Enforced Method Acting - Television Tropes & Idioms

Method Acting: noun — An acting technique in which actors try to replicate the real-life emotional conditions under which the character operates, in an effort to create a life-like, realistic performance.

Enforced Method Acting: noun — An acting technique in which actors give a life-like, realistic performance because no one warned them what was going to happen...

Enforced Method Acting is a cinematic concept in which the actors and actresses of a work give reactions that are unplanned and unscripted. This can occur for several reasons:

The director is trying to make a performance more realistic- the primary form of this trope, the applications of this are as widespread as not telling your actor that their love interest is returning to not warning them when the chainsaw-wielding maniac bursts through the door.
Another actor does or says something that causes the actors he's working with to react in an unplanned way- usually by trying not to burst out laughing.
Real Life Writes The Plot and an unforseen accident results in a scene that is appropriate to the plot.

Compare with Throw It In.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime

Hideaki Anno, the eccentric director of Neon Genesis Evangelion, infamously told Megumi Ogata to literally strangle Yuko Miyamura during the recording of the scene where Shinji tries to strangle Asuka in End Of Evangelion. Allegedly the results were so realistic that Megumi Ogata had to profusely apologise to Yuko Miyamura in the aftermath.
- Additionally by the way in which he directed Miaymura on the last line of Eo E.
In general, the directors of English dubs of anime seem to do this a lot to the actors, particularly when you consider that most anime is finished before the dub is even started on. If you do things like read interviews with the actors and watch extras on the discs pertaining to how the dub was recorded, you'll find all sorts of anecdotes such as Vic Mignogna actually crying in reaction to things that happened in the final episode of Fullmetal Alchemist, to Chris Patton in the audio commentaries in Princess Tutu wondering aloud "why I'm being such a bastard" to many, many actors not being told that a character dies until they record the scene in which it happens, even when it's their character.
- Speaking of Fullmetal Alchemist, Vic Mignogna was also not informed of what lay on the other side of the Gate prior to dubbing the scene in which Edward Elric passes through it. The surprise in Edward's voice upon seeing Zeppelins, therefore, is quite real.
  - Episode 8 is the first time it's really apparent. It seems to be the equivalent of what originally happened after the Tucker incident, and it's still a Tear Jerker.
Shinichi Watanabe reportedly required, during the recording of Excel Saga, that Menchi's voice actress crouch on all 4s to address a microphone 6 inches off the floor, and that the "Excel Girls" actresses actually wear costumes based on those worn by their animated counterparts.
- DVD extras actually show the "Excel Girls" in said costumes.
As part of her voice actress training, an up-and-coming Megumi Hayashibara was once told to focus on the saddest event in her life. She couldn't stop crying even after the exercise was over.
- Modern method acting explicitly leaves out relying on actual life experiences precisely because it can cause such trauma.

Close Anime

Film

While filming "The Empire Strikes Back," Mark Hamill was only told Darth Vader was Luke's father a few minutes before the scene was filmed. David Prowse, who was playing the physical half of the Darth Vader part, wasn't told at all. In order to make sure that no one on the crew would leak the surprise, Prowse was given the line, "No, Obi-Wan killed your father!"
- To be fair, what Prowse told Hamill was true... from a certain point of view.
A classic example is the scene in Alien where the chestbuster erupts from John Hurt's chest at dinner. The actors had no idea what was about to happen; the scene had been vaguely explained to them, but they had not been told specifics. For example, Veronica Cartwright did not expect to be sprayed with blood; her horrified "Oh, God!" is completely genuine. This is confirmed on the Collector's Edition release of the DVD.
- In the same film, director Ridley Scott placed a veiled cage with a German Shepherd in front of Jones The Cat, and unveiled it when he shouted "action!!" Hence when The Alien rose up behind Brett like a phallic gargoyle, the menacing hissing of fear from the poor kitty cat was for real.
  - How did you think they got a cat to act? "OK Jones, You've just seen a hideous, reptilian exterrestrial horror. Give me terror! ...Jones?"
- In Aliens, the early scene with the Colonial Marines coming out of hibernation was the last scene filmed. This was done to let the cast bond together through the filming, adding an extra sense of realism to the camaraderie and playful teasing of the scene.
The actors in The Blair Witch Project were given no more than a 35-page outline of the mythology behind the plot before shooting began. All lines were improvised, and nearly all the events in the film were unknown to the 3 actors beforehand, and were often on-camera surprises to them all. For example:
- In a scene where the main actors are sleeping in a tent at night, the tent suddenly shakes violently and they all get scared. This was unscripted and the director shook the tent; they were really scared.
- The crackling sounds in the woods heard through the film were made by the director and friends walking up to the camp's perimeter, breaking sticks, and then tossing them in various directions.
- To promote discord between actors, the directors deliberately gave them less food each day of shooting.
