Live-Action Films / Enforced Method Acting

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Directors

As early as the first Terminator, crew members wore T-Shirts emblazoned with "You can't scare me. I work for James Cameron."
- While filming The Abyss, 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. Harris has said he would never work with Cameron again. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was forced to go through the resuscitation scene so many times she got angry and stormed off the set when they ran out of film stock. The cast's nervous laughing at her revival was genuine as a result of dealing with the stress.
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day:
  - Arnold Schwarzenegger's entrance into the bar gets a lot of reactions from the patrons, mainly staring as his pelvic area. Arnold was wearing gaudy boxer shorts to draw their gaze.
  - Linda Hamilton tried to get the orderly to really hit her during one scene, but he refused, which meant numerous retakes of one scene in which Hamilton had to fall hard onto her knees. In revenge, when she hits him in the face with a broomstick, she really hits him. The look of pain on his face as he crumples to the floor is very real.
- In Titanic (1997) the water was much colder than any of the actors expected it to be, causing genuine reactions. The water pressure also left deep bruises on Kate Winslet to the point where the film's makeup artists took reference pictures of them.
Director John Ford could be absolutely ruthless:
- When directing Shirley Temple, 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 often considered to be one of the best moments of Miss Temple's career.
- John Ford reportedly abused Victor McLaglen to no end on the set of The Informer - he would change the shooting schedule without warning, tell him they were rehearsing when they were actually doing a take, make him perform drunk, and for the climactic scene he promised McLaglen the day off only to wake him up early and have him act through a raging hangover. The result: one near-homicidal Irishman, and one brilliant, Oscar-winning performance.
- An interesting example comes from the film Stagecoach, which was John Wayne's first major role. Ford gave Wayne absolute hell on the set, mocking him at every turn and being constantly critical. Eventually, the other actors felt so bad for Wayne that they got together and demanded that Ford lay off the young star—which is exactly what Ford wanted them to do. He sensed (perhaps accurately) that some of the older actors might have resented a younger player getting such a prominent part; by making himself the bad guy, he instead got them to support Wayne.
Alfred Hitchcock was fond of this type of acting.
- When he made the film version of Rebecca, the story called for Joan Fontaine to be nervous around the other actors. To achieve this, Hitchcock told her that no one else on set liked her. (Which was true in Laurence Olivier's case; he had wanted his bride-to-be, Vivien Leigh, for the female lead and was not pleased when Fontaine was cast instead.)
- 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".
- In Rear Window, one elaborate set involved the outside of a bunch of buildings, and one scene where a man and a woman on the "back porch" were supposed to go back inside through one of two windows, carrying the mattress they had out back in, when it started to rain. Hitchcock told them to go into different windows, so when the scene came, their confusion was real, but it made for a very convincing portrayal of people surprised by the rain and trying to get back inside in a hurry.
- Guides at the Universal Studios tour tell the story that when shooting the shower scene in Psycho, Hitchcock switched off the hot water and made it ice-cold, ensuring that Janet Leigh's screams would be real. Leigh, however, has denied this. What Hitchcock actually did to put her on edge was hide the "Mrs. Bates" prop in her dressing room for her to discover.
Stanley Kubrick was apparently a fan of this technique.
- When filming The Shining, he verbally abused Shelley Duvall and notoriously made her do numerous 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. He similarly made Scatman Crothers do hundreds of takes of scenes until eventually Crothers broke down crying and yelled "What do you want from me, Mr. Kubrick?" As Crothers's character has comparatively little screen time this might be less an example of this trope and more of Kubrick just being his usual Prima Donna Director self. As the film's making-of explains, Jack Nicholson's Ax-Crazy performance is partially influenced by the infinite reshoots, given how after 20 takes an actor gets tired and really hams up. Though interestingly, he was entirely the opposite with Danny Lloyd, the actor who played Danny Torrance. The kid had no idea at all he was in a horror movie; he thought he was just filming a movie about a family that lived in a hotel, because Kubrick kept him away from anything scary...including Kubrick's normal directing style. Lloyd apparently didn't know it was a horror movie until he saw it as a teenager, eleven years after it was made.
- He did this all over the place in Dr. Strangelove:
  - He wanted a "cowboy" actor to pilot the Leper Colony nuclear bomber, but all the ones he contacted refused because of the anti-war source material. So he finally decided to contact Slim Pickens, show him nothing but his parts, and never told him he was making a comedy, implying that his character was the hero of the film, "heroically" delivering the bomb that ends the world. Pickens was okay with it in the long run, spinning the publicity into a highly successful career.
  - George C. Scott wanted to play General Turgidson as a dignified Well-Intentioned Extremist, so Kubrick tricked him by telling him to do a few over the top takes as "practice" and that they would never be put into the real movie. Kubrick used all of them. Scott eventually admitted it was better that way, but nonetheless he vowed never to work with Kubrick again.
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!
The Laurel and Hardy pictures have a Running Gag where Ollie reacts to Stan's stupidity by looking exasperatedly into the camera. Apparently these shots were often filmed as the last shots of the day, when Oliver Hardy was dead tired and just wanted to get out on the golf course. They rarely needed more than one take.
Nicholas Meyer apparently discovered this was the best way to get a real performance out of William Shatner, and pulled this on him multiple times.
- In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in the scene where Kirk first confronts Khan, Kirk says "Here it comes" to Khan before transmitting what is supposed to be classified data but is actually a signal to make Khan's ship drop its shields. William Shatner kept delivering the line in his usual acting style with a singsong voice, making it too clear that Kirk was tricking Khan, so director Nicholas Meyer had Shatner do the scene multiple times until he was tired enough to do a more appropriately subdued take.
- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country has this remarkably cold-blooded exchange, regarding peace with the Klingon empire.
  Spock: Jim, there is a historic opportunity here.
  Kirk: Don't believe them. Don't trust them.
  Spock: They're dying.
  Kirk: Let them die!
  According to William Shatner's Star Trek Movie Memories, this wasn't how he had intended the line to come off. The unedited shot includes Kirk physically recoiling, to provide the impression Kirk had regretted saying something so bloodthirsty. Meyer promised Shatner he'd use the full shot. He lied.
- Shatner also often retells the story of an early movie he did where he had to do a scene atop a moving train. To allay his apprehension about the safety of this, the director told him he'd have the train run at ten miles an hour. But only after finishing the scene did Shatner learn that, during the course of the take, the director had had the train slowly rev up to forty miles an hour so the scene would be more realistic.

Films

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Apparently on a day when Zac Efron was filming a scene that involved him being angry for 17 Again (2009), the movie's director decided to be a total dick to him in order to make the emotions more real in the scene.
Adrian Lyne supposedly did this to great effect in 9½ Weeks. He kept Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke isolated from each other off the set, gave Rourke performance notes but not her (not an easy thing for Basinger, who was newer to film acting than he was and craved the feedback), and then filmed the movie in sequence so that Elizabeth's distressed emotional state later on was more real. Basinger does not recall the experience fondly despite the movie's cult success, and refused to ever do any sequel to it.
During the shooting of 42, Alan Tudyk, playing an openly racist baseball manager, and Chadwick Boseman (Jackie Robinson) avoided each other when not shooting, so that any friendship between the actors wouldn't diminish the hatred between their characters.

During the filming of The Adventures of Buratino, Tatyana Protsenko (aged around six at that time) couldn’t get herself to cry in the scene where her character Malvina does it. Finally, the director Leonid Nechayev started yelling at her about how useless and incompetent she was, bringing her to tears. The actress recalled how he and everybody else present at the filming gently apologised and gave her sweets after the scene was finally shot.
Aguirre, the Wrath of God: Klaus Kinski wanted to play the insane Aguirre as a cackling, over-the-top madman, much like the actor himself. Werner Herzog, however, wanted Aguirre to have Dissonant Serenity. To achieve this, he would intentionally annoy and insult Kinski before takes, driving the hot-blooded actor into lengthy rages. By the time they started filming the scene, Kinski was too exhausted to chew the scenery and gave Herzog the performance he wanted.
In Airplane!, Leslie Nielsen slapped Lee Bryant for real during the Get A Hold Of Yourself Man scene, and threw in a second slap without warning for good measure. Her confused reaction in this scene is entirely real.
In the Alien franchise:
- Alien:
  - The scene where the chestburster erupts from Kane's chest at dinner. The actors knew in theory what was about to happen but had not been told any specifics. For example, Veronica Cartwright did not expect to be sprayed with blood; her horrified "Oh, God!" is completely genuine. The blood was also not fake. This is all confirmed on the Collector's Edition release of the DVD. This Guardian article has some of the cast and crew reminiscing about the filming of the scene.
  - Cartwright really slapped Sigourney Weaver. That wasn't just a sound effect, and Weaver's recoil and look of shock is genuine. According to the actress in the DVD Commentary, she was fed up with Sigourney, who at that point had acted only on the stage and so was not used to pretending to get hit, instinctively flinching away from the slap and so, after numerous failed takes, faked the first slap and then properly hit her when she flinched.
  - 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 real.
  - In a lesser known example, Ridley Scott made sure that Bolaji Badejo (the man who played the Alien in most of the scenes) did not take tea or lunch breaks with the rest of the cast so their fear of the alien would be more genuine.
  - Yaphet Kotto did a lot of improv acting. Scott played along with it, and advised him to antagonize Sigourney Weaver, so their conflict later in the film would be more believable. When Ripley yells at Parker to "SHUT UP!" after Dallas's death, Weaver already had to listen to Kotto talking over her dialogue dozens of times. Having come mostly from stage, Weaver wasn't used to improv at all, and Kotto (at Scott's insistence) pushed her into actually asserting authority over the remaining cast.
- Aliens:
  - The scenes on board the Sulaco were filmed last, so that the actors playing the Colonial Marines would have had time to build up a realistic rapport with one another over the course of shooting.
  - Lance Henriksen (Bishop) played Five-Finger Fillet atop Bill Paxton's (Hudson) hand for real, making Bill Paxton's screams quite genuine.
- Alien: Resurrection: Winona Ryder nearly drowned when she was a child, and the first scene they shot was the underwater through the canteen scene. Winona Rider had never been in water since her accident. The looks of anxiety before she goes in, and the utter terror on her face when they can't get out the other end? Yeah, those weren't faked. She had an anxiety attack on her first day of filming. The ironic thing? As a robot, Call shouldn't have looked nervous (after all, she doesn't need to breathe).
- Prometheus: In the scene where Hammerpede erupts from a corpse's mouth, director Ridley Scott controlled the puppet using wires and made sure that nobody on set told actress Kate Dickie about what was about to happen. As a result, her startled screaming reaction was completely real.
In American Beauty, Carolyn Burnham is having a breakdown rant at the dinner table that Lester is supposed to stop by dropping a plate of asparagus on the floor. After a few unsuccessful takes, Kevin Spacey decided "screw this" and unexpectedly threw it at the wall, violently shattering a real glass plate. Bening and Thora Birch reacted with genuine shock (although you don't see the expressions on their faces in the shot).
American Pie Presents: Band Camp. While filming the scene where Matt Stifler strips naked during a trivia game with some girls, actor Tad Hilgenbrink actually did just that on the set. As he had not informed the actresses that he would be naked (they had assumed his genitals would be covered in some way), their surprised reactions are genuine.
In An American Werewolf in London, one of the extras in the zoo scene was told that the lead, David Naughton, 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.
In the remake of The Amityville Horror (2005), Ryan Reynolds stayed up late all night, on several occasions, to accurately capture the insomnia and mental break down his character was going through. In one particular scene when he tortures his stepson by making the boy hold chunks of wood Reynolds is chopping with a huuuge axe, he has a close confrontation with the boy and ends up giving him a fairly hard slap on the face. Reynolds has since admitted this wasn't scripted, at all, and came to him naturally through the character. He has expressed shock and some disturbance at his own actions as he never thought he'd be the type to hit a child, but here, in the heat of the moment, he did. Makes the scene A LOT more intense knowing that.
Robert Mitchum really slapping Jean Simmons in Angel Face may be a borderline case; supposedly, Otto Preminger ordered it not because Simmons's reaction was inadequate, but because Mitchum couldn't produce a convincing-looking fake slap.
At the beginning of Apocalypse Now, Willard is in his hotel room drunk. During the filming of the whole scene Francis Ford Coppola was telling Martin Sheen he was a worthless actor and father to keep him crying. In the same scene, Sheen started to bleed profusely after breaking a mirror. Coppola told him to work with it.
In Apollo 13, the scenes where the spacecraft had become very cold were shot on a soundstage that was actually made freezing cold via the use of massive fans and refrigeration units. The visible breath onscreen is real. A number of the zero-gravity scenes in the spacecraft were shot in the infamous Vomit Comet, actually simulating zero gravity, which allowed the actors to convincingly mimic floating in other scenes.
While shooting At Close Range in 1986, Sean Penn became aware of Christopher Walken's intense fear of handguns. In the midst of filming the climactic confrontation scene between the two, Penn ran off-set yelling to the prop guy, "Give me the other gun!" Walken was unsure if it was loaded and became extremely nervous. Cameras rolling, Penn threatened Walken with it. That take, complete with the close-up of Walken's fear-filled eyes, ended up in the film. He admits to being quite angry with his co-star to begin with, but then realized "what a favor he had done me" and actually thanked Penn later. The two remain good friends to this day. In fact, two years later, Walken pulled the same stunt on Matthew Broderick while filming the scene in Biloxi Blues where a drunken Sgt. Toumey threatens to blow a tunnel through Eugene's head. One must wonder if Broderick carried on the tradition.
In Attack the Block, they attempted this with the child actors who played Probs and Mayhem by not showing them the aliens until the scene where their characters first encounter them. It didn't work; the two boys burst into laughter instead of being scared. They settled for a take of the two boys staring at the aliens in awe.
Austin Powers in Goldmember: Mike Myers, who played Dr. Evil, opted to have a swinging prop meteor hit his groin without a protective cup because he wanted the pain to be authentic. He visibly flinches before Mini-Me (Verne Troyer) lets go of the meteor. After getting up, he stops himself from swearing by kicking at the air violently.
For the Anti-Climax Boss scene in The Avengers (2012) when Loki gets whipped around by the Hulk, Tom Hiddleston wore a rope tied around his legs that the film crew used to yank him off his feet. He knew it was coming ahead of time, but he wasn't told exactly when it would happen.

