to set and shot a full scene.” 

That's right — Brie filmed an entire scene while wearing pee-soaked clothes. Afterward, costume designer Janie Bryant "came in and was like, ‘Do you hate your costume? You look so uncomfortable,'” Brie said. “I was like, there’s pee, I peed everywhere! And she said, ‘It happens more often than you think.’"

2. Hugh Jackman also peed himself — this time on stage while playing Gaston in Beauty and the Beast.

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OK, this one took place on stage, not a film set, but that almost makes it more embarrassing, doesn't it? Jackman was playing Gaston in a 1990s Australian production of Beauty and the Beast, and well, we'll let him take it from here:

“I pissed my pants on stage,” he told British Vogue. “It’s the doozy of all doozies. The doctor told me I was dehydrated so, following direction, I drank so much water that by the time I was doing this number — in red tights, as Gaston in Beauty and the Beast — I basically had a choice of pissing my pants or not singing.”

I might have chosen the "not singing" option, but then again, I'm not a world-famous performer!

3. Anne Hathaway got naked on the set of Love & Other Drugs before she was told, "Uh, Anne, you don't actually have to be naked right now...we're just rehearsing the scene":

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Hathaway can be forgiven for her awkward mistake because the film — costarring Jake Gyllenhaal — was a steamy affair. Still, showing up naked at work when you're not supposed to is definitely a facepalm-worthy moment.

Talking about the scene where Hathaway removes her trench coat and is nude underneath, she told the Standard, "I thought we were filming, but it turned out we were just rehearsing, and I got unnecessarily naked in front of a lot of people. But hey, I just did my job."

4. Kristen Schaal farted on her Last Man on Earth costar Will Forte while filming a sex scene with him.

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Schall told Seth Meyers, "I was so nervous because I'd never done a sex scene before... The problem was we shot the scenes out of order, and when you watch the episode, after they have intercourse, Carol (her character) is famished and she's just slamming beans. And so we did a few takes, and I was committed. Like, I was eating the beans for real, and I wasn't cheating that! I was like (mimes cramming food into her mouth)." 

"So then they shot the sex scene...where you have to lie flat on your tummy...and Carol was also aggressively sexually talking to (Forte's) Phil, which was a lot of diaphragm work that was also in the danger zone of where the beans were having their hey day, so I was having this private battle. Finally, I looked at Will and said I'm gonna fart on you. And I did." 

After reflecting on the experience, she said, "I want to call the union. You don't fill a lady up with beans, put her on her tummy, and make her yell!"

5. Speaking of farts, a then-9-year-old Josh Hutcherson ripped one on Tom Hanks while filming a scene in The Polar Express.

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The Hunger Games/Five Nights at Freddy's star told James Corden about his experience filming the holiday classic...which included what he called the most embarrassing moment of his entire life. "I was shooting this scene with Tom Hanks, who is like the father of America, and we’re shooting this scene…where I’m, like, nestled in under him…and I farted."

But it gets worse...

"Instead of playing it cool, Tom Hanks was like, 'Whoa! What? Oh my god, this kid, what the heck!' My first big movie. Tom Hanks! And I just farted in his face!”

Thankfully, Hutcherson has since recovered (I think), and now says, "Looking back on it, it's very funny, but in that moment, I felt like my face was going to start sweating blood."

Look on the bright side, Josh...it was a learning lesson...and you never farted on Jennifer Lawrence!

6. Christopher Mintz-Plasse had to film his sex scene in Superbad with his mom in the room watching.

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Superbad was the first movie for Christopher Mintz-Plasse (who played McLovin) so there were probably a lot of stressful moments on set. But one surely took the cake — having to film a sex scene in front of his mom's watchful eye.

Mintz-Plasse later told Vanity Fair, "I remember being young and thinking it was cool: 'Oh, my god. I’m gonna shoot a sex scene? That’s crazy!' I had never really even kissed a girl at the time." But his excitement quickly waned when he was told that — because he was a minor — his mother would need to watch. He called the experience "pretty uncomfortable," which I imagine is an understatement! 

7. Sadie Sink also had her first kiss on the set of Stranger Things...with her mom looking on.

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A first kiss on set in front of your mom is bad enough, but the Stranger Things filmmaking team kept the kiss between Sink and costar Caleb McLaughlin a secret until the day of shooting. McLaughlin told the Things that the kids on set teased him, like, "Oooooh! You're going to kiss her!" A little teasing is nothing compared to Sink's situation, though, as her mom was on set and watched the whole damn thing. Awkward!

8. Henry Cavill got a very awkward and "unacceptable" boner on the set of The Tudors while filming a sex scene.

Mike Marsland / WireImage

Cavill told Men's Journal, “It was very embarrassing. A girl had to be on top of me, she had spectacular breasts, and I hadn’t rearranged my…stuff into a harmless position. She’s basically rubbing herself all over me and, um, it got a bit hard. I had to apologize profusely afterward. It’s not great when you’re in a professional acting environment and somebody gets a boner, is it? No, not acceptable.”

9. Gucci Mane fell asleep while filming his big sex scene in Spring Breakers.

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According to Mane's autobiography (appropriately titled The Autobiography of Gucci Mane), the rapper was performing a scene where his character was having sex with one woman while another sucked his toes...and he fell asleep! Imagine being one of the actors performing the sex scene opposite him...talk about humbling!

