Gross Things Actors Had To Do For A Role

Hollywood stars are sometimes more than mere actors, simply reciting lines for a camera and going home for the day; many are dedicated, hard-working performers who will go to extreme lengths to establish the authenticity of an on-screen persona. To get into character, such stars will rely on more than just wardrobe, immersing themselves in the part to really become the person they are playing. 

Principal among these might be Method actors, named for their embrace of "The Method," a series of training and rehearsal techniques developed by Russian actor Konstantin Stanislavski, taught by icons like Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler, and employed by the likes of Marlon Brando, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman — and in more modern times, Joaquin Phoenix, Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio.

From weightlifting to dieting to spending months learning new skills, the Method can take many forms, and sometimes even perhaps go too far in its implementation. At times, some actors will go to extreme measures in front of the camera in order to credibly perform their parts, sometimes reporting that they were so "in character" it was like someone else was doing it. At times, these actions manifest themselves in repellant, horrific acts that would make most of us nauseous at the thought. Whether it was captured on screen, or in preparation for a part, here is a list of some of the gross things committed actors have done to bring a role to life.

There has long been talk of Halle Berry going to extraordinary lengths to get into character as Vivian (girlfriend to Samuel L. Jackson's Gator) in "Jungle Fever," Spike Lee's 1991 exploration of romance and race relations. Jackson portrayed the scene-stealing, drug-addled brother of Wesley Snipes' lead character, while Berry was Gator's hardscrabble main squeeze. 

One memorable scene calls for Jackson and Berry to bicker back and forth, when Gator wants some alone time with his brother. For Berry, who came from the world of modeling, it was an unexpected role, and one she had worked hard to land. To prepare for the part, she spent several weeks not bathing, with most reports claiming two weeks and some even speculating her avoidance of soap and water went as long as two months. In 2012, the Oscar winner told talk show host Wendy Williams that the Method tale was no exaggeration. "It's true," Berry replied to Williams when she cited the span of time as 10 days. "Ask Sam Jackson, he had to get a whiff of it constantly!"

"Spike Lee wanted me to read for [a different role] and I read that part fine enough, but then I said to Spike, 'You know, I really am eyeing this [other] role," she told W magazine in 2016 (via Indiewire). "It was an amazing way to start my career."

Cast in the role of Peter Loew, a literary agent suffering from paranoid delusions in the 1989 horror-comedy "Vampire's Kiss," Nicolas Cage was a fast-rising Hollywood star at the time, known for taking daring risks and creating some unique movie moments well worth pausing. In the years since, this box office flop has become a cult hit, as well as a dependable Halloween watch. 

"Kiss" also offers viewers the chance to watch the actor do some off-the-wall things, from falling down stairs to tearing a room apart to pouring hot yogurt on his toes. The odd performance has since fed multiple memes, and is considered a landmark in the cinematic evolution of Cage, perhaps the most interesting actor of his generation.

To convincingly portray Loew's spiraling descent into insanity, Cage made a habit of offering to do more than what was being asked of him — for one scene, in particular. Though the script only called for Loew to slurp down a raw egg, Cage felt more was needed. In a 2019 interview with The Ringer, Director Robert Bierman recalled that day on set. "[Nicolas Cage] said to me, 'The thing I hate most in the world are cockroaches, so let me eat a cockroach,'" Bierman said. "I thought, 'This is terrific!' I sent my prop people down into the boiler room ... they brought me a box, divided up into little sections with tissue paper. The cockroaches were there, lined up for me to cast." 

After attempting to escape her apparently abusive and unfaithful husband Nick (Ben Affleck) in David Fincher's 2014 thriller "Gone Girl," Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) hides out with another formerly abusive ex-boyfriend, Desi (Neil Patrick Harris), letting the world believe she has disappeared while knowingly implicating Nick in the process. The film follows Nick's attempts to clear his name and find his wife, with Amy being revealed as a ruthless, cunning woman out to destroy her husband's life.

In the film's climax, Amy decides to return to Nick, and is forced to murder Desi and frame him for her disappearance so she and her husband can live happily ever after. Pike was required to believably slice the throat of Harris; it was a key scene that she wanted to be prepared for, so she did what any reasonable person would — she got a hold of some pig carcasses, and pretended to murder them.

"If you're going to do something like that, you have to do it with a certain degree of accuracy," the actress told Collider in 2016. "I had no idea how much force you needed to slice someone's throat. I actually went to a butcher and asked them if they wouldn't mind me just using a box cutter on a pig carcass, just to understand what it would be like."