Back to the Future films:
- In his memoir Lucky Man, Michael J. Fox recounts that while filming the scene where Marty is lynched in Back to the Future Part III, 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.
- Marty's gasp in part two 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.
- A Hilarious Outtakes version happened during the first film. In one take of the scene where Marty drinks Lorraine's liquor, there was actual liquor in the bottle, which made him do a real Spit Take.
In Bad Boys II, when Dennis Greene, who played Reggie, showed up for shooting, he was told by Martin Lawrence's bouncer that he mustn't look into Lawrence's eyes or talk to him, and Lawrence himself was subsequently nasty to him. It was all a ploy arranged by Michael Bay, who wanted the boy to be genuinely scared of Lawrence. Greene also wasn't told about the gun that he would be threatened with by Will Smith.
In The Bad Sleep Well, actor Tatsuya Mihashi was nervous and stumbled over his words during the first take of his character's speech during the opening wedding scene. Akira Kurosawa didn't even bother to film the second take. The nervousness and awkward mistakes in Tatsuo Iwabuchi's wedding toast are all genuine.
Barbarella. Director Roger Vadim didn't tell Jane Fonda and Milo O'Shea that the Excessive Pleasure Machine was rigged with flares and smoke bombs. He hoped to get authentic reactions from them when the fireworks went off.
Par for the course in any live-action Batman movie: The heavy, tight, all-encompassing cowl itself put almost all of the Dark Knight's actors into a very Batman-like temperament while they wore it.
In The Beguiled, there's a scene where Clint Eastwood's character kisses a twelve-year-old girl to keep her quiet. According to the actress, the script had it written for him to cover her mouth with his hand and it had been rehearsed that way. The director suggested the change without telling her about it.
In Being John Malkovich, after Schwartz and the title character walk up the hill from the drainage pipe (and Malkovich threatens to take the former to court for planning to exploit it), Malkovich angrily walks away. As he does so, a car passes by and a drunken passenger yells, "Hey, Malkovich! THINK FAST!" and lobs a beer can that hits him squarely in the head. Malkovich's anguished cry and reaction (gripping his head in pain and swearing) was real.
According to a long-standing Hollywood legend, during the shooting of the 1959's 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 Charlton Heston of this—the "enforced" aspect was entirely on Heston's part. This is corroborated by Gore Vidal in the documentary film The Celluloid Closet.
For Billy Madison, the director and Adam Sandler asked the kids in the dodgeball scene for permission for Adam to throw the ball at them. However, they didn't say how hard he was going to throw it, resulting in several understandable jump cuts.
In Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), the infamous Times Square sequence was only shot twice, so as not to arouse the suspicion of tourists. Apart from Michael Keaton and a few extras that pass by close to his character, everything else around them is very real.
Black Panther (2018): This was Michael B. Jordan's first time playing a villain, and he was very much aware of his reputation and personality as a really nice guy. He intentionally distanced himself from the rest of the cast to preserve the sense of unfamiliarity and hostility appropriate between his character Killmonger and the others.
Subverted during the filming of Black Swan. Director Darren Aronofsky would try to pit Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis against each other to make their antagonistic scenes together more authentic. Unfortunately for him, both of them caught on to what he was doing very early and instead sent congrats to each other by phone when Darren told one of them the other was doing great.
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 three 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. As one of their messages to the cast read: "Your safety is our concern. Your comfort is not."
- The actors were given directions to follow for each day. The breakdown when, after walking all day, they end up in the same place is real.
Blazing Saddles:
- Frankie Laine was not informed that the film 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 genuine article came in, he just didn't have the heart to tell the guy that it was a parody movie after hearing his effort.
- Another enforced method acting moment was when Cleavon Little can't keep a straight face after Gene Wilder delivered the "You know... morons" line. Little was not told about the line in advance.
Blue Valentine:
- During the filming, actors Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams actually shared a home and lived more or less as a married couple, like their characters. They have both stated that they tried to pick fights with the other, as their characters' marriage is falling apart, but had a hard time of it due to their mutual fondness for one another. Director Derek Cianfrance even encouraged Gosling to go into Williams' bedroom and try to make love to her. It didn't work.
- In the scene where Dean and Cindy are on the bridge, and Dean climbs up the railing, Williams was told she had a secret and to keep it under lock and key, while Gosling was instructed find out this secret by any means necessary.
According to actor Sean Patrick Flanery, David Della Rocco's reaction to the gunshot on the table in the first The Boondock Saints is real. He'd purposely been told by Flanery and director Troy Duffy that it would make no sound and that he would have to improvise his reaction. It's stated that on the original take, which ended up being used in the film, he panicked because he thought something went wrong.
When James Woods and Sean Young starred in an otherwise forgettable movie, The Boost, the off-camera tension between the two of them got so bad that when the script called for Woods' character to slap Young's, Woods slapped her for real.
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.
In The Boys in Company C, Drill Sergeant Nasty Sgt. Loyce (played by R. Lee Ermey) inspects the possessions of new recruits. Loyce asks one of them, "What's that in your pocket? Lipstick?". The recruit pulled out what turned out to be a switchblade and flipped it open. Ermey, not expecting this, immediately cowered and screamed, "JESUS! PUT THE GODDAMN THING ON THE TABLE!"
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.
Winona Ryder said in an interview that, when filming Bram Stoker's Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola^note threw insults at her so she would cry more heartfully during a scene where Mina was supposed to break down, yet Ryder couldn't reach the emotional depths she required.
The actress who played the peasant girl who is tied up on a bed and tickled on her feet by Fyodor in The Brothers Karamazov said that she got the job because she was tickled at her audition and her reactions were the best. The scene took eight hours to shoot and her reactions are 100% real.

While filming Carrie: Betty Buckley says the terrified look on her face right before she gets killed at the climax is real, since they hadn't been able to test the falling backboard to make sure it would stop where it was supposed to before hitting her and no one knew for certain whether it would work.
Carry On... Series:
- Carry On Nurse: The reason the Colonel looks so relaxed before being told he's had a daffodil stuck in his rear end? Wilfrid Hyde-White wasn't told of his fate during filming. When Hyde-White found out and believed a stand-in bottom was used to show the flower, he was infuriated.
- Carry On Dick: When Sergeant Strapp is thrown into a horse trough, Jack Douglas wasn't told of this beforehand, only that he'd be thrown outside.
There's an iconic scene in Casablanca where the Nazis at the bar start singing "Die Wacht am Rhein," a German patriotic song, but are drowned out by a singing of "La Marseillaise," the national anthem of France. To make sure the bar was authentic in the film, actual French refugees were cast as extras, and the song ends with some very real crying that wasn't in the script, but was left in the film. This was filmed in 1941, when the Nazis had the upper hand and French refugees were unsure if they'd ever see home again.
In The Celebration, Thomas Vinterburg kept the awful revelation during the speech a secret. The shocked reaction of the crowd, who had become quite in-character by that point and saw their host as a cordial, lovable gentleman, was very real.
An offscreen version, but in Chasing Mavericks, Gerard Butler got caught under several big waves and had to be rescued. The actor credits this experience in helping him play the character, as big wave surfers often are in constant danger of being caught in these waves.
Charlie Chan actor Warner Oland was an alcoholic; his director. "Lucky" Humberton, at times encouraged his drinking, because he found the actor's slightly slurry speech better conveyed the sense of one struggling with a foreign language, as well as mentally groping toward the solution of a crime.
Child's Play (1988): According to a commentary omitted from the 20th anniversary DVD, director Tom Holland roughed up Alex Vincent in order to get him to emote properly for the scene in which Andy, locked in his asylum cell, is crying about Chucky coming for him. Producer David Kirschner felt that Tom went too far and caused an actual fistfight on set. Alex's parents were apparently fine with Tom's treatment of Alex.
A Christmas Carol (1938) had a scene of Scrooge telling Bob Cratchit to remove the coals from the fireplace. Cratchit's actor, Gene Lockheart, burns his hand doing so and the take of him nursing his hand is left intact.
In the last scene of A Christmas Story, the Parker family is served roast duck in a Chinese restaurant, and the waiter startles the family by suddenly chopping off the duck's head with a meat cleaver right in front of them. Melinda Dillon, who played the mother, wasn't told that this was going to happen; her shock and surprise was completely genuine.
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.
- 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.
- Jadis is a textbook Sociopath, so Skandar needed to be able to convey the alarm bells going off in Edmund's subconscious. So before and between takes during the scene in which Edmund meets the White Witch, Tilda Swinton flirted with Skandar Keynes (roughly thirteen years old at the time) so that there would be a genuine undertone of discomfort in his performance.
- When they were first cast, Georgie Henley and James McAvoy were encouraged to spend a lot of time hanging out to build their friendship. Further into the shoot they were abruptly separated and purposefully kept away from one another so Georgie's tears at seeing his statue depicting him in anguish (and their subsequent reunion) would seem more genuine.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind:
- When Cary Guffey's three-year-old character, Barry, is supposed to be reacting to aliens, Steven Spielberg had two crew members in a clown and gorilla suit appear suddenly and then remove their masks. The boy is at first afraid, then smiles.
- And when he is abducted later, Melinda Dillon was not told the extent of the special effects that would be going off around the house, making her panic authentic. 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.
- When Barry is pulled from his mother's grasp through the pet door by the aliens he wants to be with, Guffey's real mother was the unseen "alien" pulling from the other side.
- When Spielberg told Guffey to say goodbye to the aliens "like your friends are going away forever", the four-year-old actor misunderstood and thought Spielberg was saying that his real life friends (there were other children on the set) were going away forever. Those tears are real.
The third ending in the film version of Clue brings us this gem. When she was to admit she killed maid Yvette, this was the scripted line for Mrs. White's actress, Madeline Kahn:
Mrs. White: Yes. I did it. I killed Yvette. I hated her.
- Now this is what she said:
  Mrs. White: Yes. Yes, I did it. I killed Yvette. I hated her sooooo much... I..it...flames! Flames...on the side of my face... breathing... breath-... heaving breaths...
- This was planned between Kahn and director Jonathan Lynn. And no one else. As a result, we see Tim Curry (Wadsworth/Mr. Boddy) holding back from Corpsing, and Martin Mull (Col. Mustard) and Christopher Lloyd (Professor Plum) looking around dumbfounded.
In Cocoon, the scene where Hume Cronyn's character punches out the orderly wasn't all acting. Cronyn, who was a Golden Gloves boxer and lacked sight in one eye, actually knocked the guy out because he (Cronyn) lacked depth perception.
In Come and See, director Elem Klimov fired live gunshots over the heads of the actors to get genuine looks of terror in the battle scene.
Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus: Gaby Hoffmann is really tripping on psychedelics during the scene where Crystal Fairy takes mescaline at the beach.