“I couldn’t keep my eyes open," Mane wrote. "I was knocked out, snoring... Harmony (Korine, the director) kept having to wake me up for takes.” 

As it turns out, Mane had an excuse for being so exhausted. He'd just performed a concert prior to the night shoot, which continued until early in the morning.

10. Michael Sheen vomited after seeing Lizzy Caplan naked for the first time on the set of Masters of Sex.

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Caplan was nervous about shooting the scene as it was the first time she had to be naked in front of her costar. In it, Caplan was to remove her brassiere, take Sheen's hand, and place it on her breast. That part of the shoot, nerve-racking as it may have been, went off fine. Then the real awkwardness hit. 

Caplan told Conan O'Brien, "They yell cut, and he (Sheen) immediately walks over to a garbage can and throws up."

You heard that right. He threw up!

Caplan continued, "I later found out that he had food poisoning, but in the moment, there was no way to digest that in a reasonable way. I thought it was a direct cause and effect. My whole self confidence plummeted to the ground, and I realized I was a monster, and anyone who touches me will immediately start vomiting."  (She was being sarcastic with the last bit, but something tells me it wasn't all that far from how she actually felt!) 

11. Robert Pattinson couldn't stop sweating all over Julianne Moore while filming a sex scene.

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As should be clear by now, sex scenes are just plain awkward. But Robert Pattinson had an ESPECIALLY awkward one with Julianne Moore while filming 2014's Maps to the Stars. 

Pattinson had just met Moore when they immediately had to film the sex scene, and before he knew it, he was sweating...profusely. He told the Independent, “I sweat like a fucking crazy person,” he said. “I was trying to literally catch drops of sweat to stop them from hitting her back. Afterwards, she was like, ‘Are you having a panic attack?’ It was so embarrassing.”

12. Martin Short didn't realize his penis was hanging out of his boxer shorts while in hair and makeup.

Orion Pictures

The 1994 cult comedy Clifford sounds pretty generic — a 10-year-old boy goes to stay with his uncle while his parents are on vacation — until you realize the boy was played (with no CGI or anything) by then-44-year-old comedian Martin Short! 

In order to make Short appear more child-like, he would get his legs waxed by the hair and makeup department. One day, he was wearing boxer shorts while getting his legs shaved, and didn't realize that his penis was hanging out of the side...the whole time. Yikes. 

Short told David Letterman that he later asked the woman who waxed him if his penis was indeed hanging out, to which she replied: "I'll tell you this. If I had known you then like I do know, I would've shoved that thing back in!"

13. Matthew McConaughey didn’t read the script before arriving on the set of 1995's Scorpion Spring and learned he was expected to immediately perform a four-page monologue...in Spanish.

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Why, you may ask, did McConaughey not read the script? Well, he explained it on Variety’s Actors on Actors: 

“I had this idea that I needed to go back like I did in my first film (Dazed and Confused), where I just knew my man, and I would show up and just play the circumstances — improvise. So I said, 'I’m not going to read the script. Just tell me the character, tell me the situation, and I’ll show up, and I’ll just react and do what I would do.'"

“So I show up on set, we’re about to do the scene, and I said, 'You know what? Since I know my man, let me just have a peek at these sides real quick.' I pick it up: four-page monologue…in Spanish.”

McConaughey said he asked the production if they could give him 12 minutes before shooting. "For whatever reason, I thought that was enough time to learn four pages of dialogue in Spanish and not piss off the crew,” McConaughey continued. Spoiler alert: It was not enough time. 

Thankfully, the gaffe acted as a learning experience. “I remember that day going, 'Whoa, McConaughey, no — to relax, you don’t not prepare; to relax, you go learn it, so you can get there and throw it away.'”  

14. As a young actor, Ben Stiller yelled "Cut!" after screwing up a line on the set of Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun.

Warner Bros.

If you don't know, there's probably no bigger faux pas you can commit on a movie set than yelling "Cut!" if you're not the director. But messing up and yelling "Cut!" on the set of arguably the greatest filmmaker of all time? Well, that's a whole other level of embarrassing.

Stiller's mortifying moment came while they were filming a complicated, six-minute steadicam shot following star Christian Bale through camp. Stiller only had one line halfway through the shot ("Hey, kid, would you like a Hershey bar?"), but blew it, swore, and yelled, "Cut!"

Stiller told USA Today that after that, "I hear this huge silence. Steven Spielberg is in another building watching on the monitors, and he yells: `What happened?' I'm like, 'I just yelled cut because I screwed up,' and he's yelling, 'No, no, you never cut!' I literally turned white and shrunk because my hero and idol, Steven Spielberg, is yelling at me."

Awkward? Oh yeah. Stiller says that while he's "lived with this shame for years," he has since laughed about the moment with Spielberg (who, of course, remembers it).

15. Lastly, a young Emma Watson got called out by director Chris Columbus in front of everyone on the set of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for mouthing her costars' lines.

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Whan a 9-year-old Emma Watson was first cast as Hermione, she was so intent on doing her job well that she would not only say her own lines, but also mouth those of her costars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint.

When Jimmy Kimmel reminded Watson of this, she said, "This is actually quite traumatic for me because I created issues because of this. I would ruin takes. Chris would be like, 'Cut! Emma, you're doing it again. You're mouthing Dan's lines.'" She added, "I was such a loser. I really loved those books, I really wanted to do my job well, and I kind of overdid it."