Matt Damon was nothing if not dedicated when he took on the role of Max DeCosta, a blue collar worker in a dystopian future version of Los Angeles in the 2013 film "Elysium." The movie was a much-anticipated follow-up to director Neil Blomkamp's indie hit "District 9," a science fiction drama featuring overt commentary on South African apartheid. With "Elysium," Blomkamp took the formula that worked so well before — including its social commentary — and dialed it up a notch: adding a bigger budget, bigger sets, and bigger stars like Damon and Jodie Foster.

But that expanded FX budget didn't mean the entire movie would be filmed on greenscreen, so to portray Los Angeles in a future where pollution, overpopulation, and climate change had ravaged the landscape, producers used a garbage dump in Mexico City as a stand-in. At San Diego Comic Con in 2012, Damon spoke to the curious crowd and told them about filming the sci-fi epic, and how the landfill location was mostly fecal matter. 

"The helicopters would come through and we'd be black with dust," he remembered (via The Wrap). "Neil would come over with his mask and said, 'I promise you, the photography looks great.'"

Star Trek has always featured aliens, and some have been depicted eating intergalactic delicacies, from blue squids to Klingon "gagh." But more often than not, the actors are really eating regular Earth food colored to look like odd alien eats. Other times, it's not actually food at all; it's something much worse. 

Such was the case in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "Conspiracy" (Season 1, Episode 24), which had the ship's crew taken over by mind-controlling insect creatures out to take over the Federation. During a climactic scene from the 1988 episode, several possessed officers sit around a table, reveling in their new alien forms and eating their bizarre cuisine — in this case, bowls of living worms. Although some fans initially insisted that the actors were filmed eating chow mein or some other form of real food that resembled the alien dish, others insisted that Jonathan Frakes, who played Commander Riker, actually ate live worms. 

In a 1996 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Frakes set the record straight. Asked to name his favorite Klingon dish, he replied: "I like gagh. And I once ate a live grub worm in a 'Star Trek' episode." It wasn't the only gross thing Frakes did for "Trek." As he later revealed in the documentary "Journey's End," he volunteered to swim in a pool of Metamucil and black printer ink, all in service of Season 1, Episode 22, "Skin of Evil."

Filming for the 2015 Alejandro Inarritu wilderness epic "The Revenant" was notoriously difficult, with the director himself calling (via The Hollywood Reporter) the production's harsh conditions "a nightmare." Filmed on location in the Canadian Rockies, the crew dealt with bitterly cold temperatures that made production difficult, and Inarritu was heavily criticized for pushing his cast and crew too hard under harsh conditions in a shoot that went at least five months over schedule. 

Some crew members reportedly ranked it among the worst experiences of their career; one cast member who didn't complain, however, was lead Leonardo DiCaprio. To get into character and deliver his gut-wrenching performance, DiCaprio — known for going above and beyond for his films — went to extreme lengths that included sleeping in animal carcasses and eating raw bison liver. 

"Whether it's going in and out of frozen rivers, or sleeping in animal carcasses, or what I ate on set. [I was] enduring freezing cold and possible hypothermia constantly," he told Yahoo! Movies. "I certainly don't eat raw bison liver on a regular basis. When you see the movie, you'll see my reaction to it, because Alejandro kept it in. It says it all. It was an instinctive reaction." For the effort, Inarritu would become just the third director to win back-to-back Academy Awards for best director, while DiCaprio would take home his first best actor trophy.

Based on the smash hit comic book by Todd McFarlane, 1997's "Spawn" is infamously remembered today for its over-the-top, sometimes silly tone. But the cast was certainly taking it seriously. From Michael Jai White as the title character — an ex-soldier turned hell-bound superhero vigilante — to Martin Sheen as the corporate villain to John Leguizamo as a clown-like demonic foil and advisor called the Violator, the performances were both heightened and frequently intense. 

Leguizamo's character, for instance, appears as a nauseating bulbous street punk in bizarre facial makeup whose disgust for humans is rivaled only by an appetite for all things horrifying. In one scene, the character eats a pizza covered with live maggots. Like some other instances above, this immediately led to a debate among viewers about how real the scene actually was, and eventually the conversation got so loud that the actor himself had to respond. 

"Yes I did eat maggots in 'Spawn,'" he tweeted in 2014. "But only swallowed a few!" He followed it up by warning his fans not to try it at home: "Ha ha. Don't go there!"