In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:
- Georgie Henley and Skandar Keynes, the actors playing Lucy and Edmund, had never seen the snowbound set until they walked onto it on camera. Their awe-struck reactions were authentic.
- Similarly, Georgie Henley had never seen James McAvoy in his Mr. Tumnus costume before shooting their scenes together.
- In a more subtle example, director Andrew Adamson shot the film in primarily chronological order. He did this in order to naturally create a sense of mature development from his young actors, which mirrored their real-life development.
In Far And Away, one scene has Nicole Kidman peeking under a bowl covering Tom Cruise's genitals. For the first few takes, she didn't look surprised enough, so director Ron Howard had Cruise take off his underwear without Kidman's knowledge.
In the movie M*A*S*H, director Robert Altman had trouble shooting the scene in which Hot Lips is exposed in the shower when the tent flap is pulled up. On the first take, actress Sally Kellerman knew what was coming and was already lying on the ground during the reveal. For the second take, Altman and Gary Burghoff came onto the set and dropped their trousers in front of her off-camera to keep her distracted until the actual reveal.
At the end of the movie Kes, the director told the young main actor that they'd killed the kestrel he'd been filming alongside in order to get a convincing performance out of him. In actual fact, they'd got another dead bird from a sanctuary before filming.
- Wow that's... That's a bit like emotional child abuse isn't it?
- And in the earlier scene where Billy gets caned, he was caned for real. Yikes.
  - And there's the physical child abuse...
According to a long-standing but unconfirmed Hollywood legend, during the shooting of the 1959 remake of Ben Hur, scriptwriter Gore Vidal and director William Wyler convinced Stephen Boyd to play the role of Messala as if he and Judah were estranged lovers, without informing Heston of this — the "enforced" aspect was entirely on Charlton Heston's part.
- This is confirmed by Gore Vidal in documentary film The Celluloid Closet.
Child actor Jackie Cooper was goaded into crying for a scene by a director who threatened to shoot his dog. Cooper was so traumatized by the memory of that event that when he later wrote his autobiography, he entitled it, Please Don't Shoot My Dog.
- Sent up in an episode of Extras where the director threatens to shoot the child actor's mother in the face to get him to cry in a film about the Balkans war. Andy Millman comments "...and the atrocities continue."
In Straw Dogs, to get the perfect "shocked reaction" from the villagers when the main character walked into the pub, the director had him walk in without any trousers on. It worked.
According to the commentary track on the DVD release of the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, none of the cast, child or adult, was allowed to see or even know about the "candy gardens" room until the filming — the wonder and amazement on their faces at the moment the door opens is genuine.
- In the documentary on the same disc, Gene Wilder admits he did not tell Peter Ostrum just how furious he would be when he declared Charlie had violated the contract and thus wouldn't win the lifetime supply of chocolate. Since it was key that Charlie be shocked, Wilder didn't unleash the character's rage until the cameras rolled in order to get the most natural reaction possible.
- Similarly, the scene when the Oompa Loompas walk out for the first time was unscripted; all the reactions that the actors have to them are real.
- And Gene Wilder's ravening on the boat came as a complete shock to the actors aboard, who all genuinely thought that Wilder was going insane.
Used in the second Pirates Of The Caribbean film, where all the characters were told that The Reveal at the end was that of Anamaria, a minor character from the first film. The looks of shock as Barbossa appears are genuine.
- Also done when Elizabeth kisses Jack near the end of the same film. Orlando Bloom wasn't told that that would happen, so Will's expression upon seeing the two kiss was genuine as well.
- Not to mention the crew's collective looks of confusion at Jack's "Jar of Dirt" song.
- The actors were also not told until the moment that the bone cages would actually be swinging. Wow, they liked this trope.
The documentary The Fear of God: The Making of The Exorcist revealed some of the shocking enforced method acting used by director Friedkin in The Exorcist. He refrigerated the room to make Max von Sydow and Jason Miller shiver convincingly. He assured the actresses that they would be treated gently when hooked up to wires, and then yanked them around so violently that he caused them minor injuries. Firearms would be discharged between takes every once in a while to keep everyone jittery. Jason Miller was not told that he was going to be sprayed in the face during the vomiting scene. And when the actor playing Father Dyer wasn't getting the final scene, where he administers the last rites to Father Karras, just right, Friedkin took him aside, slapped him hard across the face, and then resumed shooting. In the documentary, O'Malley testifies that his shaking hands during that scene are due to fear of Friedkin.
In Transformers, one scene had Shia LaBeouf's character clinging to the side of a building while above him are the spinning blades of a helicopter with explosions all around him. As admitted by the actor, the fear he expresses is genuine as the copter was real.
- In the same movie, when Scorponok attacks the soldiers in the desert the actors were told to run and not to stop no matter what. That was because Scorponok's "tracks" were being made by detonating buried strands of primacord. So the panic in that scene is quite genuine.
