1. Robert Pattinson was called on to simulate masturbation in the 2008 film Little Ashes, but when he felt his efforts weren't coming off realistic enough, he went ahead and did the deed on camera. In a 2013 interview with Germany's Interview magazine, Pattinson explained why he didn't just pretend. "Try it," he said. "I can tell you right now, no chance. It just doesn’t work."
2. Julianne Moore — an Academy Award–winning star — was shockingly fired from Can You Ever Forgive Me? by director Nicole Holofcener just six days before filming was scheduled to start.
Costar Richard Grant added some more detail, saying one big conflict between the director and star was that Moore wanted to wear a fat suit and false nose to more closely resemble the real-life person, Lee Israel, she would’ve portrayed.
3. Early rock 'n' roll star Jerry Lee Lewis (the high-energy pianist-singer behind "Great Balls of Fire") got married to his 13-year-old first cousin once removed, Myra Gale Brown. If that's not shocking enough, the marriage was the then–22-year-old singer's third marriage (and he was technically still married to wife number two when he married Brown).
The marriage flew under the radar until Lewis and his new wife traveled overseas for a tour of England. There, he told a reporter who asked Brown's age that she was 15 (thinking that would make it acceptable), but it quickly became a massive scandal. The tour was canceled after three dates, and Lewis and Brown returned to the United States, where the news had caused an uproar too. It probably didn't help that his current single was titled "High School Confidential."
In 1989, there was a movie about the marriage and scandal, starring Dennis Quaid and Winona Ryder, entitled Great Balls of Fire!
4. Chloë Sevigny and costar Vincent Gallo were filmed engaging in oral sex during the climax of the 2003 film Brown Bunny. Gallo, who also wrote and directed the movie, told Film Freak Central that when he pitched the project to Sevigny (with whom he'd had a previous relationship of sorts), he said, "Remember that night in Paris when I did that thing to you, but you didn't do it to me because you weren't so into it? Well, you might have to do that. On film."
That the Academy Award–nominated Sevigny agreed to be in the scene was surprising, but she stood by her decision over a decade later. “I’d probably still do it today. I believe in Vincent as an artist, and I stand by the film,” she told Variety in 2016, adding, “It was a subversive act. It was a risk."
5. Gary Busey once refused to perform a scene set in heaven because he said the set design looked nothing like the real heaven he visited during a near-death experience.
Fifteen years later, Busey arrived on the set of Quigley — a box office bomb about a billionaire who dies and comes back to Earth as a Pomeranian — and objected to the way the production design team had made heaven look. Busey’s costar Curtis Armstrong (yes, Booger from Revenge of the Nerds) told the A.V. Club, “He looked around and said, 'It’s nothing like this. I’ve been to heaven, and it doesn’t look like this. That sofa’s all wrong. That mirror is ridiculous. They don’t even have mirrors!' It was ridiculous. He was completely nuts about the design of heaven.”
6. Victor Salva — the writer and director of the popular Jeepers Creepers horror franchise — is a convicted child molester who spent 15 months in jail after sexually abusing the 12-year-old star of his first film, Clownhouse.
Jeepers Creepers 3 producer Michael Ohoven told BuzzFeed News that Salva’s crime was “absolutely repulsive and horrific,” but added, “I think often in life you're confronted with, Do you believe in redemption? Are you willing to give second chances? And again, I'm not advocating for anybody or trying to make anybody's decision. But I had to make the decision to say, ‘Look, I believe he is a man who's done something absolutely horrific some 30 years ago. I believe he has turned his life completely around.’”
7. A young Melanie Griffith was clawed across the face by a lion and nearly lost an eye while filming Roar, a movie costarring 70-plus untrained lions that injured nearly 100 cast and crew members.
Working with the animals proved difficult — and dangerous — and the planned five-month film shoot stretched to five years. The lions mainly did two things: a) NOT what the filmmakers wanted, and b) injured the cast and crew. Griffith needed plastic surgery after her run-in with a lion, cinematographer Jan de Bont (who would go on to direct Speed) got scalped and needed 220 stitches, and 70–100 other people were injured.