In Andrzej Wajda's film Danton, he created distance between the two different factions by having Robespierre's supporters all be Polish actors, and Danton's all French, so that they came from different backgrounds and could barely even talk to each other off-set.
In the movie Date Night, during the Erotic dance scene, in order to make the actors feel as awkward as the characters would, he shouted obscure things at the actors. On a side note, most of the lines from the two main characters were improvised on the spot.
The extras in the vigil scene outside the prison in Dead Man Walking on the evening of the execution are anti-capital punishment activists in Real Life (including the real Sister Helen), and many of them attended an actual vigil at Angola for an inmate who was executed there a couple days before that scene was shot.
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.
- The slapping in the Russian roulette scenes was real as well and genuinely heightened the actors' tension.
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...
Destroyer (1988): This movie contains an In-Universe example. When Sharon is strapped to the electric chair and pretending to be shocked while they're filming a scene, the director turns the chair on to get a more convincing performance out of her. She gets very angry at him after the scene is done shooting and quits the movie.
On the set of The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep kept her distance from the rest of the cast for most of the production, warning Anne Hathaway after they were first introduced that she wasn't going to say anything nice to her again until they wrapped. As a result, in the scene where Andie delivers the Book to Miranda's apartment, the first scene Hathaway shot with Streep, the younger actress was genuinely terrified.
In The Diamond Arm, a scene was being filmed where a man pushes a boy into shallow water. Since during the rehearsals the boy was seen to visibly brace himself, he was told next time the adult will only pretend to push him, but the adult himself was told to push for real. The ensuing unscripted exclamation "Hey, what are you doing?" was good enough to Throw It In!.
In the climactic scene of Die Hard where Hans Gruber falls out the building. Alan Rickman was suspended over 40 feet in the air and told that he was going to be let go on a count of 3 where he would safely land on the safety mat... except 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 with the director after that day's shooting was over.
In District 9, the vox populi segments where local South Africans complain about the prawns were not done with actors. The filmmakers asked random South Africans about Nigerian immigrants, then edited their most xenophobic comments into the film.
Likewise, Kate Winslet came onto production of Divergent a little later than everyone else, and kept her distance from the younger actors at first. The result was that she came across as aloof and the cast were intimidated by her.
In Django Unchained, Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) smearing blood on Broomhilda's face was apparently ad-libbed. DiCaprio actually injured his hand on broken glass while pounding the table. He just kept on going and bloodied Kerry Washington's face without her knowledge (though for smearing her face with blood they switched to fake blood). Her look of horror is quite real, as are the "is somebody going to say anything about this or are we all seriously pretending it's okay?" looks the rest of the cast are shooting each other.
D.O.A. used this. That long sequence where Frank is running through the streets? None of that was planned. They just sat the camera on the back of a car and had the actor run through the streets. Those times where he nearly gets hit by a car and a bus, the actor really could have been hit by a car or a bus. It really adds to how frantic he is.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has two cases: Xochitl Gomez is screaming for real as she jumps on a falling ledge, and Scarlet Witch shouting "STOP IT!" at her sons is both Elizabeth Olsen angry at the child actors accidentally hitting her head with an object, and the boys terrified at this reprimand.
In the Soviet adaptation of Lope de Vega's A Dog in the Manger, Diana repeatedly slaps Theodoro and later he is shown pressing a bloodied handkerchief to his face. His nose was really bleeding, the actor asked the actress himself to slap him very hard and make the scenes more believable.
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. The line "She's dead enough" was reportedly ad-libbed by Weber on the spot.
Sam Raimi did this in Drag Me to Hell, purposely neglecting to tell Alison Lohman that a dummy animated corpse was going to vomit in her face.

In The Elephant Man, John Hurt in playing the title role needed to wear extensive prosthetics. They were extremely heavy, about twenty pounds of weight glued to his head and shoulders. When he tried to lie down and sleep a few hours before going on-set the first time the makeup was applied... Suffice it to say that he was found in the morning sleeping sitting up, in the same manner Merrick was known to.
In El Norte, during the scene in which Rosa is bitten by rats, the panic is real due to the actress' real fear of rats.
Alejandro Jodorowsky considered his film-making to be a sort of magical ritual in and of itself, and as a result, used this approach to an alarming degree. For example, it was not uncommon for him to instruct actors to take psychedelic drugs. In the course of this interview he claims that the scene in El Topo where Mara hits El Topo, and then he rapes her was not acted.
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 Steven Spielberg told the actress playing the maid to really slap him for the real take. Christian Bale's shocked reaction was completely real.
While shooting the steamy scenes in Endless Love, director Franco Zefirelli stood off camera and squeezed Brooke Shields's big toe until the pain in her face resembled orgasm.
In the film adaption of the novel Eragon, there is a scene where Eragon is snooping around in Brom's house, looking for information on dragons, when Brom himself comes out of the shadows and shouts at him to get out. According to the DVD commentary, Ed Speleers (Eragon) didn't know that Jeremy Irons (Brom) was there until he appeared, to produce a suitably startled response.
In Escape from New York during the boxing ring fight, the professional wrestler Ox Baker, who never acted before, got a little too intense and struck Kurt Russell very heavily with some of his blows. So Snake Plissken's expressions of fears you can see are genuine. At the end, Russell had finally had enough and asked Baker to take it easy, tapping him in the groin to let him know he was serious. Baker then calmed down.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind had a couple of examples:
- In the circus scene, Kate Winslet was asked to suddenly disappear without Jim Carrey's knowledge. The result was poignant; in the final cut, Jim can clearly be seen saying "Kate?" with a very saddened expression on his face.
- When Mark Ruffalo scares Kirsten Dunst, Mark was asked to hide in a different spot for each take to genuinely scare her.
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.
A Cracked list of five truly abusive moments is topped by The Evil Dead (1981), which due to No Budget was nothing but the actors being scared shitless (real windows being broken, real daggers being wielded).
The documentary The Fear of God: The Making of The Exorcist revealed some of the shocking enforced method acting used by director William 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 Exorcist II: The Heretic, when Regan is about to walk off the edge of a building, there were no safety measures in place. One wrong step and she would have plummeted.
In The Expendables, during the fight between Sylvester Stallone and Steve Austin, in the basement of the castle, Stallone was actually thrown at the support beam and hit it very hard, and was pretty badly hurt by the impact. The reaction from that impact was very real.

In The Fabulous Baker Boys, when real-life brothers Beau and Jeff Bridges have a fight, Jeff very nearly actually broke Beau's hand. They planned to come up with a "safe word" in case things went too far, but Jeff forgot himself and Beau went to the hospital directly afterward. When he yells "my hand, my hand!", it's genuine.
The Fall:
- Lee Pace spent twelve weeks in a wheelchair pretending to be unable to walk while filming so the Catinca Untaru 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 wheelchair. Most of Catinca'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.
- The scene when five year old Alexandria, hysterical already, comes to find that Roy is alive after he attempts suicide with what he thinks are morphine pills Lee Pace was frustrated by the number of takes it had taken to get the scene, Tarsem's insistence on repeated takes and Catinca's inability to get her physical movements quite right. Tarsem had infamously been calling CUT right before Roy was supposed to react to waking up meaning Pace had by the 30+ take built up quite a lot of tension. When Tarsem finally let the scene continue after Alexandria draws the curtain back, Lee unleashed his bottled rage and lost his mind, screaming hysterically (in character) and knocking a side table over. Catinca was terrified and genuinely wet herself in fear. Tarsem, in the commentary described her as being like a giraffe; when scared, she goes very still and pees. He also cast her after meeting her, at which point she barely spoke a word of English, telling a fellow crew member 'We have to make this film now, in six months, she'll be a different person.' All the hospital scenes were shot in sequence so that Alexandria's grasp of English developed naturally, taking her from one or two confused words a scene to complete English language conversations with Pace.
- In the finale, where Roy tries to kill off the hero of the fairytale he has been telling Alexandria, they had another difficult day of shooting and Pace, once again, got quite wound up. His frustrated, angry telling of the story is fueled by quite genuine anger. In the moment when he lifts his hand to mime punching someone as in the story, Catinca once again flinched realistically as she genuinely thought he might hit her.
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 Ferris Bueller's Day Off there is a scene where Ferris tickles Sloan. Mia Sara's laughter is real, because Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck actually did take off her shoe and tickle her foot.
Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element:
- His reaction at the end of the Diva's performance was real. Even though the actress playing the Diva had practiced her scene 30 times a day every day for 3 months before filming, nobody told Bruce what was going to happen, and that the actual filming was the first time that both actors had met each other.
- In the scene where Korben meets Leeloo, Bruce was not told what Milla Jovovich was going to say to him, making his perplexed reaction to her rapid speech in the Divine Language authentic.
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?!
- Helena Bonham Carter is British and didn't know what Marla's "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school" line meant, since England has a different education system. When she found out that grade school was the American equivalent of primary school, she was not happy.^note
During a dinner scene from Finding Neverland, the boys are supposed to be laughing — what the audience doesn't hear is the fart machine in the background, garnering genuine laughter from the young actors.
That scene in Flash Gordon when Dale looks shocked after Prince Vultan walks past and gooses her? Brian's idea.
In Garry Marshall's 1991 film Frankie & 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 (who were shooting Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country nearby) to make an appearance on the other side of the door just off camera in full costume as Kirk and Spock!
During the famous chase scene in The French Connection, prior permission for filming wasn't obtained, which meant that the panicked reactions from passers-by were genuine.