Shia LaBeouf's commitment to the role was tested in David Ayer's acclaimed 2014 World War II picture "Fury." Along with much of the cast, LaBeouf took part in several weeks of military boot camp alongside a group of Navy Seals. But LaBeouf, who played tank driver Boyd Swan in the film, took his Method performance one step further — going so far as to having one of his teeth removed. 

"I got it removed for the movie. I put a fake one in," he explained on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," adding that it wasn't as easy as you might think. "It's not like you can go to some dentist and go in there, like, 'Hey, I wanna get this tooth taken out.' They were like, 'You wanna do what? That doesn't make any medical sense at all." 

But ultimately, LaBeouf got it done because he wanted to add some depth to the character. "I found a guy in Reseda next to a Radio Shack," LaBeouf explained. "He didn't ask too many questions." To add further Method to this madness, "Fury" co-star Logan Lerman told British GQ (via The Independent) that the scar on LaBeouf's cheek in the film was not only real, but self-inflicted. "They were putting cuts on Shia ... and Shia was like 'No, it doesn't look real,'" Lerman explained. "[So] he takes out a knife and cuts his face ... For the whole movie he kept opening these cuts on his face. That's all real."

Among the most intensely-dedicated actors in Hollywood today, Christian Bale notoriously lost 60 pounds for the 2004 flick "The Machinist," then immediately bulked up to play Batman. He has been known to fake an American accent off the set, even during some interviews when playing an American character (despite his Welsh origins). 

For the Werner Herzog Vietnam war drama "Rescue Dawn," Bale combined these methods and more. Taking on the role of real-life war hero and U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, Bale committed himself fully to embodying the part of the long-suffering hostage of the Pathet Lao. Tortured and starved, the movie portrays Dengler's struggle to endure his captivity, staying alive for his ultimate rescue by American forces.

Bale once again challenged himself both physically and mentally during the shoot. These adversities included wrestling a real snake, losing more than 60 pounds, and being physically abused as part of several torture scenes. But perhaps most nauseating, Bale ate live maggots in an attempt to portray the depths of desperation his real-life character had reached during imprisonment. "Oh, yeah, those were real maggots. They were very real," he told Collider, adding: "I didn't mind eating the maggots." 

Veteran actor Tony Todd had multiple iconic supporting roles over the years, in movies like "Platoon" and "Final Destination," as well as TV shows like "Star Trek: The Next Generation." But it's his part as the titular villain in the 1992 horror film "Candyman" that became his calling card. His booming voice terrified moviegoers in multiple films (as well as the 2021 reboot), and has haunted dreams for nearly 30 years. 

But it was more than Todd's imposing deep voice, towering physical presence, and razor sharp hook that scared viewers. The franchise has depicted swarms of bees crawling out of him, from his sleeves, his chest, and even his mouth. Since this was the early '90s and CGI was a costly, rarely-utilized option for horror films, real bees were used on set and Todd endured it all, receiving more than 20 bee stings during the shoot. But don't feel too bad for the thespian: he made a smart deal with the film's producers that ended up putting some good money in his pocket (alongside all that calamine lotion).

"I negotiated a bonus of $1,000 for every sting during the bee scene," he told Entertainment Weekly while looking back on the film in 2019. "And I got stung 23 times. Everything that's worth making has to involve some sort of pain. Once I realized it was an important part of who Candyman was, I embraced it. It was like putting on a beautiful coat."

The notorious Korean action thriller "Oldboy" made waves when it was released in 2003, setting a new standard for violent anti-hero crusaders on film while inspiring an entire genre that continues today in the likes of "John Wick" and "Nobody." The film that minted the trend of one-take hallway fight scenes, "Oldboy" starred Choi Min-Sik as Oh Dae-su, a man wrongfully imprisoned for 15 years by the ruthless and wealthy Woo-jin (Yoo Ji-tae), who plays a twisted mind game with his victim. At last free, Dae-Su wages a one-man war as he seeks revenge against his captor. 

Min-Sik dedicated himself fully to transforming into the imprisoned Dae-Su, and is said to have lost and gained weight before and during filming to portray the starving, imprisoned, world-weary man who escapes a lengthy and brutal captivity. But the actor did more than attempt to look the part: in one noteworthy scene that Moviemaker called "visceral and hypnotic," Dae-Su ate a live octopus, and it was no movie magic: actor Min-Sik ate the live octopus on camera — and did so four times.

"The Paperboy" didn't make many waves with critics or at the box office, but at the time of its release the 2012 film was nonetheless discussed, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Set in 1969, "The Paperboy" tells the tale of a reporter who goes back to his childhood hometown to prove the innocence of a death row inmate found guilty of murdering the local sheriff. Matthew McConaughey plays the reporter, while a tawdry secondary story involves Zac Efron (as his younger brother Jack) and Nicole Kidman (as an out-of-towner named Charlotte Bless, girlfriend of the accused). 