- And when Sam's on the hood of a car, and Barricade slams it, demanding to know where the glasses are? One of the first pieces of movie-related video released to the Internet was a clip of that scene being filmed, complete with Shia LaBeouf screaming afterward that they didn't tell him the car was going to jump up.
The kids in The Goonies weren't allowed to see the pirate ship until the filming of the scene in which they see it for the first time. Unfortunately, the first take wasn't used, as several of the cast blurted out an unscripted "Holy shit!"
In the scene within X-Men where Wolverine first confronts Magneto, the initial look of shock at Magnus' entrance was a result of Hugh Jackman's fear of the sparks that were flying all around him.
In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, director Steven Spielberg didn't allow the child actors to see the E.T. puppet until their scenes were filmed. Thus, their screams are genuine. Additionally, the scenes were filmed chronologically, so that by the end, their tears during E.T.'s departure were part of a sincere sadness that the shooting was over.
- In the scene in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind where Cary Guffey's 3-year old character is supposed to be reacting to aliens, Spielberg had two crew-members in a clown and gorilla suit appear suddenly and then remove their masks.
- In particular, when he looks into the sky and says "toys" (presumably in reference to the alien spaceships), Spielberg had gotten onto a ladder with a large box and opened it up to reveal actual toys.
At the beginning of Apocalypse Now, the character of Willard is in his hotel room drunk. During the filming of the whole scene Coppola was telling Sheen he was a worthless actor and father to keep him crying. (Sheen was drunk while filming the scene, but that's just method acting, not Enforced Method Acting.)
- This seems to be a standard method acting from Coppola. Winona Ryder said in an interview that, when filming the Dracula movie, Coppola teamed up with Keanu Reeves to throw insults at her so she would cry more heartfilly during a scene where Mina was supposed to break down, yet Ryder couldn't reach the emotional depths she required.
  - This troper wonders what you'd have to do to Keanu to get actual emotion.
The commentary track to Jurassic Park III, after describing the machines used in one scene added, "So when the actors look frightened, they're not acting." (Although one could argue that this was not particularly unusual for the cast of Jurassic Park III.)
- They were conditioned to react to dinosaur realistically via someone shoving a dino head on a stick in their face and going "grr" just so they'd be more scared when they actually used real models.
Die Hard. Alan Rickman was told that he was going to be let go on a count of 3. They dropped him on "2," and the look of panic on his face is definitely not acted; one is not surprised to learn that he was extremely angry after that day's shooting was over.
Attempted in The Descent. The crawlers were kept hidden from the cast until The Reveal and the actresses were given the sole instruction to stay in the same place for the shot. When it appeared, everyone got such a fright they went running to the other side of the set. At least the effort wasn't a complete waste, they did say that it shook them up pretty bad for the next take...
During the filming of a basic training scene in the movie Stripes, director Ivan Reitman quietly told the actors to pull Warren Oates, who played their drill sergeant Sgt. Hulka, down into the mud with them - when they did so, Oates chipped a tooth. Oates subsequently berated Reitman in front of everyone, shouting "If you want to push me into the mud I'll get pushed into the mud, but don't pull that kind of shit again!" After that, Ivan Reitman has never attempted to use Enforced Method Acting in any of his films.
In Vera Drake, the director and the actress playing the title role managed to keep the character's big secret from the actors playing her family until the scene where they find out, to get genuine reactions out of them.
- Thomas Vinterburg managed the same thing in The Celebration, though The Reveal comes fairly early.
In The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Richard O'Brien didn't inform the actors that Eddie's corpse was under the tablecloth - their surprise is genuine.
In Boyz N The Hood, director John Singleton didn't tell the cast when shots would be fired, to ensure that the actors' reactions to the sound of gunfire would feel authentic.
In Garry Marshall's 1991 film Frankie and Johnny, Marshall wanted Al Pacino to show a genuine amount of surprise when opening a door at a key point in the movie. To get authentic emotion from Pacino, Marshall arranged for William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy to make an appearance on the other side of the door just off camera in full costume as Kirk and Spock!
In American Beauty, Annette Benning is having a breakdown rant at the dinner table that Kevin Spacey is supposed to stop by dropping a plate of asparagus on the floor. After a few unsuccessful takes, he unexpectedly throws it at the wall, violently shattering a real glass plate. Benning and Thora Birch have genuine looks of shock.
In Monty Pythons Life Of Brian, the extras who play guards in the "Biggus Dickus" scene were told to stand stock still and look serious. You can see them genuinely straining not to laugh when Michael Palin gets into his bit. Seriously, you try to watch the scene with a straight face.
- That scene is pure gold and too effective. Even you can see that Palin, who knew what's going to happen, is also struggling NOT to laugh at this very scene.
In Monty Python's Meaning of Life, many of the extras in the famous Mr. Creosote scene had no idea what was going to happen, and their disgusted reactions to the scene are genuine. In an interview, Carol Cleveland revealed that her line about bleeding all over her seat was met with particular revulsion — one of the extras screamed "Who the fuck wrote this?!"