Galaxy Quest: After the heroes get teleported for the first time, Guy's scream was unscripted, and Gwen's jump of startled surprise was Sigourney Weaver's actual response.
In The General (1926), director Buster Keaton did not tell leading lady Marion Mack what was going to happen when he pulled the spout off the water tank during the return chase. He wanted her reaction when she got drenched by a torrent of water to be authentic.
- In the scene where the bridge collapses under a locomotive, the face of the Confederate officer is genuine: he was not informed of this event. The bridge and the locomotive were real, not just models.
- Buster practically built a career around these; In one film he's being washed down a lake, but Buster had a hidden harness on which kept him from actually being washed towards the rapids and waterfall. The harness broke, and it's glaringly obvious when Buster's waves and swimming to safety suddenly become faster and more pronounced. He actually looks and shouts at the camera several times. He had to cling on to rocks before he was rescued.
- In the same film Buster swung into a waterfall to rescue 'the maiden'. He inhaled enough water to need resuscitation efforts.
- In yet another film, Buster leaps from one building to another, misses by a hair and slams into the side of the building before falling. Buster performed this stunt, for real, slamming at speed into a solid brick wall. He took a hot rub down followed by an ice bath and was back at work within two hours.
- He inverts it a lot, too, by not flinching when he KNOWS a hit is coming; when the house famously falls on Buster in Steamboat Bill, Jr., the wall was a real, incredibly heavy part of a house. Crew members had walked off the set, refusing to be part of what they KNEW would be the actor's demise. The stunt went perfectly and Buster managed to act not even a little bit scared or aware the wall was about to crush him TO DEATH.
Ghostbusters (1984)
- The actress who plays the maid at the hotel was only told of a "bang." She had no idea that there were pyrotechnics in her cart, so when they went off (in the scene where the Ghostbusters fire their proton guns for the first time), her "What the hell are you doing?!" line was genuine.
- When Walter Peck gets deluged with "marshmallow" goo (actually shaving cream) in the climax, the actor William Atherton wasn't warned about what was going to happen.
- Director Ivan Reitman thought Bill Murray did his best improv comedy when he was agitated. So he had more weight added to Bill's proton pack prop without Bill knowing.
Gladiator - or more specifically, Joaquin Phoenix:
- Early on, Phoenix asked Russell Crowe to piss him off before their takes, both to make himself less nervous and so his character would appear to really dislike Maximus. Crowe was confused and asked Richard Harris for advice, who encouraged him. Phoenix got his way in the end, but only after several hours drinking with Crowe.
- Phoenix also decided on his own that, as Commodus grew in power and debauchery, he'd also become fatter, and proceed to increase his meals while filming. Ridley Scott noticed the weight increase while revising the footage and told him to stop.
- Phoenix ad-libbed his "Am I not merciful?!" scream, startling Connie Nielsen for real.
The Giant Claw: Be sure to check out the furious look on Jeff Morrow's face when huge chunks of flaming debris land inches from his head.
The Godfather.
- Actor/wrestler/part-time mafia enforcer Lenny Montana, as Luca Brasi, was so nervous about his scene where he gives his regards to Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) that he stumbled and stuttered over most of his lines. Brando compounded the problem by making funny gestures and having messages written on his forehead to unsettle Montana. When Brasi apologizes and asks to start again, that's actually an out-of-character moment that got kept in the final cut. Francis Ford Coppola liked the scene as it was, because it established that it's not the thugs you need to worry about, but the man that gives them their orders. So that this scene would make sense, Coppola wrote and filmed an earlier scene with Brasi nervously practicing his lines to make his awkwardness more natural.
- When filming the severed horse head scene, they used a realistic prop head for the filming. After a few takes, they replaced the prop with a real horse head without the actor knowing. His reaction was completely genuine.
- In Don Corleone's death scene, Marlon Brando improvised and placed an orange peel in his mouth. The young actor playing Corleone's grandson didn't expect this, and his reaction is genuine – the kid really was scared.
- In The Godfather Part II, director Francis Ford Coppola played a trick on the actor who played Signor Roberto by making it so the door to Vito Corleone's office wouldn't open. Signor Roberto's frantic babbling of "I wish I could stay!" and so on as he jiggles the door handle was all completely ad-libbed.
Godzilla:
- An accidental case of this occurred during the filming of the original Godzilla. The original suit that the actor wore in filming was so stiff and inflexible that the suit could stand upright by itself. This forced the actor wearing the suit to move in ways which were not like those of a human, making the monster that much more real and terrifying.
- In Mothra vs. Godzilla, When Haruo Nakajima (Godzilla's suit actor) tripped on part of the Nagoya Castle set and slammed into the castle's keep, some teeth from the Godzilla suit fell out. The impact of slamming into it also dislocated the jaw on the Godzilla suit, giving it the wobbly muzzle that is seen throughout the movie. SFX director, Eiji Tsuburaya liked the outcome of the shot so much that he keep it in the film.
- In two separate movies, Mothra vs. Godzilla and Terror of Mechagodzilla, due to a combination of malfunctioning pyrotechnics and the actor not being able to see where he was going, the Godzilla costume actually caught fire during filming. Both scenes made the final cut of the films.
  - In Mothra vs. Godzilla, the Godzilla suit was caught on fire during the sequence where a plane drops napalm on him. Protected by the suit, Haruo Nakajima continued following the script, creating a very cool shot where Godzilla keeps walking forward, apparently unfazed by the fact the back of his head is ablaze!
  - In the case of Terror of Mechagodzilla, the result is also very apropos; considering Godzilla is fighting Mechagodzilla, a walking, roaring weapons platform, suit actor Toru Kawai's startled reaction - either to the force of the exploding pyrotechnics or to the suit's dorsal fins being set on fire - gave Godzilla a very fitting reaction to Mechagodzilla's might.
- According to the Japanese-only "The Art of Godzilla" art book for the 1998 Godzilla, the scene where one of the baby Zilla's head bashes right through the elevator door and Matthew Broderick's character Nick Tatopoulos is freaking out in response was because the puppeteers had mistimed the closing of the doors. The baby Zilla had already had computer reactions programmed into it, and "could care less if the puppeteers mistakenly closed the doors early - it went through the steel-framed aluminum doors, ripping them apart as if they were made out of paper!"
In Goodfellas, in the scene where Paulie admonishes Henry and tells him to stop selling drugs, Paul Sorvino (Paulie) slaps Ray Liotta (Henry) for real, in order to really elicit a scared and cornered reaction.
It's quite alarming the number of times the actors in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly nearly died while making the film, with Eli Wallach suffering the most abuse.
- In the scene when Tuco severs the handcuffs by lying on the train track, Eli Wallach got almost decapitated by the low, sharp metal steps jutting out of the side of the train, and his expression of terror as he realises this is real. Wallach disputed with Leone over this and insisted that they use the first take and they finally did.
- In the first hanging scene, the pyrotechnic severing the rope spooked the horse significantly more than anyone besides Sergio Leone expected, and it galloped for miles with Wallach tied helplessly to its back. Fortunately Wallach was an expert rider (he never would have agreed to do the stunt otherwise) but he was understandably furious when they found him again. Wallach's look of fear at the beginning of the scene is also genuine because as an avid equestrian he knew there were any number of ways that stunt could have gone wrong, from the horse spooking prematurely to the rope failing to part, any one of which could have have left him with a broken neck.
- In the scene where Wallach improvised with different gun parts, the look of exasperation on Enzo Petito's (the gun shop owner) face is real.
The Goonies
- The kids 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!"
- Jeff Cohen, who played Chunk, was told that the scene where Sloth picks his chair-tied self up would cut before the actual lift occurred; it obviously didn't, and John Matuszak straight-out picked him up easily, leading to the kid's wails and cry of, "You smell like phys. ed.!"
In Grand Prix, director John Frankenheimer was not satisfied with the crowd's reaction to a dramatic on-track incident and realised that they were looking forward to their tea break. He reshot the scene and at the critical moment had the special effects man blow up the tea van. Result: a convincingly shocked and stunned crowd.

H-I

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 off behind him.
Harry Potter:
- In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, they were in the process of filming the dramatic scene in which Sirius falls through the veil. To help get Daniel Radcliffe to the proper emotional state, Gary Oldman asked him if he could do something a little physical with him, then shook Radcliffe violently and screamed in his face. So those tears are apparently real.
- In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:
  - A cannon was fired to start the First Task. When the scene was filmed the director had the cannon fire on the line before the prompt from the rehearsals so the actors jumped for real.
  - Harry was supposed to be rubbish at the big Yule Ball dance scene. So the director had the rest of the cast practice that sequence during the month Dan Radcliffe was shooting the long underwater Second Task, and then gave him a week to learn the dance.
- Also throughout the films, Rupert Grint was able to effectively portray Ron Weasley's arachnophobia because...well, take a guess. Rupert was also going through puberty at the time of filming the second movie and his voice was breaking, so most of those voice cracks you hear from Ron are real.
- In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, during the scene where Harry is eating dinner with the Weasleys, Arthur Weasley asks Harry "What exactly is the function of a rubber duck?", prompting a confused "Uh..." before Molly interrupts. Mark Williams, who played Arthur, mentioned a different Muggle item in every take of that scene, so Harry's confused reaction is real as Daniel Radcliffe had no idea what he was going to say.
An early scene in Holiday Inn shows Fred Astaire drunk at a party, stumbling around in the crowd. According to his daughter, he took two shots before the first take - and the film used the fifth or sixth.
Hook: Raushan Hammond, who played Thud Butt, revealed in an interview that the scene where Peter hands him the sword was improvised. The only people who knew who would get the Pan sword were Robin Williams and Steven Spielberg. Hammond's gasp of awe and beaming smile were completely genuine.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1:
- Francis Lawrence made use of the close real-life relationship between Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson, and Jennifer's vocal displeasure with Josh being absent for most of the shoot. All of Peeta's interview segments were shot and edited before they shot the scenes where Katniss sees them, and they actually played the interviews for Jennifer and Liam Hemsworth during the takes to get the right emotional response from her.
- Jennifer Lawrence trolled Liam Hemsworth by only eating fish and foods with garlic before their kissing scenes, thus helping with the general awkwardness.
In Independence Day, no one warned Will Smith that the filming location in Utah contained decomposing brine shrimp which smelled absolutely awful. Will clearly noticed and reacted with "AND WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SMELL?!!" This scene was kept in the film.
In Inglourious Basterds:
- Quentin Tarantino didn't let Christoph Waltz rehearse with the rest of the cast so that their reactions to him would seem more natural.
- When it got to filming a scene where the character of Bridget was strangled to death, Tarantino was concerned that faking a strangulation wouldn't look "right" on film and requested permission to strangle actor Diane Kruger for real. They consented to it (both agreed to only try it for one take), and during the close-up shot, you're seeing Tarantino's hands genuinely cutting off the actor's air for several seconds.
The ending of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) was known only to the director, writer, and Donald Sutherland, in order to get an appropriately terrifying reaction out of Veronica Cartwright.
Over the course of the filming of It, director Andrés Muschietti deliberately kept the actors who played the Loser's Club away from Bill Skarsgård, and prohibited them from seeing any images of Pennywise. The first time they actually saw Pennywise in full was the first take of the first day of them shooting all together, to get the authentic reactions.
In It's a Wonderful Life:
- During the run-on-the-bank scene, George convinces most of the Bailey Building and Loan clients to only withdraw a small amount to tide them over instead of taking their money from Potter's banks. After a few people ask for twenty dollars, one lady asked for an odd amount, $17.50. Turns out that Frank Capra had asked her beforehand to ask for an odd amount instead of the twenty that everyone else said in order to surprise Jimmy Stewart and get a reaction from him. His reaction was, after a moment's surprise, to hug her.
- The famous telephone conversation was the first take of the scene and the first scene that James Stewart had recorded since returning from WWII (in which he flew something like 50 bombing missions). Apparently the scene wasn't even rehearsed and the outpouring of emotion from Stewart is quite genuine; you can see how nervous and uncomfortable the actress playing Mary is. This flood of emotions apparently scared the crap out of Frank Capra too, who didn't even try to film the scene a different way.