One scene has Efron's Jack Ward getting badly injured and stung by a group of jellyfish. As pop culture of the last few decades would have you believe, there's only one way to overcome such pain, and that's by having someone give you an impromptu golden shower (according to the Cleveland Clinic, this is indeed just a myth, so please don't pee on friends and family without first consulting a doctor).

For the scene in question, Kidman actually urinated on Zac Efron. "We just went for it and never thought twice about it," Daniels told Vulture. "It was what it was." During post-production, Daniels began having doubts — but Kidman encouraged him to stick by his instincts. "I think that I became more nervous about it in the edit room, and I thought, I'm not actually going to show this, right? Is it vulgar?" Daniels recalled. "And I called Nicole and said, 'I don't know,' and she said, 'Lee, you made me pee on Zac Efron. If you don't put it in the movie, you need to man up.' And I was like, 'All right.'" 

Tim Burton's "Batman Returns" had some unsettling moments, many of them belonging to Danny DeVito's Penguin — whose grotesque appearance and disgusting eating habits made it a bit unpleasant if you were attempting to chow down on a tub of popcorn. But it was the eating habits of the other villain that makes this list, in particular an infamous scene involving a little birdie. 

During the scene in question, the villainous Catwoman puts a live bird in her mouth as a way of threatening Penguin. Actress Michelle Pfeiffer — who had beat out the likes of Sean Young and Madonna for the in-demand part — was determined to do more than simply toss a rubber prop into her mouth and call it a day. Instead, the actress wanted the full effect — particularly the bird fleeing the coop when she opened her mouth — and actually put a real, live bird in her mouth for the scene.

"I don't think I've ever been so impressed," Tim Burton told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. "She had a live bird in her mouth while the camera was rolling. It was four or five seconds, and then she let it fly out. It was before CG, it was before digital. It was so quick, it seems like it was an effect." Pfeiffer added, "I look back and say, 'What was I thinking? I could've gotten a disease or something from having a live bird in my mouth ... it seemed fine at the time."

Joaquin Phoenix is known for his eccentric ways while throwing himself into films like "Joker" and "I'm Still Here." But for "The Master," Paul Thomas Anderson's 2012 film that flirted with the origins of Scientology and the struggle between faith and free will, Phoenix may have gone to his most extreme.

Portraying Freddie Quell, a World War II veteran suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, Phoenix got very Method, to the point where he even wired parts of his jaw shut so he could achieve the character's awkward speech patterns. It's a move somewhat reminiscent of how Method hero Marlon Brando stuffed cotton balls in his mouth to land the role of Don Corleone, but it also made for a wholly unique performance — one that landed Phoenix an Oscar nomination.

"My dad sometimes would talk out of the side; he'd clench down one side of his mouth. And I just thought it represented tension in this way, somebody that's just blocked and tight," Phoenix explained in 2014. "So I actually went to my dentist and I had them fasten these metal brackets to my teeth on the top and the bottom and then I wrapped rubber bands around it to force my jaw shut on one side."

Yes, in what might be one of the most shocking moments ever filmed, an actor ate real dog feces for a movie. But it's a bit less shocking when you learn that it was the 1972 film "Pink Flamingos," and the actor was Divine, who did it all under the supervision of madcap director John Waters. If you haven't heard of "Pink Flamingos" — shot on a shoestring budget with amateur actors — you're in for a nauseating lesson in cinema history. 

Director John Waters is the kind of filmmaker who will push the envelope so far that it splits in half — with stories and characters so bizarre and disgusting that some have debated whether "Pink Flamingos" is a real movie or just trash. The film centers on Divine, whose claim to fame is being the filthiest person who ever lived — and she's willing to do just about anything to prove it. Essentially playing an even more off-the-wall version of himself, the cross-dressing Divine eats a handful of dog poop in one notorious scene, and the truth is that it wasn't an effect at all — he put actual dog poop in his mouth. 

"It's one of the most famous scenes I ever shot," Waters told Rolling Stone. "Certainly, no one ever tried to do it again ... No special effects — it was real. And it frightens people to this day." Waters insisted that Divine didn't swallow, but admitted that just swishing it around in his mouth makes it even more hideous to think about.