- The same man who once wrote toad rape fanfiction for his own film as his biography on the official Python website. So... yeah.
In Star Trek Nemesis, in the scene where Riker is fighting the Reman Dragon on a catwalk which suddenly collapses beneath them, Riker's panicked cry is for real because they didn't tell the actor ahead of time.
In Star Trek IV The Voyage Home, there's a street scene with Uhura and Chekov trying to get directions from other pedestrians. As it turns out the scene was shot candid-camera style and all the pedestrians were real people who had no idea a movie shoot was in progress. This includes the lady who actually did stop and interact with the actors. After she left, someone was sent after her to obtain permission to use her footage and to give her an SAG card.
In the German movie Das Boot, one of the actors (Jan Fedder) fell off the bridge of the submarine set. One of the other actors shouted "man overboard" and the director remarked that it was a good idea and they should run it one more time with the fall as part of the plan, not realizing that Fedder had broken several ribs and had to be hospitalized.
Alfred Hitchcock was fond of this type of acting. For example, when he made the film version of Rebecca, the story called for Joan Fontaine to be nervous around the other actors. To acheive this, Hitchcock told her that no one else on set liked her.
- And that doesn't even mention how he got the classic ear-splitting scream for Psycho's shower scene: he turned off the hot water.
- Janet Leigh denied this.
- The climax of The Birds was filmed with five days' worth of live birds thrown at actress Tippi Hedren, instead of the mechanical birds she had been promised. The blood from the birds hitting her and the terror she expresses was genuine, and she was ordered a week's rest after breaking down crying onset, when she reported "nightmares filled with flapping wings".
Mel Brooks movie example: In Dracula: Dead and Loving It, when Lucy Westenra is staked after becoming a vampire. "Harker" actor Steven Weber wasn't told the massive amount of stage blood that would come from the dummy. In the movie, he's clearly struggling not to laugh as he delivers his lines.
In the scene from the movie Shine where concert pianist David Helfgott (played by Geoffrey Rush) was jumping on a trampoline naked except for an open trenchcoat, Lynn Redgrave's shocked and amused reaction was genuine because at the last minute, Rush covered his privates with a bouquet of plastic flowers.
When directing Shirley Temple, ruthless Western director John Ford needed her to cry. So he asked the stage manager to inform her that her dog had been killed by a car, right before flipping on the cameras. What is captured on film is one of the best moments of Miss Temple's career.
Tropic Thunder uses this trope in the plot, which involves a director filming a movie about The Vietnam War dropping his five actors into the Golden Triangle of Asia while riddling the jungle with hidden cameras as advised by Shell Shocked Senior Four Leaf Tayback.
John Woo reveals on the commentary track of Hard Boiled that, in the scene where Tequila outruns an explosion and leaps out a window holding a baby, Chow Yun-Fat was not given any warning before the pyrotechnic charges were set of behind him.
The scene where James Bond is in a pool with sharks in Thunderball was meant to be filmed with the sharks in a plexiglass tunnel. When it turned out not enough glass was available and there would be a hole in the tunnel, the filmmakers elected not to tell Sean Connery, as he was terrified of the sharks and they knew they would never be able to get him in the pool if he was aware of the problem. Hence the terrified look on his face when the shark comes after him, and then his practically doing a vertical leap out of the water.
- And in Tomorrow Never Dies, in the Saigon scene where Bond and Lin steal a motorcycle, the director instructed each of the actors separately that they would be driving the bike, resulting in the desired scuffle over who would sit in front.
In Mary Poppins, the young actors playing Michael and Jane weren't told that it was Dick Van Dyke playing the elderly Mr. Dawes. In an interview included on the Mary Poppins DVD release, Karen Dotrice said that she didn't find out until seeing the credits of the finished movie in the theater.
- Also, in the scene where the children are to take their medicine, a bottle with several internal compartments is used to dispense several colors of elixir. The children were not informed of this, so when Jane shrieks in shock at the changing color, it's real.
Roman Holiday features a moment where Gregory Peck's character pretends his hand has been bitten off by a statue. Peck didn't tell co-star Audrey Hepburn beforehand and her reaction is genuine.
From an article on the making of the film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen: "The way (filmmaers Norman) Cohn and (Zacharias) Kunuk work, the scene starts, everyone gets into character and the camera rolls. It was a challenge for the Danes, (producer Elise) Lund Larsen says. She mentions a scene of a party, when Kunuk unexpectedly pointed the camera at (actor Jakob) Cedergren and urged him to drum dance. That’s not in the script. The point is to get a reaction that matches how Mathiassen must have felt. "
When filming his adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining, Stanley Kubrick verbally abused Shelley Duvall and notoriously made her do 127 takes of a single scene in order to render her performance as Jack Torrance's meek and increasingly terrified and hysterical wife Wendy more compelling.