James Bond:
- In Dr. No, Sean Connery's reaction to the tarantula crawling over him is entirely genuine, as he hates spiders, even though it didn't actually touch him (he was beneath a sheet of glass, and the shot of it crawling up his leg used a body double).
- Goldfinger:
  - When James 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 Harold Sakata hadn't quite 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. If you wondered why Bond looked like he was actually concerned for his enemy, that's because Sakata's screams of pain were genuine and Sean Connery really was worried for him. The director asked Sakata why he didn't just let go, and Sakata replied, "Well, you didn't say cut."
  - 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.
- The scene where 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.
- The Spy Who Loved Me
  - In the scene where Major Amasova couldn't drive stick, Barbara Bach, Anya's actress, actually couldn't drive stick: Moore's snarky responses were unscripted!
  - Roger Moore decided last minute it would be much more dramatic if he was sitting in the chair instead standing behind it when the gun underneath the dining table was fired. The special effects team had only reinforced the back of the chair for the original planned shot, which meant Moore risked serious injury if he didn't leap away in time.
  - According to production designer Ken Adam, that was a look of real panic on Barbara Bach's face in the scene where the tunnels of Atlantis are flooding because she didn't expect such a powerful deluge of water.
- 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.
- During the boat chase on the Thames at the beginning of The World Is Not Enough, two traffic cops writing a ticket and attaching a parking clamp to a car at the riverside get a lot of water splashed onto them when Bond slams his boat round a corner. Apparently the actors were told they would get a bit wet and the rest of the crew was worried to get the scene right the first time, because the reaction just wouldn't be the same in the second take. What a lot of people tend not to realize nowadays (or are from non-British audiences) is that this was actually an Easter Egg. The two men involved were the stars of a BBC documentary series that was showing at the time named Clampers that followed a team of London wheel clampers - and they had garnered quite a hate following for their relentless enthusiasm at making drivers lives a misery. Needless to say that whoever was piloting that boat may have derived a certain amount of pleasure from it.
- During the torture scene in Casino Royale (2006), Mads Mikkelsen was really swinging the rope hard at Daniel Craig's genitals, which were protected by a single piece of plywood that eventually started splintering. The two used the danger and discomfort to take the scene much farther than scripted, prompting director Martin Campbell to tell them to dial it back because they were making a Bond film and not a torture film.
Jaws: While filming the scene of the shark attack on the Skinny Dipping woman, they needed several takes because Susan Backlinie wasn't able to give the right reaction. On the last take, they didn't tell her that a diver was going to sneak up and grab her leg, which finally got her to act terrified and act like a shark had grabbed her.
From an article on the making of the film The Journals Of Knud Rasmussen: "The way (filmmakers 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. "
Jurassic Park films:
- 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." They were conditioned to react to dinosaurs 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.
- During the scene where the T-rex is pressing its snout against the pane of glass with the children underneath. The robotic t-rex was being controlled by a puppeteer with a scale model rather than a programmed set of movements. The puppeteer was given plastic stops to tell him how far he could go with the robot before he crushed the actors; needless to say, the pressure being put on both actors was very real.
- In Jurassic World, Bryce Dallas Howard was not aware that Chris Pratt was going to kiss her (at the suggestion of the director), after the scene of Claire saving Owen from a Dimorphodon attack; that surprise in the film is her real reaction.

Kes
- At the end Ken Loach 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.
- The scene where a boy, who is mistakenly thought to have been smoking, is caned across the hand. The caning is real, and the camera, lingering for a long time on the child actor's face, positively soaks up his bemusement.
In The Kid, Jackie Coogan was told by his father that he would be sold to an actual workhouse if he did not cry convincingly in the scene where the little boy is taken away from the Tramp. Needless to say, it worked.
Between takes in The King of Comedy, Robert De Niro made antisemitic comments around Jerry Lewis in order to make Lewis' anger toward DeNiro's character more real.
In Kingsman: The Secret Service, all the cast were really underwater during the flooding of the first test. Hence everyone's scared faces as they tried to get out. Especially since the machine lowering the room was supposed to stop periodically...and didn't.
A Knight's Tale features an odd example in that it came from the extras, not director Brian Helgeland. After Geoffrey Chaucer's first big speech praising William, there's an awkward silence until Roland glances around and starts cheering, prompting the rest of the group to join in. That was a genuine response from Mark Addy, who played Roland—the extras apparently missed their cue and forced him to signal that it was time to begin. It was later determined that the problem was a language barrier: the crowd was made up of Czech extras who didn't realize that they were supposed to start cheering after the speech, so Addy's improvisation was the only thing they understood. Helgeland loved it so much that he kept it in the final cut.
Knocked Up: Jay Baruchel is terrified of roller coasters and was initially not going to partake in the roller coaster scenes used for the opening montage. When one of the other actors was running late, director Judd Apatow convinced Baruchel to go on the coaster just once for a take. According to Apatow (and the behind-the-scenes footage), Jay's panicked "IWANNAGETOFF!" that made the final cut of the film is a legitimate Jay Baruchel freak-out and not him being in character.

The Last House on the Left
- In the 2009 remake, actress Riki Lindhome has a brief topless scene near the beginning when the girls first see her character, as she quickly changes shirts ripping off her old one in plain view. Sara Paxton was not informed that this would happen, causing her shock to be more genuine.
- On the original movie's special edition DVD actors commentary track, the actors playing Krug and Weasel boast about how they terrorised the actresses playing Mari and Phyllis, right down to hinting during the filming of the rape scene that they'd go ahead and actually commit the act if they didn't think the actresses' performances were convincing enough. They seem to think this is awesome.
The Last King of Scotland:
- For the scene early on where Idi Amin speaks before the cheering crowd of villagers, the filmmakers didn't have to tell the extras to react that way... because they all believed that Forest Whitaker really was Idi Amin.
- The director decided to use local Ugandan children as extras for a scene where James McAvoy's character is giving vaccinations. The director didn't tell the children or their parents/other adults with them that the syringes were just props. Many of the children thought they were really going to get shots, so their apprehension and nervousness is completely real.
A horrific example in Last Tango in Paris; Bertolucci didn't tell Maria Schneider what was going to happen in the rape scene, a scene wasn't even in the script, because he wanted her reaction to be "real".
During the filming of Les Misérables (2012), director Tom Hooper gave the actors exactly four words of direction for the barricade-building sequence: "Build a barricade. Action!" The resulting shot is compressed footage of the actors spending fifteen frantic minutes doing just that. This includes the furniture falling from windows around them.
In Liar Liar, when Fletcher Reede tries to get out of a court case by beating himself up, Jim Carrey actually did beat himself up while filming that scene.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:
- In the Walden film, Tilda Swinton (White Witch) flirted with Skandar Keyes (Edmund) to make him feel more uneasy for their scenes together.
- The entire film was shot in near-chronological order - so that the characters' emotional growth would be reflected by the physical growth of the actors. The obvious exception is the scene of all four falling out of the wardrobe at the end.
- Georgie Henley was blindfolded before being brought on to the set to film Lucy's first arrival in Narnia. As such her reactions to the wood are genuine. Likewise she hadn't seen James McAvoy in his costume before filming the scene, so her reaction to Mr Tumnus is genuine too.
- Skandar Keynes likewise wasn't shown the set beforehand, so Edmund's reaction to Narnia is his own as well.
- Edmund was the last of the children to be cast, so the other three actors were already familiar with each other by the time Skandar Keynes was brought in. As such this adds to the detachment between him and the others. Also Skandar Keynes hates being hugged, so the director had the others Glomp him at every possible opportunity to drum up the animosity.
- Anna Popplewell got Georgie Henley to cry for the Stone Table scene by shouting at her.
Before Little Miss Sunshine started filming, the director had the main cast actually rent a VW bus and drive around in it for a few days to accurately capture their emotions at being cramped in such a small space. Similarly, the cast made sure that Abigail Breslin's headphones were securely over her ears and playing loud music during Adam Arkin's curse-laden rants as Grandpa.
In Looking For Eric, Steve Evets (who plays Eric Bishop) had not been told that Eric Cantona would be here - they smuggled him on set while Evets was smoking a cigarette and hid him. However, they didn't use his enforced take. Other scenes of enforced method acting include an armed police raid omitted from the actors' scripts, and the gangsters' first reactions to seeing dozens of United fans in Cantona masks raiding their house.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy:
- The Fellowship of the Ring:
  - Billy Boyd was not aware that Gandalf's firework actually was going to flare. Pippin's scream is real. He admitted in the film's commentary that he got so freaked out by the firework that he peed his pants. Dominic Monaghan actually called him 'Pissylegs' for the rest of the production because of it.
  - While practicing canoeing for the scene in which the Fellowship leaves Lorien by river, Orlando Bloom and John Rhys-Davies were unable to keep their balance and fell in the water, fueling animosity between elf and dwarf.
  - In Aragorn's duel with Uruk-hai commander Lurtz, the script called for Lurtz to throw a knife at Aragorn and miss. Actor Lawrence Makoare misjudged his throw and nearly hit Viggo Mortensen in the face; Mortensen deflected it with his sword by pure reflex.
- The Two Towers:
  - 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).
  - While filming the scene where Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are examining the pyre of Uruk-hai bodies, believing Merry and Pippin has been burned along with them. Aragorn kicks a helmet lying on the ground and screams in anguish over his Hobbit friends most likely being dead. The intensity of the scream was due to Viggo Mortensen (who played Aragorn) breaking two toes when he performed the kick, but Peter Jackson liked the shot so much that it was left in the movie. In the DVD extras for the movie, you can see the other takes filmed before the one that made the cut. There were quite a few, suggesting Mortensen was having trouble getting the reaction just right, until he kicked the helmet and channelled his pain into a realistically heart-rending scream of genuine anguish.
  - There was something of an Interservice Rivalry between the extras playing Elves and the extras playing Uruk-hai. The Uruks coined the nickname "cupcakes" for their Elven counterparts. This apparently started because the Elven extras (who were largely local college students) weren't getting into character as soldiers, so the Uruk-hai decided to start taunting, jeering, and otherwise acting like actual members of an opposing army. This got the Elven actors riled up enough to be in character.
- David Wenham mentions on the commentary for The Return of the King 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.
For Lorenzo's Oil when recording Lorenzo's dialogue director George Miller would press down on Elizabeth Daily's stomach and ribs to make her voice sound strained.
The film Lucky Number Slevin features a scene where Lucy Liu accidentally stumbles in and sees Josh Hartnett completely naked as he adjusts the towel he's wearing. In the original script, that bit wasn't supposed to happen, but as a practical joke Josh took off the towel just as Lucy walked in, flashing her. Lucy's giggle and quiet "sorry" were genuine before she continued delivering her lines.
When filming the famous scene in Love Actually where Harry (Alan Rickman) tries to buy a necklace from Rufus (Rowan Atkinson) without Karen finding out, Rowan Atkinson did a lot of long improvisations and chatted casually with Richard Curtis about his ideas - and Alan Rickman gradually got just as angry and impatient as his character was supposed to be.