8. Matt Damon reprised his Ocean's 11 character, Linus Caldwell, in Ocean's 8, the woman-led reboot of Ocean's 11, but was left on the cutting room floor. The reason? His comments about Harvey Weinstein, which were described as "thoughtless and sexist" in a petition calling for his removal from the film.
The comments the petition referred to were ones Damon made in an interview with ABC News where he condemned Weinstein and abusers, but added that not all misconduct claims "belong in the same category" and that there was a "spectrum of behavior." Damon later apologized.
9. Ed Norton played Bruce Banner/Hulk in The Incredible Hulk but was dismissed from the role in the most awkward way possible — a statement released by Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige that read in part, “We have made the decision to not bring Ed Norton back to portray the title role of Bruce Banner in The Avengers. Our decision is definitely not one based on monetary factors, but instead rooted in the need for an actor who embodies the creativity and collaborative spirit of our other talented cast members.” Ouch.
Norton's agent, Brian Swardstrom, fired back, saying, “Edward was looking forward to the opportunity to work with Joss [Whedon, director of The Avengers] and the other actors in The Avengers cast, many of whom are personal friends of his. Feige's statement is unprofessional, disingenuous and clearly defamatory. Mr. Norton's talent, tireless work ethic and professional integrity deserve more respect, and so do Marvel's fans.” The role, of course, later went to Mark Ruffalo.
10. On a drug- and alcohol-fueled tour in 1984, Ozzy Osbourne — in an effort to gross out his tourmates Mötley Crüe — peed on the ground next to a swimming pool and drank his own urine, then used a straw to snort a line of ants.
Osbourne's guitarist at the time, Jake E. Lee, contests the story, saying he snorted a spider instead of ants. He does, however, corroborate the urine-drinking story, adding the unappealing detail that the urine was green because Osbourne was taking a lot of vitamins. Lee added, “That's where I said, 'Okay, I'm outta here. Not only is that happening, there's families on the other side of the pool – children and mothers and fathers looking horrified, like, 'What the fuck is going on over there?’”
11. Lori Petty — the star of Point Break and A League of Their Own — was originally the female lead in Demolition Man but was let go after just three days of filming and replaced by Sandra Bullock in her first major role.
According to Petty, part of the problem was that she and costar Sylvester Stallone got along like “oil and water,” but there were also reports that the studio didn’t like the dailies of her scenes. Whatever the truth is, she may have dodged a bullet. Nigel Hawthorne, who costarred in the movie, called the production a “miserable experience” and claimed the egos of the stars and producer Joel Silver were out of control.
12. Guns N' Roses lead singer Axl Rose can be heard having sex with Adriana Smith — the girlfriend of the band's drummer Steven Adler — on the 1987 song "Rocket Queen."
On the day the sex was recorded, Smith had just been told by Adler that he didn't consider her to be his girlfriend, so she went to the studio to hang with two of the band's other members, Axl Rose and Slash, in hopes of making Adler jealous. That's when Rose approached her with an unorthodox idea — to record her having sex with him and put the sounds over the bridge of the song.
The song became notorious in the wake of the album's success, and Smith later regretted taking part in it. She said that Adler "fucking freaked out" after learning what happened and that the whole experience left her lost: “I ended up drinking and using drugs over this for a really long time, because I had this extreme shame and guilt and stuff.”
You can listen to "Rocket Queen" below:
View this video on YouTube
13. Bruce Willis was offered the lead role of Sam Wheat in the global smash and Academy Award Best Picture nominee Ghost opposite his then-wife, Demi Moore, but turned it down.
He added, "It would have been nice to have worked with Demi again." (The couple had costarred in the thriller Mortal Thoughts.) Another film he probably wished people didn't know he turned down? Ocean's 11 — he would've played Andy Garcia's part.