Eating live insects is a good starting point when it comes to gross things an actor can do for a role, whether they're maggots, mealworms, or bumblebees. But what might be just as bad — if not worse — is when an actor is asked to put live insects in their mouth, without chewing or swallowing. At least if they're eating them, it can be quick, and the insects swiftly put out of their misery. But in the case of Jerry O'Connell in the cockroach comedy "Joe's Apartment," he had to put real cockroaches in his mouth and spit them out over and over again.

The 1996 film revolves around a man whose new apartment is home to talking cockroaches. The film used real, living cockroaches to create its creepy crawly scenes, including a moment where Joe supposedly eats a handful of them. While O'Connell didn't chew them up or swallow them, he did indeed put real, live cockroaches into his mouth to accomplish the scene. After the cameras cut, the actor quickly removed them, sparing their lives, but that look of cringe on O'Connell's face when he shoves a spoonful of roaches into his mouth? That is his very real reaction.

It probably doesn't come as a shock to learn that some of the most disgusting things that actors have done during filming have occurred on the set of horror movies. In a genre known for often being stomach-churning, horror movie scenes can go any number of repulsive ways, and that includes movies that aren't explicitly gross-out thrillers. Consider the 1982 classic "Poltergeist," in which actor JoBeth Williams was forced to take a swim in a vat filled with real human remains.

The film, directed by Tobe Hooper from a script co-written by producer Steven Spielberg, centers on a suburban family whose life is turned upside down when supernatural forces descend upon their home and take their young daughter. In one iconic scene, Williams' character falls into a muddy pit, where — much to her horror — the skeletons of the dead emerge from the muck around her. Though it may seem hard to believe, those were real human skeletons that came bubbling up to the surface. But the real kicker is that Williams didn't even know they weren't mere props until years later.

"I always assumed that the skeletons were made by the prop department," Williams told Vanity Fair. "A few years later, I ran into one of the special effects guys, and I said, 'You guys making all those skeletons, that must have been really amazing.' He said, 'Oh, we didn't make them, those were real.'"

There aren't many actors whose fame comes almost exclusively from playing horror movie monsters. But alongside icons like Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi is Kane Hodder, the man who famously brought the masked killer Jason to life in several "Friday the 13th" films. But it was in the 1987 film "Prison," directed by "Die Hard 2" helmer Renny Harlin and co-starring a young Viggo Mortensen, that Hodder filled his mouth with giant worms — West African nightcrawlers, to be exact.

"There was a scene toward the end of the movie where my character comes up through the ground," Hodder explained in the official "Jason Goes to Hell" magazine. "They were putting dirt all over me, and also worms — big, live nightcrawlers." Being a veteran of one of the goriest horror series of that time, of course, Hodder wasn't satisfied just to be covered in those nightcrawlers.

"I came up with the suggestion to put some of those worms in my mouth, because I thought it would be good for them to come squirming out of my mouth when I started screaming," Hodder said. He went on to describe that while he wasn't all that fazed by it, the rest of the crew was nearly nauseated. "It repulsed most everybody on the crew, but to me it wasn't a big deal. [The worms] were about five or six inches long, big fat ones...The worms were trying to get out, and I was trying to hold 'em in until the cameras rolled."

After her breakthrough big screen debut in "The Princess Diaries," actress Anne Hathaway quickly became one of Hollywood's most in-demand leading ladies. She reached the top of the Hollywood mountain in 2013, when she won an Academy Award for her role as Fantine in Tom Hooper's big screen adaptation of the classic stage production "Les Misérables," alongside Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman. Hathaway had to work for her award, not only doing her own singing in the dramatic musical numbers, but also during a scene that required her to sit in a stinking pile of dead fish.

It's during Hathaway's biggest number, "I Dreamed a Dream," that Fantine is singing her heart out while surrounded by rotting fish. And believe it or not, those were real fish. "On the set where Annie [Hathaway] did 'I Dreamed A Dream' there were thousands of rotting fish corpses and the place stunk to high heaven," said Hathaway's co-star Eddie Redmayne, in a 2012 interview with the Huffington Post. "Although they were sets, they felt cold and real." That stink of rotting fish couldn't have made it easy for the "Les Mis" star to sing her iconic song, but in doing so, added to her legend and helped her earn an Oscar.

Prepping for a role can sometimes be just as intense as performing it, as Hollywood actors want to really feel like the person they are playing. That sometimes means getting into character days, weeks, or even months in advance. For performers who practice the style of acting known as the Method — which can involve pretending to be their character even off-camera — that may sometimes mean doing gross things when nobody is pointing a camera at them. 