A mild case took place during the filming of The Sound Of Music: the reconcilliation scene between the children and Captain Von Trapp was filmed last, ensuring that the tears were genuine. One story has it that Christopher Plummer deliberately enhanced the effect by deliberately distancing himself from the actors playing the children so they all thought he didn't like them.
During the filming of Scream, director Wes Craven was unable to get a convincing performance out of Drew Barrymore. In desperation, he had her dog kidnapped, then had the sound effects man put a recording the sound of a dog screaming in fear inside a box. Craven then kicked and abused the box, triggering the sounds from the "dog", telling Drew to do the scene properly or he'd keep torturing and abusing the dog. Her tears during her scene were genuine.
In the car scene in Dirty Dancing where Baby yells "You're Wild" at Johnny, the actress was unable to laugh at the same time as the line so in order to make her laugh Patrick Swayaze unzipped his trousers and pulled out his "clutch" in order to get a reaction out of her. The crew were unaware until she yelled at him after cut to put it away.
For Dr Strangelove, actor Slim Pickens was never shown the complete script and was led to believe that the film was a serious drama.
- I think the bit about waving his cowboy hat and whooping while astride a hydrogen bomb might have tipped him off.
- Also, after each of his scenes was supposedly done, Stanley Kubrick asked George C. Scott to do one more take going as over the top as possible. His scenes in the final film are made up entirely of these takes.
  - The scene where Scott stumbles and does a forward roll while enthusiastically describing the capabilities of his bomber pilots was a fortunate accident - since Scott didn't break character, it made the cut.
Likewise, Frankie Laine was not informed that Blazing Saddles was a comedy, so he sang the theme song straight, which makes it even funnier.
- According to Mel Brooks, Mel was looking for a Frankie Sound-a-like, and when the real Mc Coy came in, he just didn't have the heart to tell the guy that it was a parody movie after hearing his effort.
And to complete the trifecta, Kyle MacLachlan allegedly stormed out of the premier of Showgirls, shouting "They told me this was going to be an ART movie!".
In An American Werewolf In London, one of the extras in the zoo scene was told that the lead was going to say a few words to her and move on. She wasn't, however, told that he was going to be completely naked when he did that.
While filming The Abyss, James Cameron kept the cameras rolling after Ed Harris had run out of oxygen, capturing the actor's real panic. When he got out of the tank, Harris went up to Cameron and punched him.
During the filming of United 93, the four actors playing the hijackers were sequestered from the rest of the cast, to prevent any familiarity developing.
In the Adam Sandler remake Mr. Deeds there is a scene where Sandler invites John Turturro's character to hit his foot with a fireplace poker to prove he has no feeling in it. While Sandler doesn't even shrug at the first two strikes, at the third Deeds screams in pain before revealing he was joking to get a rise out of the butler. As you might have guessed, the scream wasn't in the script, Sandler and the director threw it in at the last minute to get an amusing reaction out of John Turturro.
I'm not sure if this take was used or not, but in his memoir Lucky Man, Michael J. Fox recounts that while filming the scene where Marty is lynched in Back To The Future Part 3, he actually didn't get his hand in the right place on one take and actually blacked out. The director soon realized that the swinging was too realistic.
- Not sure if this fits the trope very well because he knew it was coming, but Marty's gasp in part 2 when Biff kicks him in the gut is real. Robert Zemeckis is apparently big on real reactions, and runs the mantra "Pain is temporary, film is forever" with his actors.
In Empire Of The Sun, there was a scene where a maid smacks Christian Bale's character across the face. They had practiced the scene with a fake slap, but Stephen Spielberg told the actress playing the maid to really slap him for the real take. Christian Bale's shocked reaction was completely real.
When filming The Deer Hunter, director Michael Cimino convinced Christopher Walken to actually spit in Robert de Niro's face. De Niro was completely surprised by it, as evidenced by his reaction.
In the scene in Withnail And I where Withnail drinks lighter fluid, the liquid in the bottle was vinegar, not water as previously rehearsed. The look on Richard E. Grant's face is completely unfeigned.
Between takes in The King Of Comedy, Robert DeNiro made antisemitic comments around Jerry Lewis in order to make Lewis's anger toward DeNiro's character more real.
In The Thomas Crown Affair, the 1999 remake, the director told Pierce Brosnan to keep kissing Rene Russo even thought she was pulling away, during a kissing scene near the end of the film. Rene was not told of this, so during the scene, she was really trying to stop the kiss.
In the comedy Run, Fatboy, Run, director David Schwimmer said that in the scene where Simon Pegg and Hank Azaria are talking in the locker room, Simon's shocked reaction to Hank dropping his towel was very real. Apparently, Hank was supposed to wear a modesty patch over his genitals, but it didn't fit, so he did the scene without it.
In Fight Club, the first punch in the first fight between Edward Norton and Brad Pitt was supposed to be awkward as neither character had fought before. It was agreed beforehand that Norton would punch Pitt in the shoulder, but the director changed it at the last minute. Brad was not informed.
Tyler Durden: Ow! Christ, why the ear, man?!