14. Will Smith would also probably prefer people didn't know that he turned down Keanu Reeves' role of Neo in the landmark film The Matrix. A pitch meeting with the Wachowskis' (the filmmakers) had left Smith a little confused by the concept, and he wasn't sure of the film's commercial prospects, so he passed.
Makings things even worse is that the movie Smith chose to film instead was Wild Wild West...an infamous box office bomb.
15. In 1995, Hugh Grant was arrested in Hollywood for receiving oral sex in a public place from a sex worker named Divine Brown. The British star, who was dating fellow actor Elizabeth Hurley at the time, quickly released a statement: "Last night I did something completely insane. I have hurt people I love and embarrassed people I work with. For both things I am more sorry than I can ever possibly say."
This was very bad timing, as it happened just 18 days before the release of his first Hollywood star turn in Nine Months.
To address the scandal, Grant appeared on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, and so many people tuned in that it beat The Late Show With David Letterman in the ratings for the first time in a year. Leno got right to it, asking Grant, “What the hell were you thinking?”
View this video on YouTube
Grant replied, "I think you know in life what's a good thing to do and what's a bad thing, and I did a bad thing. And there you have it." He had a similarly even-keeled response on Larry King Live, saying, "In the end, you have to come clean and say, 'I did something dishonorable, shabby, and goatish.'" In response, CNN wrote, "By apologizing publicly, Grant has taught celebrities facing scandals in the future a lesson in how to defuse a crisis."
The campaign to rehabilitate Grant's image (quickly) worked — Nine Months became the biggest comedy of the summer, grossing $138 million worldwide.
Grant later pleaded no contest to the crime and, after paying a fine, was placed on two years' probation and ordered to complete an AIDS education program.
16. Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson befriended Charles Manson and even got the Beach Boys to record a song written by Manson.
17. Ellen Pompeo played Naomi, the ex-girlfriend of Joel (Jim Carrey), in the critically acclaimed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but ended up having her part cut out of the final film.
But another potential factor was Carrey's reaction to the casting of Pompeo, and his belief that director Michel Gondry cast her because of her resemblance to Carrey's real-life ex Renée Zellweger. Carrey told Vanity Fair, “I was pretty hurt. Michel likes to have real feelings in the scene and real chemistry, so he hired Ellen Pompeo, who’s a wonderful actress. But she reminded me completely of Renée. Her look was similar. And I said, Bastard! And it ends up that she’s not even in the movie.”
18. Action star Jean-Claude Van Damme played the title character in Predator — briefly — before being fired and replaced by Kevin Peter Hall.
What exactly went wrong isn’t totally clear (this Hollywood Reporter deep dive is the closest we may ever get to the truth), but it seems Van Damme arrived on set expecting to show off his martial arts skills but was instead fitted with a gigantic alien mask that limited his mobility and restricted his air so much that he kept passing out. Van Damme either quit, was angrily fired by producer Joel Silver, or was no longer the right fit for the role when the costume was redesigned for a 7-foot man.
19. In 2006, actors Adam Brody, Jenna Dewan, and Kristin Cavallari began production on a remake of the '80s comedy Revenge of the Nerds, but it was never finished.
The movie filmed for two weeks before the production company Fox Atomic pulled the plug. Why? Well, it seems two things went wrong: Georgia's Emory University rescinded their agreement to let the production film on campus after reading the script, and film dailies weren't impressing Fox Atomic executives.
20. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo were so drunk on the set of Super Mario Bros. that Hoskins broke his finger.
21. Filmmaker Ed Solomon, who cowrote all three Bill & Ted films, was — very briefly — a prime suspect in the grisly Night Stalker murder spree.
Solomon, it should go without saying, wasn't the Night Stalker, and the visit by the police was largely a formality, as they'd pretty much already determined Solomon wasn't the guy. The car found at the scene, it turned out, was one Solomon had cosigned on for a friend, which the friend later gave away to someone else before it was stolen by Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker.