Ben Foster, star of such films as "Hell or High Water" and "Finest Hours," is one such actor. For the 2011 film "Rampart," Foster played the role of a homeless man who witnesses a murder. To prepare for the role, he spent time living on the streets of Los Angeles, dirty and disheveled — and doing some pretty gross stuff to feel like he was really living it.

In an interview with GQ, Foster said he lived alongside other homeless people, "p***ing my pants like everyone else." Probably TMI, but proof positive that Hollywood actors are their own unique breed, willingly putting themselves in challenging situations for the sake of a movie that doesn't even crack a million at the domestic box office.

Fake blood is usually made from corn syrup and food dye, but there are many variations — for example, the fake blood used in "Dexter" contains a surprising ingredient. On the set of one of James Cameron's best films, however, the fake blood was made of something very different, because it wasn't supposed to be human blood, but an android's internal bodily fluids. If you hadn't guessed, we're talking about "Aliens," and it was star Lance Henriksen who had to ingest the disgusting, spoiled fluid. 

At the climax of the 1986 film, Henriksen's character, the android Bishop, comes to the rescue of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver. He's ultimately impaled by the Alien Queen's tail, and his body is torn in half, which literally spills his guts. According to Henriksen, it wasn't a pleasant sequence to film. 

"The only problem I had was that they had milk and yogurt mixed up, and they had it sitting in cups for me to puke all over the place ... and the stuff went bad," Henriksen said in a 2003 behind-the-scenes documentary, "The Making of Aliens." Henriksen got a bad case of food poisoning from the fake android blood, which was later swapped out with fresh yogurt once the crew realized just how sick it made him. 

As wild as it may sound, urinating on one's self isn't limited to Ben Foster during his preparation for "Rampart." There's another, even bigger actor, who did the same thing, but who went even further, defecating and urinating on himself during filming. That actor is Robert Pattinson, the latest man to wear Batman's cape and cowl. But it wasn't on the set of "The Batman" that he relieved himself — on himself. It was instead on Robert Eggers' 2019 period madness drama "The Lighthouse." And it was all part of making the film as realistic as possible.

"The Lighthouse" follows the day-to-day life of a pair of lighthouse keepers, whose loneliness after a devastating storm prompts them to slowly lose their sanity. Playing a person losing their mind is something Pattinson dove into headfirst, going to great lengths to get into character on set. "Because you're playing a mad person, it means you can sort of be mad the whole time," he told Esquire. More than just acting crazy, though, Pattinson became so removed from his own identity, he claims, that he was nearly unconscious for filming.

"It was crazy," he said. "I spent so much time making myself throw up. P***ing my pants. It's the most revolting thing. I don't know, maybe it's really annoying." Whatever it turned out to be, it worked, because Pattinson was lauded for his work in the film, with many critics hailing it as a "career-best" performance (per Playbill). 

Biopics can be a tricky genre, especially when it comes to casting, with a star often required to bring not just talent to the screen, but at least a passing visual likeness to the real person they are playing. There are quite a few actors in true-story films who looked exactly like the real-life person they were playing, and Jamie Foxx as legendary piano player Ray Charles in 2004's "Ray" is one of them. But to achieve the uncanny resemblance, Foxx made the odd choice to glue his own eyelids shut.

It happened at the request of the film's director, Taylor Hackford, who — wanting as much realism in Foxx's performance as possible — was not content to have Foxx simply wear shades throughout the film. Perhaps surprisingly, Foxx agreed to do it, and a pair of fake eyelids was crafted and glued onto him, forcing him into permanent blindness during shooting. It wasn't without side effects, as Foxx says he suffered panic attacks. "Imagine having your eyes glued shut for 14 hours a day," Foxx told the New York Times." "That's your jail sentence." 

Unfortunately for Foxx, the rest of the crew would frequently need to be reminded that Foxx couldn't see, because they'd often leave the actor sitting alone without realizing he couldn't get around on his own. But Foxx took home an Academy Award for his performance, so it was probably all worth it the hassle.

British icon Gary Oldman is known for over-the-top but convincing performances in which he can make even the most outlandish character seem eminently real. He had to do it again in the biopic "Darkest Hour," which chronicled the wartime command of Winston Churchill, the larger-than-life British prime minister who led the nation during World War II. One of the ways Oldman was able to channel the legendary leader was to match his love of cigars, though he went so far overboard with the habit that it made him physically ill.

