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.

A decade before cult metal band Acid Bath would release "Cassie Eats Cockroaches," Nicolas Cage actually did it. 

Cast in the role of Peter Loew, a literary agent suffering from paranoid delusions in the 1988 horror/comedy "Vampire's Kiss," Cage was a fast-rising Hollywood star at the time, known for taking daring risks and making ... let's call them unique ... choices in his mannerisms. In the years since, the 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 screaming the alphabet in its entirety, jumping on desks, chasing pigeons and 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.  

Speaking to The Ringer about the infamous movie moment in 2019, 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.' ... 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." 

"I think they're actually called water bugs," he added. "They're bigger than cockroaches."

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. "Neil would come over with his mask and said, 'I promise you, the photography looks great.'"

Filming for the 2015 Alejandro Inarritu wilderness epic "The Revenant" was notoriously difficult, with the director himself calling 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 said in a 2015 interview. "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.

Shia LaBeouf has earned the reputation of a Hollywood eccentric, and in the right hands this can sometimes translate to powerful on-screen work. IndieWire, for one, has lauded his ability to give "complex, transportive performances, with rough and edgy bursts of messy antics slathered on top of soul." This 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, with star Brad Pitt saying "It was set up to break us down, to keep us cold, to keep us exhausted, to make us miserable, to keep us wet, make us eat cold food." 

But LaBeouf, who played a tank driver 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 insists that he 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 further Method this madness, "Fury" co-star Logan Lerman told an interviewer that the scar on LaBeouf's cheek in the film was not only real, but self-inflicted. 

"They were putting cuts on Shia and I said, 'Yeah, yeah, it looks good'," Lerman (who also backs up the tooth tale) explained. "And Shia was like 'No, it doesn't look real' ...[so] he walks out into the hallway and says, 'Hey man, wanna see something fun? Check this out ...' and 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."

Veteran actor Tony Todd has had multiple iconic supporting roles over the years, in movies like "Platoon" and "Night of the Living Dead," as well as TV shows like "Star Trek: The Next Generation." But it's his part as the titular horror villain in the 1992 film "Candyman" that has become his calling card. His booming voice terrified moviegoers in multiple films (as well as the recent reboot), and has haunted dreams for nearly thirty 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 — and keep in mind that in the early '90s CGI was a costly, rarely-utilized option for horror films. 

As a result, swarms of real bees were used on set, and actor Tony 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 2012 movie "The Paperboy" didn't make many waves with critics or at the box office, but at the time of its release the film was nonetheless discussed, albeit for all the wrong reasons.

Set in 1969, "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 intrepid reporter, but a tawdry secondary story involves the film's other two leads, Zac Efron (as his younger brother Jack) and Nicole Kidman (as an out-of-towner named Charlotte Hess, girlfriend of the accused). 

One scene in the film 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, because it made sense for the film," Daniels said in a 2012 interview. "It was what it was."

As the flick made its way through post production, Daniels began getting doubts — but Oscar winner 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." 

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

Portraying Freddie Quell, a veteran of the second world war 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 Brando used cotton balls 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. ... After a couple weeks, the bands, they weren't really strong enough to kind of hold it so I ended up getting rid of the rubber bands and I still had these metal brackets in and so it made me constantly aware of my cheek. You know, they had these pointy tips so they'd tear up the cheek a little bit."