During the filming of the fountain scene in Mamma Mia!, Meryl Streep, for some unfathomable reason, decided to rip Pierce Brosnan's shirt off — without telling Brosnan. His enthusiasm was absolutely genuine.
To make the actors more at ease during a love-making scene in Mannen som slutade röka (The Man Who Quit Smoking), director Tage Danielsson as well as the whole production team were naked during the shooting.
While training for Man of Steel, Henry Cavill (Superman) and Michael Shannon (Zod) competed against each other to enhance their onscreen rivalry.
Dustin Hoffman tells a story that when they were filming Marathon Man, Laurence Olivier's acting was way too big and theatrical for the scene, but the director was unwilling to tell SIR LAURENCE OLIVIER to tone it down. So Hoffman went back over and told Olivier that they already had all the film of him they needed, but they wanted more of Hoffman's half of the scene, so could he do a few takes just reading his lines, as if they were in rehearsal. Apparently Olivier saw through it, but appreciated his tact.
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. She also makes an amusing comment about shooting the scene in question, along the lines of "suddenly a door popped open and this horrible old man came tottering out.."
- 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.
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.
Matilda contains an adorable example. Mara Wilson suffered from stage fright during the "Little Bitty Pretty One" scene where Matilda masters her telekinesis and dances around happily. Eventually, director Danny Devito approached her and said "You know what the problem is? You're the only one dancing!" He then told everyone on set—including the film crew!—to dance along with the music; even the camera operator bounced his foot slightly to keep time. The trick worked, and Wilson's joy during the scene is completely genuine.
The Maze Runner:
- Self-inflicted. Thomas Brodie-Sangster put a stone in his shoe to remind him to keep limping.
- The cast as a whole spent a few days doing survival training, learning how to build tools and shelter. They also camped in the glade for one night to help with a natural feeling of camaraderie.
- Chuck's death was the last scene filmed. The cast had all had time to bond, so their sad reactions are genuine.
In Medium Cool, a film about—well, shot during the Chicago 1968 riots, directed by Haskell Wexler with actors in the middle of real-life events. When the police started beating in the heads of journalists, it prompted the director to later dub in the voice of a man shouting "Look out, Haskell. It's real!"
Meet the Parents. Ben Stiller once described De Niro making him uncomfortable off-camera to this end: "Whenever I made it clear I didn't want to go to first base, he made sure he went to second."
In Memoirs of a Geisha, according to the director's commentary, in the scene in which Mameha (played by Michelle Yeoh) admonishes Sayuri (played by Ziyi Zhang) for her lack of caution which led to her assault at the hands of the Baron shortly before her virginity is to be auctioned off, Zhang was not told beforehand that Mameha, her character's mentor and one of her only friends, would quickly exit after hissing her final line: "... if you are found to be worthless..." as a vicious threat, leaving Zhang to deliver Sayuri's lines, to declare "I am not worthless. I am not worthless!" to only herself, with no one to hear her. Zhang/Sayuri broke down at this, quite nicely.
Tommy Lee Jones hated the script to the first Men in Black movie so much, he re-wrote all of his own lines. He didn't tell Will Smith of any of his changes, so Smith had to constantly ad-lib to keep up.
In Miracle, to make the scene where coach Herb Brooks drills the team all night (after their 3-3 tie with Norway) as realistic as possible, the director filmed the real actors skating the drills for three 12-hour days. Their reactions (including collapsing from exhaustion and experiencing dry heaves) were genuine.
From the Misery film adaptation:
- James Caan (Paul Sheldon) and Kathy Bates (Annie Wilkes) didn't get along while filming, making the characters' growing friction between one another feel all the more authentic.
- According to Kathy Bates, James Caan is quite athletic and hates having to sit still for long periods of time. His character's growing frustration about having to remain bedridden is very much Caan's own.
In The Monster Squad, Ashley Bank had not seen Duncan Regehr in his full Dracula costume and makeup (complete with eerie red eyes) until they shot the famous "Give me the amulet, you bitch!" scene. Cue a Blood Curdling Scream from the young Miss Bank. Upon completing the shot, Regehr grew very upset about how badly she'd been frightened and flatly refused to do so much as one more take.
Monty Python:
- Monty Python's Life of Brian: The extras who play guards in the "Biggus Dickus" scene were told to stand stock still and look serious, and that if they so much as giggled they would be fired. 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. Another highlight is the Oh, Crap! look on the guards' faces when he says, "He has a wife, you know..." The wife's name was improvised with each take, so the extras didn't know what Palin might say next...
- In the "burn the witch" scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail when John Cleese held his pause for an extremely long time (far longer than in the rehearsals), Eric Idle had to bite on his prop scythe to stop himself from laughing. They kept it and added a sound effect.
- In Monty Python's The 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?!"
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. The end of the movie involves Sandler using that foot to save Winona Ryder from drowning.
Christopher Lee's stiff movements as the eponymous character in The Mummy (1959) were partial caused by all the injuries he suffered through the filming; he dislocated his shoulder in the scene where he crashes through the door, hurt his back when he carried Yvonne Furneaux in his arms and he hurt his legs on various pipes in the tank that was used to create the swamp in the ending.
The Mummy:
- Jonathan Hyde (the Egyptologist in the rival expedition) was genuinely surprised when his donkey took off full tilt in the race to reach Hamunaptra first.
- Although hopefully not intentional, Brendan Fraser gave Kevin J. O'Connor some genuine bruises when Rick roughed up Beni for information in the doomed Egyptologist's office; likewise, Fraser was able to bodily lift O'Connor uncomfortably close to the spinning ceiling fan. Apparently, he doesn't know his own strength.
- Also not intentional: Brendan Fraser's performance during the aborted hanging is... not a performance.
In The Mummy (2017), when Nick is tied up by Ahmanet and she strokes his bare chest, his panicked reaction wasn't just acting; Tom Cruise is extremely ticklish and he was saying "Okay! Okay!" for real.
In Mystery Men, The Bowler (Janeane Garofalo) touches the hand of the recently-killed hero Captain Amazing in an attempt to get his pulse. When the hand breaks off, her shriek of surprise sounds entirely genuine — no one told Garofalo the prop was designed to fall apart when touched.

N-O

The Name of the Rose:
- When the ceiling of the burning library collapses on Jorge, it is actually solid oak that hits the actor, the 81-year old Feodor Chaliapin. The set people had overlooked that part of the script and hadn't obtained lightweight balsa wood to hit the actor, and were only reminded of it on the morning of the shoot by director Jean-Jacques Annaud. So, not having any balsa wood on hand, they set up the ceiling collapse using solid oak. The scene was filmed, and this enormously heavy piece of wood lands on Chaliapin. Annaud realizes what has happened and shouts "Cut!" and everyone rushes to see if Chaliapin is all right. Chaliapin's first words were, "Is the take OK?" Annaud asks, "Never mind that. Are you all right?" Chialapin replies, "I'm 81 years old. I can die. Is the take OK?", which probably counts as a real life Moment of Awesome.
- Annaud had apparently not warned Christian Slater of what would happen during the scene where the girl more or less rapes his character, and let the actress decide what to do for this scene (Slater may also have had a crush on her).
- The director has also previously implied that the sex scene may not have been simulated. Given the fact that Slater was 15 at the time, and the actress was 21, even if it's true "implied" is probably the only legal way to say it.
Network: In the scene where Max Schumacher (William Holden) confesses his infidelity to his wife Louise (Beatrice Straight) director Sidney Lumet ran the scene through numerous rehearsals and filmed takes so that by the time the takes that actually made the final cut were filmed, Straight was extremely tired and so in addition to her performance being explosively angry and heartbroken it also had a distinct air of exhaustion and defeat that was exactly what Lumet wanted. When called out on this by screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, who in many ways had more control over the production than Lumet and was very particular about the tone he was trying to set, Lumet rebuffed him by saying, "Paddy, you know comedy, I know divorce." ^*
The Neverending Story during a scene where a beast named Gmork pounced and attacked Atreyu. His actor was not told that the puppet was going to actually pounce him - nor was he told just how heavy it was. His expressions are indeed real. However, it almost took out his eye.
1968's Oliver!:
- There is a scene where Oliver discovers Fagin's hidden cache of pilfered treasure. The director, Carol Reed, was not getting the right results from his young star when he was shown a box of fake jewelry and gold. Instead, Reed produced a white rabbit from the pocket of his coat, offscreen, just as the reveal happened on camera. Thus, young Mark Lester's reaction of surprise and delight is genuine.
- Oliver Reed, playing Bill Sikes, always appeared in full costume and makeup before the children in the cast and maintained a distance from them during filming; Mark Lester later reported that all of the kids were legitimately terrified of him. He lightened up after filming was complete. (The dog playing Bullseye liked him so much that, late in the story when the dog is supposed to have turned on him, they had to tape the dog's tail to his leg to keep it from wagging whenever he saw Reed.)
The Omen (1976): During the filming of infamous scene where Katherine and Damien go to the zoo and the monkeys attack the car, Lee Remick's reaction was genuine, as the the filmmakers had taken a baby monkey and placed it in the car Remick was in with a trainer, which caused them to attack the vehicle.
In On the Waterfront during a pivotal scene between Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint, Saint accidentally dropped one of her gloves. Without skipping a beat Brando picked up the glove and started toying with it while doing the scene. The glove added both chemistry and romantic symbolism to the scene. Elia Kazan has stated that the best directing he ever did was not yelling cut the moment she dropped the glove.
In Out of Africa, Meryl Streep was falsely told that a lion would be tethered so it couldn't attack her. It came too close for her comfort, generating real fear.

G.W. Pabst Pandora's Box:
- There were two characters in the film who are attracted to each other, but one character keeps screwing the other's life up and it gets messy. The actor apparently had some disdain for the actress playing the other character and would not even speak to her. Director Pabst let the awkward, antagonistic undercurrent fuel their tonally uncomfortable scenes.
- One of the characters is a lesbian. The actress was averse to playing a lesbian (this was the 1920s, after all), but Pabst cast her anyway, resulting in this character who almost always looks uncomfortable at everything even when showing affection - looked strangely authentic from here.
- The actress Louise Brooks reported that Pabst deliberately destroyed her favorite dress to ensure her look of dejection during the final scene with Jack (the Ripper).
In the first Phantasm movie, after Reggie is stabbed to death by the Tall Man, he is seen writhing on the ground shivering as his lifeblood ebbs out. The scene was filmed on a very cold night in the middle of winter, with a airboat engine blowing on the actors to simulate the Tall Man's space gate collapsing, so the uncontrollable shivering was real.
According to Mary Philbin, she had never seen Lon Chaney in makeup prior to filming the famous Dramatic Unmask in The Phantom of the Opera (1925). Her horrified reaction to both his appearance and infuriated performance is quite genuine.
Pirates of the Caribbean films,
- In the second film, all the actors 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.
- The crew's collective looks of confusion at Jack's "Jar of Dirt" song are real.
- The actors were also not told until the moment that the bone cages would actually be swinging.
In Planes, Trains and Automobiles, the part where Owen shakes Neal's hand after wiping spit off was unscripted. Dylan Baker (Owen) found out that Steve Martin (Neal) was a neat freak like Neal, so he did that to generate an actual reaction of disgust.
In Planet of the Apes (1968), Charlton Heston's famous 'get your stinking paws off me' line was made all the more realistic because Heston was suffering from pneumonia- the director liked it because he felt it made Heston's voice sound more authentic.
Poltergeist: The scene where JoBeth Williams' character has to crawl through a sea of corpses to get to her daughter used real skeletons because Steven Spielberg thought that plastic props weren't realistic enough. Williams was not pleased.
While filming the first Predator, most of the cast and crew caught a severe case of diarrhea from drinking unpurified water. This resulted in very tense performances on film as the cast members were trying to hold it in until the scene was done and they could run to the toilet.
In Predators, Oleg Taktarov received a minor head wound after accidentally hitting his face against a steadicam. However, he decided to keep filming because the bleeding helped add to the film's atmosphere.
Pretty Woman: In the scene where Edward gives Vivien a diamond necklace, he snaps the lid of the jewelery box on her fingers, causing her to jump, then shriek with laughter. The lid-snap was spontaneous on Richard Gere's part, and Roberts' reaction is real.
The Princess Bride:
- Cary Elwes unwisely told Christopher Guest to give him a proper Tap on the Head in the scene where Rugen knocks Westley out. Elwes lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital as a result. That take was used in the final film.
- During the final swordfight between Count Rugen and Inigo Montoya, Mandy Patinkin got a bit too enthusiastic and accidentally stabbed Christopher Guest in the thigh. During Montoya's Heroic Second Wind, the fear on Rugen's face is partially acting, partially Guest flailing with his sword so he doesn't get stabbed again.
The three lead actors in Project X (2012) were sent to Disneyland together and spent a weekend up at a cabin in Big Bear City so as to make a more believable friendship between them. During filming of the party scenes, the music kept playing even when cameras weren't rolling so as to maintain the party atmosphere among the extras.
Pusher: The main character of Frank was recast at the eleventh hour, after all the rehearsals had already been done with the original actor. When Kim Bodnia performed the scene where Frank intimidates a local crook, the actor playing the crook was not prepared for Bodnia's significantly more aggressive and violent style in comparison to the rehearsal, so his look of discomfort and panic was real.

