If I had to sleep inside of an animal carcass for a movie...I'd simply quit.
1. While he was Filming Morbius, Jared Leto pretended to be disabled like his onscreen counterpart and continued to limp with crutches even when he wasn't filming.
Getty / Sony Pictures Releasing
2. For Suicide Squad, Jared Leto — who would only respond to the name Mistah J — also sent his fellow cast members a dead pig at their first table read. He sent Margot Robbie a live rat.
Warner Bros.
He gifted his castmates with used condoms, anal beads, a switchblade, porn, and a dildo.
Warner Bros.
He went on to explain, "I did a lot of things to create a dynamic, to create an element of surprise, of spontaneity, and to really break down any kind of walls that may be there. The Joker is somebody who doesn’t really respect things like personal space or boundaries."
Warner Bros. / Everett
3. Jamie Foxx wore prosthetic eyelids so his eyes would be glued shut for 14 hours on filming days while he played Ray Charles in the movie Ray.
Universal Pictures / Everett
He even told the New York Times that he experienced panic attacks during the first two weeks of filming before he became accustomed to the "unsettling, claustrophobic feeling." He even shared that cast and crew-mates often forgot that he couldn't see and they'd accidentally "leave him sitting alone at a table after lunch on the assumption that he could get back to the set on his own."
Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images
4. Ashton Kutcher gave himself pancreatitis and was hospitalized twice (!!!!) while preparing to play Steve Jobs in Jobs.
Open Road Films / Everett
Steve Jobs was known to be a "fruitarian," and lived on a mainly fruit diet, which Ashton tried to replicate. His wife Mila Kunis explained, "He was so dumb. He...only ate grapes at one point...we ended up in the hospital twice. With pancreatitis! It was really dumb!"
5. While filming The Revenant, Leonardo DiCaprio slept inside of an animal carcass and was so cold he was constantly on the brink of hypothermia.
20th Century Fox
Leo is also a strict vegetarian in real life, but for his movie, he insisted on eating raw bison meat so that he could live as closely to his character Hugh Glass as possible.
20th Century Fox
6. To prepare for his role in Cast Away, Tom Hanks had to quickly drop 50 pounds, and he even refused to bathe, which ended up nearly killing him after he caught a staph infection from a wound on his leg.
Getty / 20th Century Fox
"[Cast Away] put me in the hospital. I was there for three days with something that, believe it or not, almost killed me," he revealed. "I got an infection from a cut, and it was eating its way through my leg. I didn't know it; I just thought I had a sore. I went to the doctor who took one look and said, 'I have to put you in the hospital because we have to get this infection out of you before it poisons your blood and you die.'"
20th Century Fox / Everett
7. Robert Pattinson masturbated to completion on set while portraying Salvador Dalí in the movie Little Ashes.
Kaleidoscope Entertainment
When asked why he didn't just fake it for the camera, Robert shared, "[It] just doesn’t work, so I pleasured myself in front of the camera."
Cindy Ord / WireImage / Getty Images
8. For The Lighthouse, Robert Pattinson would also try to make himself throw up, lick mud, piss himself, put stones in his shoes, and get drunk during filming.
A24
While later discussing his role, he added, “I always say about people who do method acting, you only ever see people do the method when they’re playing an asshole. You never see someone being lovely to everyone while they’re really deep in character.”
A24 / Everett
9. For Fury, Shia LaBeouf refused to bathe, deliberately cut his face open, and yanked out one of his teeth. His behavior ended up becoming so erratic that his costar Brad Pitt had to step in and talk to him.
Getty
His costar Logan Lerman told British GQ, “[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.”
Sony Pictures Releasing
Shia even told Jimmy Kimmel that he had trouble getting dentists to remove his tooth for the movie because it didn’t “make medical sense." He explained, "So I got it done by some guy in Reseda next to a Radio Shack, and he didn’t ask too many questions.”
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youtube.com10. Gary Oldman gave himself nicotine poisoning after smoking $20,000 worth of Winston Churchill's favorite cigars for Darkest Hour.
Focus Features / Everett
He explained to the Hollywood Reporter, "I got serious nicotine poisoning. 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, and then the prop man would replenish me with a new cigar — we were doing that for 10 or 12 takes a scene.”
Mike Marsland / Mike Marsland / WireImage / Getty
Gary even went on to say, “You can’t have Winston Churchill without a cigar.”
11. Colin Firth developed headaches, a pinched nerve in his arm, and a stutter of his own after portraying George VI in The King's Speech.
Paramount / Everett
"I had to learn to stammer and then play someone trying desperately not to. It put my left arm to sleep — it was very peculiar. I must have been locking something, pinching a nerve. It was a semi-paralysis that would last for three or four days," he explained. "Derek Jacobi said to me: 'You could find it affecting your speech patterns for some time afterward. When the job's over, don't worry, it will go away.'"
Paramount / Everett
12. For her first movie Jungle Fever, Halle Berry wasn't willing to experiment with drugs for her role as a crack addict, so instead, she embraced her character by not showering for eight weeks.
Universal
She shared, "I didn't smoke crack. I drew the line there, but it was 23 years ago, so I was brand spanking new, and at that time, all I could really do was kind of try to be it, so I didn't shower for the whole entire time that we shot that movie, so that was probably about eight weeks. It was gnarly. Certain body parts got washed, let's just say that."
Steve Granitz / Getty Images
13. Jamie Dornan straight-up stalked a woman leaving the London Underground to prepare for his part as a serial killer in The Fall.
BBC2
"I followed a woman off the train one day to see what it felt like to pursue someone like that," he explained. "I followed her around a couple of street corners and then was like, 'What are you doing?' It felt kind of exciting, in a really sort of dirty way. I’m sort of not proud of myself. But I do honestly think I learned something from it, because I’ve obviously never done any of that. It was intriguing and interesting to enter that process of ‘what are you following her for?’ and ‘what are you trying to find out?’”
BBC2
14. In The Brown Bunny, Chloë Sevigny gave Vincent Gallo, her boyfriend at the time, an actual unsimulated blowjob onscreen.
Wellspring
When asked why she did it, she explained, "I think it was a way of kind of reclaiming myself, which sounds odd, but after the celebrity and stuff, being like: ‘No, that’s not who I am, I’m this other thing, and this is what I stand for.’ Or wanting to push the envelope."
Gary Miller / WireImage
15. While filming My Left Foot, Daniel Day-Lewis refused to get out of his character's wheelchair, and crew members were forced to lift him over the set equipment so he could get around. He even broke two ribs from sitting hunched over all the time.
Miramax / Everett
Since the actual Christy Brown was disabled, Daniel also learned how to paint using a knife that he held between his toes and even made people spoon-feed him.
Miramax / Everett
Because he was so serious about staying in character, he made people refer to him as Christy Brown when he wasn't filming — he literally wouldn't respond to his own name.
Miramax / Everett
16. While filming Gangs of New York, Daniel Day-Lewis caught pneumonia because he refused to wear a warmer coat in between scenes since those same coats didn't exist in the 1860s.
Miramax / Everett
He went on to explain, "I will admit that I went mad, totally mad," and that the role was, "not so good for my physical or mental health."
Kevin Mazur / Getty Images
17. Finally, Robert De Niro paid a dentist $5,000 to have his teeth ground down, sharpened, and deformed for his role in Cape Fear.
Universal
Then, after the movie was completed, he paid a dentist $20,000 to fully restore his teeth.
Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images
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