In the awful film version of The Cat in the Hat, Mike Meyers is standing in the hallway amidst the house falling down, and one particular beam falls, and Mike jumps and starts looking around, because no one told him it was going to happen.
For the film When Harry Met Sally..., director Rob Reiner often encouraged Billy Crystal to improvise his dialogue to evoke more realistic reactions from Meg Ryan. The most noticeable example is in the famous "too much pepper in my paprikash" scene. At one point, while trying to figure out what Harry is saying, Sally laughs and looks away. This was Ryan looking to Reiner for some idea of what to do, but Reiner decided to keep it because it makes her character more endearing and lovable (at the exact moment in the film when the characters' love relationships starts).
In Saving Private Ryan, most of the principal cast was made to go through Army basic training. Very realistic training. For several weeks. The only actor who was exempt was Matt Damon, who played the titular Private Ryan. Steven Spielberg made sure everybody knew Damon was being allowed to sit out the training in order to build up a sense of resentment toward him from the rest of the cast, which jives well with the characters' resentment at being sent on a dangerous mission that risks all their lives to rescue one man.
Akira Kurosawa did this in Throne of Blood, in the climactic sequence where his Macbeth analogue is being fired upon by dozens of archers. The arrows that actually hit Lord Washizu, or miss narrowly, were pulled by strings behind the walls; the ones that miss by a larger margin were actually shot at him by expert marksmen on the set. Needless to say, Toshiro Mifune's display of blind terror is not entirely acted.
Remember that bit in Jurassic Park with the kids in the car? The glass wasn't supposed to break - those screams were for real, people. (Not that you can blame them, those robots were Bad Ass.)
And another James Cameron one, the water in Titanic. Most people would do the shoot with warmish water and let their actors do what their job description says. James Cameron will chuck blocks of ice into said water to make it more authentic. That's why Kate Winslet's so hesitant to get in it and where Leonardo DiCaprio's reaction comes from. The bits where Jack and Rose get hit by a massive wave of water in the hallway are also real. Kate had such impressive bruises on side and legs that the makeup team took photos to use as references for future films. Not for nothing is Cameron known as the biggest prick in Hollywood.
- During the filming of one of his movies, crew members wore T-Shirts emblazoned with "You can't scare me. I work for James Cameron." Yup.
During the production of the film version of West Side Story, the directors had the actors playing the Jets and the Sharks gangs to stay as separate groups at all times, to maintain a level of rivalry. They even encouraged them to prank each other. Soon, the actress playing Anybodys (the tomboy Jet-wannabe) was complaining that no one would eat lunch with her.
When filming the pie fights featured in several Three Stooges shorts, directors such as Jules White would avoid anticipation or flinching with misleading timing; e.g., telling an actor they would be hit with a pie on the count of three, while secretly instructing the person hurling the pastry to throw it on two.
Veronica Cartwright wasn't told the ending to the 1976 Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. So in the scene at the end where she approaches Donald Sutherland's character, who has been "changed", and he does a pod cry at her, her scream of shock was real.
- This troper finds it hard to believe that she would really freak out as she did, especially since the shocking part in the scene would be audio dubbed in later. Unless Carwright was that upset that there was no happy ending.
Goldfinger:
- When Bond electrocutes the Mook by dropping the fan in the bathtub right at the start of the film, the special effects included high-pressure steam jets, which scalded the leg of the actor, unable to escape due to the way the cable of the fan had wrapped itself around his leg. The look of pain was real.
- When Oddjob knocks Bond to the floor by smashing the back of his neck, Bond is thrown sideways, contorted in pain. Being an athlete and not an actor, the blow was genuine, as the actor playing Oddjob hadn't yet mastered the art of pulling blows. Apparently, Sean Connery was quite badly hurt.
- When Bond electrocutes Oddjob on the bars of the gold depository, Oddjob was getting badly burned by the spark effects, which were wilder than initially planned by the special effects department. The look of pain on his face and concern on Bond's face were real.
- The laser scene. The scene was shot with special effects technicians crouched under the table, burning through it with a blowtorch. There was a mark to show where they needed to stop burning. They didn't. Sean Connery's distress is extremely obvious and he was apparently furious once filming was over.
In the film Tora Tora Tora, a radio controlled aircraft was supposed to roll down the runway past a bunch of extras, and then blow up. It went out of control and swerved toward the extras, who then really did start running for their lives.
In The Dark Knight, when the Joker blows up the hospital, the detonator Heath Ledger used didn't work as intended. The shot of him smacking the detonator to try to get it to work was genuine.
During the fascist dream sequence in Pink Floyd's The Wall, actual neo-Nazis were employed as extras. Thus the intensity and brutality shown is as real as it can get.
Tommy Lee Jones hated the script to the first Men In Black movie so much, he re-wrote all of his own lines. Of course, he didn't tell Will Smith of any of his changes, so Smith had to constantly ad-lib to keep up.