Because Churchill was famously known for chomping on a stogie, a cigar was a must for Oldman to get into character — and he was apparently unwilling to use a prop or fake. But Oldman went overboard with them, reportedly smoking more than 400 cigars – at a total cost of $20,000 — during filming, which took a big toll on his health. "I got serious nicotine poisoning," Oldman told the Hollywood Reporter. 

It wasn't because he loved smoking them that he had so many, though — it was because of the rigors and idiosyncrasies of filming. "You'd have a cigar that was three-quarters smoked and you'd light it up, and then over the course of a couple of takes, it would go down," Oldman explained. "and then the prop man would replenish me with a new cigar — we were doing that for 10 or 12 takes a scene."

British star Malcolm McDowell is known as the man who killed Captain Kirk in "Star Trek: Generations," a scene he regrets filming. But it might not be the only regret he has in his career, because back in the early 1970s, during filming of one of the greatest dystopian masterpieces in cinema history — "A Clockwork Orange" — McDowell endured a skin-crawling ordeal when he had to have his eyes forced open for an iconic brainwashing sequence.

"I did scratch my corneas," McDowell admitted to The Guardian in 2024. "My eyes were anesthetized so I couldn't feel those lid locks scraping down my eyes." As the star describes it, doctors on the set from a nearby hospital would frequently administer artificial teardrops to prevent his eyes from drying out. Unfortunately, when director Stanley Kubrick decided to give the doctor a line in the film, it seems the latter took his eye off the job he was really there to do, and somehow McDowell didn't get enough moisture to prevent damage to his eyes.

"I was home an hour later when the anesthetic wore off and I've never felt pain like it," he added. "My own doctor came around and gave me a shot of morphine in my ass." Thankfully, McDowell's eyes healed quickly: "I didn't suffer any permanent damage, only psychological."

A cult favorite B-movie star, Joe Pilato made his screen debut in George A. Romero's 1978 horror classic "Dawn of the Dead," graduating to a leading role in the 1985 follow-up, "Day of the Dead." While he had little to do in "Dawn of the Dead" as an unnamed cop, Pilato had more substantial screen time in "Day of the Dead," where he plays the military commander who leads a group of survivors in an underground bunker amid a zombie apocalypse. But with a much bigger role, Pilato didn't just stand around watching other actors doing disgusting things — he had to do them himself. And that included being covered in fermented animal guts.

At the climax of "Day of the Dead," Pilato's character, Captain Rhodes, is brutally torn apart by zombies. To make it seem realistic, real animal entrails were used instead of latex, rubber, and jelly to simulate human flesh and innards. Pilato was placed into a hole in the floor and an artificial body was constructed around him, filled with organs and guts from a dead cow. Years later, appearing at a convention (via The Horror Section), Pilato was asked about the animal parts when filming that death scene, responding, "I can still smell them to this day."

Would it surprise you to learn that a movie based on the works of Stephen King forced an actor to do something disgusting and miserable? Probably not. After all, King — the king of horror — is known for his twisted stories that often see his characters enduring the most repulsive experiences. Sure enough, the 2019 adaptation "It: Chapter Two" required star Jessica Chastain to spend an entire day submerged in a viscous soup of fake blood.

Called "the bloodiest horror scene ever" by IndieWire, the sequence involved three different sets and thousands of gallons of simulated plasma. "It was an elevated reservoir, and the pipes were keyed into the flooding tank," said production designer Paul Austerberry. "It didn't just fill into the set, it went around it, too, so the pressure was even as the blood rose up." Filmed in Toronto, "It: Chapter Two" required so much fake blood, in fact, that it had to be brought in by truck from Los Angeles, because that amount of the red stuff doesn't just run like a river through the Great White North the way it does in Hollywood.

Worse yet is that the sequence didn't initially go well, requiring cinematographer Checco Varese to get into the vat of blood with Chastain. Ultimately, the pair spent nearly an entire day engulfed in the stuff, which couldn't have been fun.

If you're unfamiliar with Japanese horror, you're really missing out, because the Far East is home to some of the goriest and, frankly, most disturbing films the genre has to offer. One of the scariest Japanese horror movies of all time is "Audition," the 1999 classic from acclaimed horror director Takeshi Miike. A masterpiece of suspense and gore, "Audition" also includes some of the most unsettling sequences the genre has ever seen, and when we tell you that the film's star, Eihi Shiina, had to do something disgusting for her role as aspiring ballet dancer Asami Yamazaki, we aren't exaggerating.