Q-R

The Quiet Man:
- In the credits roll, there's a bit where Maureen O'Hara whispers in John Wayne's ear and he gives her a quick, shocked expression before they stroll back to the cottage. Director John Ford gave O'Hara a line to shock the Duke in an unscripted moment. His facial expression is real.
- Only three people ever knew what was said — John Ford, Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne — and all three of them took it to their graves.
- Furthermore, the scene where John Wayne is dragging her off to see her brother, Ford and some of the crew scattered sheep dung on the ground, and some of the crew cleaned it up at the request of O'Hara. This went back and forth until shooting, at which point there was sheep crap scattered around the field. O'Hara was really trying not to fall in that scene.
The famous knife fight scene from Rebel Without a Cause used real knives, and drew actual blood.
[REC]:
- During the filming of the scene where Alex (the young fireman) falls from the stairs, not a single actor knew that was going to happen, so the reactions we see on the films were the real reactions of the actors themselves.
- They didn't know that Jennifer (the little girl) was going to be infected either, they thought she really was just sick.
- Manu didn't act as if he hurt his ankle, that actually happened during the filming, and he didn't stop.
The Recovered, starring Tina Krause as a drug-addled, delusional woman who doesn't understand what's going on around her. Krause had little time to study or understand the script, so she was genuinely confused by what was going on in the plot, which she says inadvertently helped her performance.
Harry Dean Stanton insisted on using an actual baseball bat instead of a foam one for the scene in Repo Man where Bud threatens the Rodriguez brothers. The other actors only found this out when they showed up for the scene.^note
RoboCop (1987):
- During the filming of scene where Murphy hauls Boddicker into Metro West, Kurtwood Smith (who played Boddicker) suggested to director Paul Verhoeven that his character spit some blood onto some paperwork and say "Just give me my fucking phone call." Verhoeven liked the idea and agreed to film it as such—without telling anyone else that Smith would do it. It's entirely possible that Sgt. Reed's reaction (stepping back and muttering "Shit!") was Robert DoQui breaking character.
- Ray Wise, who played Leon, didn't see the make-up Paul McCrane wore as the melting Emil until filming the scene where Leon runs into Emil after the latter's toxic waste exposure, Ensuring Wise's reaction was real.
- A minor note since both Ronny Cox and Miguel Ferrer agreed to it, but in the scene where Dick Jones confronts Bob Morton in the restroom, Cox really did grab Ferrer's hair to get a genuine reaction.
Rocky
- The scene in Rocky where he runs around Philadelphia was shot on the fly. People are staring at him because they were wondering who that guy jogging was.
- Dolph Lundgren actually punched Sylvester Stallone hard enough to hospitalize him in Rocky IV. Stallone urged Lundgren to forget the choreography -"Just go out there and try to clock me" - and rapidly came to regret it, as Dolph punched him hard enough to drop him and bruise his heart, which resulted in swelling that put his blood pressure up to 260 and sent him to intensive care for a nine-day hospital stay. The Insurance Company thought Stallone was lying at first, since the hospital records of his injuries were more in line with a serious traffic collision. Stallone showed them the take (that is still in the finished movie) and said "Dolph is a truck!".
In The Rocky Horror Picture Show,
- All of the actors except Tim Curry were left in the dark of the fact that Eddie's corpse was under the tablecloth. Patricia Quinn's hysterical laughter in that scene, and Richard O'Brien subsequently yelling at her to shut up, were also genuine reactions.
- Also in the dinner scene, when Susan Sarandon jumps a mile when her fiancé slams his hand on the table—real. He accidentally slammed his fist down on top of her fingers. If you keep an eye on her you can see her mouth 'Ow' and subtly rub her hand as she moves it under the table.
- Janet knees Frankenfurter in the groin. Apparently Sarandon wasn't a big fan of Curry's off-set behaviour. She does it again in the swimming pool (watch Frank's face as Janet sings "God bless Lili St. Cyr!"), but that time it really doesn't have anything to do with what's going on.
Roman Holiday features a moment where Joe pretends his hand has been bitten off by a statue. Gregory Peck didn't tell co-star Audrey Hepburn beforehand and her reaction is genuine.
Rosemary's Baby contains a scene where a dazed Rosemary (Mia Farrow) has a telephone call with one of her husband's former stage rivals. Director Roman Polański did not tell Farrow that the person on the other end of the line would be Tony Curtis, so her look of confusion is real: she was struggling to remember why his voice was so familiar.
In the comedy Run Fat Boy 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 the comedy Rush Hour 2, Chris Tucker refused to sing like Michael Jackson while filming the karaoke bar scene. Since he would do it to entertain everyone between takes, director Brett Ratner ordered the camera operators to film him as discreetly as possible.

The Sandlot: In order to make Benny and Scott sound like close friends, the director had the two child actors read lines together for weeks before they actually shot scenes with other actors. This worked; the other child actors thought it sounded as though the two had been friends for years.
An accidental case in Saw IV, when Riggs (Lyriq Bent) is exploring the school and finds the man and wife suspended from the ceiling with spikes poking through their major (the man) and minor (the wife) arteries, they're still with their heads down. When Lyriq approaches, the woman jerks her head up and begs him for mercy, to which Lyriq admitted in the commentary a genuine shocked reaction occurred. Lyriq hadn't expected her to do that.
While shooting School Daze, Spike Lee had all his lighter-skinned actors in better accommodations than his darker-skinned ones to increase the tension between the two camps on set. During one scene, a unscripted fight broke out and Lee had the cameras keep shooting.
Scream:
- Scream (1996)
  - In order to get the appropriate fear reaction from Drew Barrymore, director Wes Craven reminded her of a story she had read about a man who got rid of a litter of unwanted puppies by lighting them on fire.
  - In the scene where Sidney dresses up in the Ghostface costume and stabs Billy with an umbrella, the stunt woman in the costume couldn't see very well and ended up stabbing the actor who played Billy in the chest - right where he had a wire from heart surgery. The screams of pain from him are real.
- In Scream 3, Scott Foley (Roman) is really screaming from being struck with an ice pick as Neve Campbell (Sidney) missed the protective pad.
- Throughout the entire franchise, this is the dynamic between Roger L. Jackson, who provides Ghostface's iconic voice, and the other actors. Jackson performs his lines live but the other actors don't meet him, meaning they genuinely are talking to a stranger.
Mike Leigh used this technique in Secrets & Lies where the actors learn the other characters' secrets in time with the audience.
Another one for Frankenheimer: In Seven Days in May, the script called for a shot of Col. Jiggs Casey (played by Kirk Douglas) entering into the Pentagon. The problem was, the film was not Backed by the Pentagon due to the major plot thread of a rogue United States Air Force general and so they had no clearance to film near the Pentagon. So, Frankenheimer had Douglas go in full Marine uniform up the main steps of the Pentagon, while he had a hidden camera in a car filming. Coming down the steps at the same time were two junior officers were exiting the building. Their salutes? Absolutely completely genuine.
In the 1973 crime film The Seven-Ups, Richard Lynch's reactions as the passenger in the getaway car (driven by stuntman Bill Hickman) were genuinely panicky.
In Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Stephanie Hsu and Kunal Dudheker give genuinely confounded reactions to Wong showing up at the bar, since Benedict Wong improvised his actions during the scene.
For a brief scene in Shattered Glass where a woman runs away crying from a crowd of harassing Young Republicans, director Billy Ray instructed the actors to glare at the actress silently before filming and not respond to her attempts at conversation. The look on that poor woman's face is all real.
In the scene from the movie Shine where concert pianist David Helfgott 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, Geoffrey Rush covered his privates with a bouquet of plastic flowers.
J-horror director Koji Shiraishi (of Noroi: The Curse fame) shot the entirety of his 2010 Mockumentary Shirome this way. It purports to be a collection of shelved footage from a Most Haunted-style TV program, in which real-life Idol Singer group Momoiro Clover are sent to a supposedly haunted location and apparently encounter genuine supernatural phenomena. None of the group were told the real nature of the shoot until filming finally wrapped, and the bad case of nerves exhibited by the cast throughout most of the film is real. (The Reveal was filmed, too, but is only shown in the end credits — followed by a Mind Screw Stinger suggesting that some of the phenomena were real.)
John Wayne's final film, The Shootist, involves an aging cowboy dying of cancer. Sadly, this required no acting on Wayne's part.
During filming of The Silence of the Lambs, real-life FBI Agent John Douglas, on whom the character of Jack Crawford was based, played audiotapes for actor Scott Glenn to get an idea of the stress of dealing with serial killers. Those tapes were of real young women being raped, tortured and murdered by serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris. The tapes were so horrific that Glenn broke down in tears, telling Douglas "I didn't know there were people who could do things like that," and he later said that he could no longer oppose the death penalty (which Douglas has strongly supported). Glenn also refused to sign on to the sequels, so his character was cut completely out of Hannibal (in a deleted scene, it was revealed that Crawford died between movies, resulting in a combination of type 2 of Death by Adaptation and Killed Offscreen) and recast with Harvey Keitel in Red Dragon.
In Sixteen Candles, there is a scene where Long Duk Dong is drunk and laughing hysterically. Actor Gedde Watanabe’s laughter is real, because director John Hughes is tickling his bare feet.
Child actor Jackie Cooper was goaded into crying for a scene in Skippy 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.
According to the director's commentary on the Sleepy Hollow (1999) DVD, in the scene in the church where the doctor is killed by a blow to the head, they accidentally hit Ian McDiarmid so hard that he ended up having to go the hospital.
The director of Somewhere in Time did not show Christopher Reeve the photograph with which his character falls in love until it was time to film the scene, ensuring that the enchanted look on his face would be genuine.
The Sound of Music
- A mild case took place during the filming of the reconciliation scene between the children and Captain Von Trapp. It 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. But then, he somewhat infamously didn't like them. He even insisted a stand in be brought in when he carries one of the children on his back because the real actress was "too fat".
- If you look closely at the scene where the captain returns you'll see oldest daughter Liesel dragging youngest daughter Gretl to the surface after the canoe flips. This was necessary because six-year-old Kim Karath could not swim! Julie Andrews' look of panic as the canoe rolls over is genuine because she was tasked in advance with protecting Kim but lost her balance and went over the wrong side of the boat. Fortunately Charmian Carr kept her head and a good grip on Kim as the boat went over.
In Soylent Green, just before the shooting of the euthanasia scene, Charlton Heston was told by Edward G. Robinson (playing Sol Roth, the character dying) that he was dying of terminal brain cancer. Heston was the only one in the cast that had been told. The crying that Heston gives in the scene (while he watches Robinson's character die, appropriately enough) is thus quite real. Robinson died 12 days after shooting finished.
Stand by Me
- To get the appropriate reaction from Wil Wheaton and Jerry O'Connell, who were children at the time, for the train scene, director Rob Reiner yelled at them until they cried.
- 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.
- A gentler example from the film: during the scene where River Phoenix breaks down, he was having trouble. Rob Reiner got him to remember a time when an adult had let him down, allowing him the appropriate level of emotion.
The movie Starship Troopers has several examples. Key cast members participated in a pre-production 'boot camp' to prepare them for the film's training sequence. Paul Verhoeven stood in for the CGI aliens during filming, running at the actors and screaming like a madman to get more realistic reactions (footage is included on the Special Edition DVD extras). And to make the cast feel more at ease during filming, Verhoeven himself stripped down for the co-ed shower scene (footage is not included on the Special Edition DVD extras).
In the film adaptation of Starsky & Hutch, there was a scene which called for Huggy Bear (played by Snoop Dogg) to get slapped. Nobody told the Doggfather about this in advance, so when he got slapped... Let's just say that he was about to go OG LBC on dat foo'...
Star Trek:
- Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the scenes set aboard the aircraft carrier used the ship's personnel as "extras." When preparing for the scenes of Chekov's capture and escape, the Marines were sufficiently gung-ho that Leonard Nimoy felt compelled to remind them that Walter Koenig was only playing a Russian. During the chase, Koenig was concerned enough about what would happen if they caught him that he really ran.
- Star Trek: Nemesis, in the scene where Riker is fighting the Reman Dragon on a catwalk that suddenly collapses beneath them, Riker's panicked cry is for real because they didn't tell Jonathan Frakes ahead of time.
Star Wars
- The day that the actors filmed the insert shots of the Rebel pilots for the Battle of Yavin in Episode IV: A New Hope happened to be a fifty-year record high for England's hottest temperature. The sweat pouring down the pilots' faces only adds to the tension of the battle.
- While filming Episode V: 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!" This pissed him off once he saw the actual film, as he believed that his body language would've been entirely different if he knew what the actual line was (which could constitute an example of Tropes Are Not Good).
- Episode III: Revenge of the Sith has further Vader-related examples:
  - When the newly-converted Vader arrives at the Jedi Temple, the closest youngling visibly flinches as he ignites his lightsaber. Hayden Christensen elicited this reaction by shouting "Boo!" at the kid.
  - After Vader's body is reconstructed and he is given his life supporting suit of armour, he breaks off of his table to take a few slow, thudding steps forward, almost stumbling when he does. Hayden Christensen, in addition to having to wear a suit with extensions to match David Prowse's height, was not told that the helmet and boots would be weighted, lending an authentic sense of not yet being used to the cumbersome suit Vader would wear for the rest of his life.
In Straw Dogs, to get the perfect "shocked reaction" from the villagers when Dustin Hoffman's character walks into the pub, director Sam Peckinpah had him walk in without any trousers on. It worked. If you watch the reaction shot of the town drunk, his eyes go wide and immediately drop down, apparently to stare at Hoffman's naked lower body off camera. The next shot starts at Hoffman's shoes and pans up to justify the eye motion.
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 Super Mario Bros. (1993), Dennis Hopper's performance as Koopa legitimately scared Mojo Nixon during the scene where Toad de-evolves. Toad freaking out as he's strapped into the chair wasn't acting.