One of the tricks used in the Lord Of The Rings films to make normal-sized people bigger or smaller was building the Shire interior sets at a smaller scale. Ian Mc Kellan lost track of this in Fellowship of the Ring; his bumping his head into the hanging lamp and ceiling of Bilbo Baggins' house was purely an accident.
- Another Lord Of The Rings example, while preparing for the shoot actors whose characters had close relationships were often paired up (though Peter Jackson complains on the DVD that when they were sent out in canoes to learn to work together they spent most of their time trying to sink each other). The actors playing Merry and Pippin have mentioned that they spent most of their time together during principal photography for the first two films, and were then kept apart for Return Of The King. They apparently didn't appreciate the last part.
- David Wenham mentions on the commentary for the third film that his horse often refused to cooperate, and after a while he found out it had been bought for $200. He ponders that this might have been done on purpose - give Faramir the lousiest horse, no one loves him anyway.
- When Merry is given the orc brew in The Two Towers they used all sorts of ill-matched ingredients for the brew and since Merry is unconscious when it's given to him it was more or less forced down the actor's throat. Apparently it made him actually vomit in a few takes (like the one used in the film).
- In Fellowship of the Ring Billy Boyd was not aware that Gandalf's firework actually was going to flare. Pippin's scream is real.
- An unintentional example from The Two Towers: one scene called for Aragorn to kick a discarded helmet and let out a cry of mental anguish upon finding signs that Merry and Pippin are dead. The take used in the film depicts Viggo Mortenson letting out a cry of physical anguish; he'd just broken one of his toes kicking the helmet.
While filming The Fall, Lee Pace spent twelve weeks in a wheelchair pretending to be unable to walk while filming so the child actor he was working with would deliver a more realistic performance. An extra on the DVD shows the moment where he and the director admitted to the crew that he could actually walk and got up out of his wheel chair. Also, most of the girl's lines were only loosely scripted and she adlibbed most of her lines in reaction to what was happening in the scene, and everyone referred to Pace by the name of his character, Roy.
To get the appropriate reaction from Wil Wheaton and Jerry O'Connell, who were children at the time, for the train scene in Stand By Me, director Rob Reiner yelled at them until they cried.
- Another Stand By Me example: In the movie, Kiefer Sutherland's character is a bully who terrorizes the younger boys in the town. Sutherland is a method actor himself, so he picked on the boys off-set to scare them.
Fritz Lang utilized this often, though it's hard to say where this trope ends and outright abuse begins. The best-known example was while filming the cellar scene of M; star Peter Lorre was kept working to the point of exhaustion while suffering real physical blows in order to increase his pain, fear, and desperation. The shot where he is kicked with an iron boot was filmed dozens of times in succession.
Hans Beckert: YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO DO THIS TO ME!
In the Order Of The Phoenix movie, Gary Oldman shook Daniel Radcliffe and yelled at him until he cried, producing genuine tears for a scene.

Close Film

Television

Sort of subverted in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Urgo", where Dom De Luise ad-libbed a lot of his lines and unintentionally made it difficult for Chris Judge not to break his normal stoicism. As a result, he has fewer scenes than usual in this episode.
In the M*A*S*H (TV series) episode "Abyssinia, Henry," the final page of the script, in which Radar comes into the operating room and announces that Col. Blake's plane was shot down with no survivors, was handed to the cast a few minutes before the scene began.
- The scene in question was so shocking, an urban legend sprang up that the cast didn't know about the death until Gary Burghoff read his lines on the air.
In the Red Dwarf episode "D.N.A.", Lister is handed a photo of a man's genitals and reacts accordingly. During rehearsal, the photo was always something mundane, but when they actually shot the scene, Craig was given a photo of a guy's crotch without warning.
In the Battlestar Galactica episode "Act of Contrition", when Starbuck tells Commander Adama she's responsible for the death of his son, Zak, Olmos scared actress Katee Sackhoff into thinking he was actually going to hit her, which is why she puts her hands over her head as she walks out of his cabin.
- She was lucky. At the end of "Maelstrom", as a reaction to Starbuck's apparent death, he smashes the model ship that he had been working on throughout the series. This was totally unplanned and unscripted - Olmos didn't know that the ship was not a prop, but an actual model being leased to the production team by a museum!
  - Of course, it was insured.
- Olmos enjoys doing this sort of thing. The Kiss in "Resurrection Ship part II| was also unscripted, as was the business with the wedding ring in "The Hub". Good thing Mary Mc Donnell is used to him.
During the pilot of Firefly, Mal and Jayne throw a body out the ship's airlock and rush back inside as the door closes with a fraction of an inch to spare. This isn't just feigned: Nathan Fillion and Adam Baldwin had no idea that Joss Whedon started closing the doors the moment they went out, to simulate how fast these characters had to act in their escape from the world.
In 24, Kiefer Sutherland changed the line of the famous "Jack whispering to Nina" scene from Day 2 from its scripted one to a declaration of love for Sarah Clarke in order to get a shocked reaction from her.