"Audition" tells the story of Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), who loses his wife to a devastating illness. Years later, Shigeharu's friend Yasuhisa (Jun Kunimura) decides to help him find a new wife, using the ruse of an audition for a TV show to help him meet women. Shigeharu quickly becomes drawn to one applicant, Asami, who turns out to be much more than she appears: At one point late in the film, it's revealed that Asami has tortured and mutilated a man for her own twisted amusement, even vomiting into a dog bowl for him to eat. It's a sickening scene made all the more horrific when you learn that it wasn't special effects — Shiina really vomited into the bowl.

A master of horror, Sam Raimi's filmography is much more than the "Spider-Man" films that he's become known for. Beyond even "The Evil Dead" and its sequels, Raimi's most famous horror classic might be "Drag Me to Hell," a 2009 film written by Raimi and his brother Ivan in the early '90s long before he struck it big with superheroes. The film stars Alison Lohman as a bank manager who has a curse placed on her by a disgruntled old woman whom she denied a loan.

The film sees Lohman's character experience a number of horrific incidents, as the curse turns her life into a nightmare — before she's literally dragged down to the underworld upon its conclusion. In one scene, the character is visited by a demon that vomits maggots into her mouth as she lies in her bed. It's a hideous moment that's intended to make the audience's stomachs churn. But even if it didn't make viewers with a steely constitution queasy, it might help to learn that during filming, real maggots were poured into Lohman's open mouth. When movie account Film Craze remarked on the reality of the scene on X, Lohman herself responded bluntly (and sarcastically), "Thanks for reminding me."

Getting sick on a movie set isn't that uncommon. After all, cast and crew are working in close quarters for long hours, often late into the night. Even bad catering has led to food poisoning, as in the wild story from the set of the Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi classic "Total Recall." But sometimes, on-set illnesses can be caused by cringe-inducing decisions made during filming. That's exactly what happened during the production of 1981's "Halloween II," when Pamela Susan Shoop got an ear infection after filming her death scene. If you are sensitive to bad hygiene, you might want to stop reading now.

Shoop's character, Nurse Bailey, is drowned to death in a bathtub by the film's villain, Michael Myers (Dick Warlock). To film the scene, Shoop was indeed submerged in bathwater, but while it was ostensibly boiling hot water, it was actually ice cold and dirty. So cold, in fact, that Shoop says her teeth were chattering — but that wasn't the worst part. Repeatedly dunked into the tub filled with dirty water, Shoop wound up getting a severe ear infection. And it wasn't the only lasting effect the film had, as she also says that the process used to dress her up for her "beauty" scenes left her hair damaged for a long time after the film wrapped. 

"Day of the Dead" used real cow entrails to make it convincing when Joe Pilato's character is disembowled by zombies. But it wasn't the first time that George A. Romero forced actors to work with real animal guts in a zombie classic, as he did something similar — and arguably worse — when he made the original "Night of the Living Dead" in 1968. The film, of course, follows the events of a zombie outbreak that leaves a group of survivors trapped inside a farmhouse.

During one infamous scene, a truck explodes and leaves human victims scattered about — making for the perfect meal for nearby undead walkers. The sickening scene sees the zombies chowing down on human flesh, an effect achieved by using real animal parts — sheep hearts, lungs, and intestines — that the zombie actors ate up like candy. The guts were supplemented by ham, as well as syrup to simulate blood, but the real animal parts were supplied by a friend of the production who happened to own a meatpacking plant. 

To give them an even more realistic look and feel, the various sheep organs were filled with water, making them slimy and jelly-like, with a bulbously squishy appearance. "It was bizarre," said John A. Russo (via Newsweek), Romero's co-screenwriter who also played a zombie in the film. "Like a Fellini movie or something."

Eating bugs and animal guts is pretty disgusting, at least for most people. For actors it can be even worse because they're often filming multiple takes, over and over, until the director gets the shot they need. Sometimes, though, it's worse still, especially when an actor is a vegetarian and is asked to eat something that would probably disgust even omnivores. That's the situation that befell Mia Farrow when she starred in "Rosemary's Baby," a horror movie already legendary for its controversy.

Most of the scandalous attention paid to "Rosemary's Baby" these days revolves around its infamous director, Roman Polanski, although his borderline abusive treatment of Farrow on the set is also well-documented. One instance in which the director brutally crossed the line was when he forced Farrow to eat a raw liver for the sake of a scene. But it might surprise you to learn that Farrow — who'd already been pushed to the limit on the set — didn't fight the decision. 

"When Roman wanted me to eat raw liver, I ate it, take after take, even though, at the time, I was a committed vegetarian," she said in her memoir, "What Falls Away." Talk about a trooper: Farrow was clearly an actress willing to do anything for the sake of the film.