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Unexpected Bloopers From Otherwise Serious Actors

Since gaining popularity in the late '70s and early '80s, blooper reels have become a highly enjoyable part of the movies. Often included on DVD releases, they can offer an eye into the filmmaking process, humanizing their stars by showing them flubbing their lines, goofing up, and just generally having a good, silly time while it's all captured for posterity. Bloopers are especially fun when they're from unexpected sources—such as serious actors, the ones who win lots of awards for their dramatic roles. But hey, they're only human, and they're prone to goofs too. Here are some little-seen screw-ups from some of the most respected dramatic performers in Hollywood history.

Marlon Brando in Superman

Marlon Brando is among the most lauded actors of all time, fascinatingly disappearing into his characters in classic films like The Godfather and On the Waterfront. He lends just the right amount of gravitas to the role of Jor-El, the future Superman's father, in a cameo appearance in the first Superman film. But while Brando is probably the very definition of "serious actor," he didn't always take himself all that seriously. While doing some blue-screen work on Superman, he just started riffing, delivering famous lines of poetry and "Camptown Races."

Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing

Hugh Jackman is a versatile actor, able to handle costume dramas, action movies, and even musicals with aplomb. He's best known for the role of Wolverine in many X-Men movies, and brings depth and nuance to a comic book character that could threaten to be one-note (that note being "angry all the time"). So no matter what the work is, Jackman takes it seriously...until things get really goofy. On the set of the 2004 monster-hunt movie Van Helsing, he doesn't even have Wolverine's adamantium claws to blame for a prop surprisingly breaking in his hands, which leads to some very unserious chuckling and grinning.

Bryan Cranston in Total Recall

As Walter White on Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston was "the one who knocks"—and he won four Emmys for his trouble. That role involved a lot of difficult dialogue, from long monologues to rattling off the names of chemicals and scientific processes, both in high school chemistry class and meth-making scenes. But stick Cranston in a sci-fi movie, like the 2012 remake of Total Recall, and he can't get the word "re-implantation" out.

Naomi Watts in King Kong

Naomi Watts almost exclusively acts in dramas—and really tense ones like 21 Grams (about death) and The Impossible (about the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami). She lightened her workload a little with a major role in Peter Jackson's huge King Kong remake in 2005. The blooper reel for the movie reveals an actress that has an almost pathological inclination to swear when she flubs a line. Watts swears a lot.

Matt Damon in The Martian

Matt Damon is certainly one of the finest actors of his generation, and a beloved movie star to boot. He is, of course, not really a genius scientist—he merely convincingly plays one in The Martian. Most of Damon's scenes in the sci-fi film are of him alone, stranded on Mars, carefully devising ways that he can prolong his survival. Math helps in that kind of situation, but Damon amusingly can't quite get that part right, as he has a hard time remembering what number comes next while writing them down.

Kate Beckinsale in Underworld: Awakening

It's like Kate Beckinsale has at least two separate career trajectories. One is as a stone-faced action heroine in the Underworld series of supernatural horror movies. Another is acting in classy, restrained British period pieces, such as Love & Friendship. Regardless, Beckinsale is usually very much in control of the scene or the situation. Unless a fight scene goes wrong and she has to pull back on the physicality after it's already been launched, leaving her no choice but to do a weird little dance.

Anthony Mackie in Captain America: Civil War

Anthony Mackie is an experienced theatrical actor appearing in many serious plays both on and off Broadway. He's also got two Independent Spirit Awards nominations, including one for The Hurt Locker. It's safe to say that none of the intense dramas Mackie worked on before he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Falcon involved him doing wire work. While filming a scene for Captain America: Civil War, he landed wrong and literally fell on his face.

Uma Thurman in Kill Bill: Volume 1

As the stoic, revenge-obsessed Bride in Quentin Tarantino's two-part Kill Bill epic, Uma Thurman rarely got a chance to be funny. Her character is generally about as hilarious as a hole in the head...like the one Thurman makes when she reaches into a fight opponent's noggin and pulls out a (fake) bloody eyeball. It's so hilariously gruesome that Thurman simply must turn to the camera and deliver a witty quip.

J.K. Simmons in Spider-Man 3

J.K. Simmons is one of the most prolific and versatile character actors in Hollywood. He won an Oscar for his role as a brutal drumming instructor in Whiplash...which was a far cry from his role as a soft-spoken police chief on the TNT cop drama The Closer...which is a far cry from his role as the blustery newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson in the first Spider-Man trilogy. He's got to deliver Jameson's lines strongly, loudly, and at a rapid clip; in an outtake from Spider-Man 3, Simmons gets at least two out of three right. He trips on his own tongue to deliver gibberish, and yet maintains the Jameson voice.

Zoe Saldana in Star Trek Beyond

Being a working actor is inevitably going to involve a lot of jargon. For Zoe Saldana, that means having to memorize big chunks of technical words to advance the plot of sci-fi films like the Guardians of the Galaxy series or the Star Trek movies. The life of an actor involves navigating a lot of movie business jargon, too. That's two different kinds of word stew bouncing around the brain, and while shooting a scene for Star Trek Beyond, Saldana starts talking about a "development deal" when she's supposed to be talking about space stuff.