The opening-night production of Macbeth in Slings And Arrows includes this as part of the plot; Slings And Arrows is a story about a theater company, and Geoffrey Tennant is not above manipulating his performers to get results. In order to get the performance he wants out of his recalcitrant Macbeth, Geoffrey changes all the blocking at the last minute, inserts a small tree at a strategic location, and gives secret instructions to Macbeth's opponents in fight scenes.
In the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations", when Sisko and Dax first walk onto the Enterprise and look around in wonder, that was really the first time the actors had seen the incredibly faithful recreation of the original set. It worked because the characters were supposed to be "fans", too.
In the episode "Waking Moments" of Star Trek Voyager, Tuvok dreams that he reports to the bridge naked. The people who are already there burst out laughing when they see him - and it's not acting. Apparently, Tim Russ attached really big fake genitals over his own, just to get the right reaction.
In the Babylon 5 episode "The Hour Of The Wolf", one of the reasons that actor Peter Jurasik looks as he does when talking to the severed heads is that one of the heads was based on fellow actor Andreas Katsulas. They avoided telling him about it in advance.
- In the episode "In the Shadow of Z'Ha'Dum", Andrea Thompson really slapped Bruce Boxleitner, very hard. Not only his reaction but the sound the slap makes is real.
Many of the tears in the Doctor Who episode "Doomsday" were genuine sadness at the cast knowing this was going to be Billie Piper's last scene or so they thought at the time. Also in "School Reunion", Sarah Jane and Rose laughing at the Doctor is actually because David Tennant scribbled on his own face and didn't tell Billie Piper or Elisabeth Sladen.
Arguably, this was often the case in Mork And Mindy. Much of Mork's dialogue and antics were ad-libbed by Robin Williams, and so Mindy's surprise and confusion were often genuine. Of course, this made it interesting in an "It's A Wonderful Life" episode where Mindy isn't supposed to react to the invisible Mork's antics, but Pam Dawber is visibly struggling to keep a straight face.
This clip from The Daily Show, in which John Oliver reads out a list of funny names. Between rehearsal and the final recording, the list was changed. Nobody told Jon Stewart.
- This seems to happen to Jon a lot, especially in the tosses to the Colbert Report or when he starts cracking up.
Interestingly averted in Coupling. A scene set in a Lap Dancing club called for the male cast to react to an (off-screen) stripper. The scene was first shot using a real stripper but was unusable as the cast all just sat still and open-mouthed throughout the performance. The scene was reshot with the (male) director performing the stripper so the cast could give the appropriate reactions with distraction.
Farscape episode Durkha Returns features a scene in which Crichton and Durkha are supposed to dive away from an exploding grenade: however, the pyrotechnics used in the explosion were obviously more powerful than expected, as the seat of Ben Browder's trousers reportedly caught fire. Thus, the look of terror on Crichton's face as he dives away is very real indeed.
The Brady Bunch episode where Bobby took up outlaw Jesse James as a role model ends with a dream sequence where Jesse James shows up and shoots Bobby's entire family (even Alice!) to death (in an extremely silly-looking way, of course). To counteract the silly action, the director took actor Mike Lookinland alone to a closed set and began to describe to him how the scene would look in graphic, horrid detail, using Lookinland's real-life family as an example. The looks of terror you see in Bobby's eyes are from the director screaming at him about how his real-life parents and siblings (even his pets!) were screaming in pain, suffering, bleeding, and dying!
The Price Is Right occasionally does this with a showcase (usually April Fools Day showcases) so that the model(s) involved are genuinely surprised. For the "Janice Pennington, This Is Your Strife" showcase, the cast and crew even went to the trouble of rehearsing a fake showcase with Janice.
Although not an intentional use of this trope, Mira Furlan has stated that her status as an outsider to the regular Ensemble Cast of Lost was useful in portraying Danielle Rousseau.
The fifth series of the UK version of The Apprentice had the contestants create an advertising brand for a new cereal, including a mascot and TV commercial. One group came up with a superhero character called "Pantsman" who wears his underwear over his outer clothes, and made an advert featuring two young children, with "Pantsman" told to hide before filming so the kids wouldn't see him. Their expressions in the finished ad (as he walked in and they saw him for the first time) are priceless.
Frequently in Scrubs when the Janitor does a freakish rant, the astonishment of the characters listening is often genuine. Neil Flynn is given a long leash with ad-libbing lines, with the script often literally stating "Janitor: What Neil Says".
Monty Python's shot of the kangaroo-hopping Freemasons with their trousers down and spotted boxer shorts displayed (part of the "How to recognise a Freemason" sequence) was filmed on a real London street with the then largely unknown Pythons dressed up in their banking suits and blending in. At a prearranged signal, they dropped their trousers and started hopping, and the shot was taken by a camera in a passing vehicle. The reactions from the passers-by are all completely genuine.