Take Shelter: The extras in the lunch scene at the Lion's Club were only told they would get a free lunch and be in a movie, so their stunned and horrified reaction to Curtis's fight with Dewart and subsequent freak out was dead real.
In the film Tears of the Sun there is a scene where the African refugees start to break down and cry while Bruce Willis leads his team of Navy Seals into a village to stop ethnic cleansing. The reason they are crying is that they are actual African refugees who are flashing back to actual ethnic cleansing they had endured.
Charlton Heston's costume in The Ten Commandments (1956) supposedly resulted in many of the local extras thinking he *was* Moses... they were heard saying "Mosiah! Mosiah!".
The casting of Claire Danes in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines as Katherine Brewster was a last minute decision. As a result, Danes had very little time to learn about her character. She later said this ended up being beneficial, since it added authenticity to Kate's confusion of her entire world being turned upside down without warning in the span of a few hours.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974):
- During filming of the climactic dinner scene, the stench of the food got to everyone so much that some of them (including the man playing Leatherface) started to hallucinate that they were really their characters. This was worsened by the fact that the shooting took place on an un-airconditioned set in summer. The actor playing the Hitchhiker, who had fought in the Vietnam War, describes filming that scene as the worst experience of his life.
- The dinner scene was a 24 hour shoot, so the actors' exhaustion and bloodshot eyes were real.
- Marylin Burns' finger was cut for real when the prop blood sprayer wouldn't work properly. The obvious cut immediately afterwards is so the actor playing the grandfather wouldn't have to suck on a real bleeding finger.
- The actors playing the teens were not told exactly how Leatherface would look. Thus, the horrified reactions they have when they first see Leatherface were genuine.
There's Something About Mary. When Ted (Ben Stiller) is being loaded into the ambulance, he really is dropped.
In This Is the End, Michael Cera asked Rihanna if he could grope her behind, which she allowed if she got to slap him in return. She hit him in the face so hard, he had to lie down from the dizziness. Jason Segel's reaction to it is genuine.
In The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), John McTiernan told Pierce Brosnan to keep kissing Rene Russo even though 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 Thor, there is a scene where Loki (Tom Hiddleston) briefly tries to confess something he's done, but his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) shuts him up with a sort of angrish roar that causes Loki to stumble back, blinking and silenced. According to Hiddleston, the roar was "unscripted genius[...] Terrifying. Magnificent." and his startled shrinking away was not acting.
In Threads, the crew set off an enormous smoke bomb to create the image of the mushroom cloud rising over Sheffield, but the residents actually thought that a bomb had gone off, resulting in a very genuine reaction from everyone.
When filming the pie fights featured in several The 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 (often Moe, who was known for being very, very accurate) to throw it on two.
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.
- Using expert marksmen was standard practice in Japanese cinema at the time. If the character was supposed to be struck by the arrow, the actor wore a wooden block under his costume and prayed really hard that the archer was having a good day.
- The Adventures of Robin Hood used the same technique with a professional stunt archer.
William Friedkin used a lot of first takes for To Live and Die in L.A. in order to get across the most natural reaction from the actors, who were a little more casual for what they thought was a rehearsal take.
The scenes with Michael Dorsey arguing with his agent in Tootsie reflect the tensions that had grown between Sydney Pollack and Dustin Hoffman during filming, tensions that were resolved somewhat by creating the part of the agent for Pollack to play so he could berate his star on camera.
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. They are wire-controlled replicas of P-40 fighters, but with real Allison engines in them. Both takes are seen in the finished movie. One where the plane runs into a row of parked planes, and the other that explodes and spins to a halt in the middle of the runway.
In Transformers:
- One scene had Sam 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 Shia LaBeouf, the fear he expresses is genuine as the copter was real.
- 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 (rope with explosive materials in it). So the panic in that scene is quite genuine.
- The filming of the scene where Sam is on the hood of a car, and Barricade slams it, demanding to know where the glasses are, was one of the first clips of movie-related video released to the Internet, complete with Shia LaBeouf screaming afterward that they didn't tell him the car was going to jump up.
- The very large explosion during Revenge of the Fallen's desert battle climax where all the actors and actual service personnel are running away? That was real panic on their faces. And they had only one take.
A scene in TRON had Bruce Boxleitner performing a difficult 'behind the head' frisbee catch while expressing defiance and anger. The director got Bruce riled up by accusing him of not practicing, saying he was unable to do the required shot and finally picking up the prop frisbee and challenging Bruce to prove it. He did, and the director yelled cut, having filmed the whole thing.
True Lies: In one scene, Arnold Schwarzenegger's character Harry Tasker was scripted to smash a car window in frustration while arguing with Gib, played by Tom Arnold. The SUV window had been replaced with stage glass, as you might expect... but Schwarzenegger hit the wrong window by mistake. Arnold therefore ends up reacting to Ahnuld breaking a real car window bare-handed.
In Twilight, when Carlisle bites Edward, he whispers in Edward's ear. The in-character "I'm sorry" failed to get the right terrified reaction, as did the equally in-character "My son", but when he whispered "You're sexy", Robert Pattinson actually breaks into a broad smile as if he's about to laugh. But that's the take they used.

U-Z

The Usual Suspects:
- Redfoot threw a cigarette at Mcmanus's face which was meant for his chest. Stephen Baldwin's reaction is real, as is Benicio del Toro's look of panic.
- Director Bryan Singer convinced each of the main actors that they were Keyser Soze. Cracked's 6 Actors Who Thought They Had Made a Totally Different Movie explains.
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.
VFW: Many of the fight scenes were "choreographed" by simply having the actors beat the snot out of the extras for real. Allegedly, this was just the tip of the iceberg for the film's Troubled Production, along with many others at its studio Cinestate, which folded in 2020 under the weight of various mounting scandals.
Pink Floyd's The Wall:
- During the fascist dream sequence, actual neo-Nazis were employed as extras. Thus the intensity and brutality shown is as real as it can get. Several of them can be seen performing Nazi salutes, which the director did not tell them to do.
- At one point, the character Pink phones his wife, knowing she's with another man. The phone call? Real. The operator's confused reaction ("There's a man answering...") is genuine. They had to do the call several times before they found one who realized what the situation was. The exact same phone call was originally featured on the album of the same name.
- In the scene where Pink trashes his hotel room, the actress playing the groupie had just been told to watch him. She got genuinely shocked when he started throwing things at her.
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 White Heat, most of the actors in the prison dining hall were not warned that James Cagney's Cody Jarrett was about to go ballistic. Their surprise at him running atop the tables and clocking guards is real. Cagney planned out much of this sequence without explaining it to the director. They were having trouble deciding how to play it out and shoot it, and Jimmy apparently said to just keep the cameras pointed at him.
Throughout filming of The Wicker Man (1973), Edward Woodward refused to see where the crew were assembling the wicker man for the final scene, so that his reaction would be genuine. When Lord Summerisle has his character dragged to the site, Woodward suddenly realized that they were going to actually put him in the wicker man and then set it on fire (even if they intended to pull him out before the fire could actually hurt him) - his resulting screams of "OH, GOD! OH JESUS CHRIST!" were as much Woodward as they were Sgt. Howie. Woodward would later admit in interviews that his fear greatly drove his acting in the scene.
Willy Wonka & 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. The children were also told to do whatever they wanted on the set, as long as they didn’t obstruct shots with Gene Wilder.
- 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 by stealing Fizzy Lifting Drinks earlier in the movie 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.
- 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.
- According to Julie Dawn Cole's memoir, none of the cast knew that the hand-like hangers in the cloakroom were actual hands that were going to reach out and grab their coats.
- And Gene Wilder's raving on the boat came as a complete shock to the actors aboard, who all genuinely thought that Wilder was going insane. They were told that Wilder would do something and they had their lines. That was it. When they don't seem to be able to speak right, it's because they can't. Those looks of fear and the adults pulling the kids closer is them contemplating whether or not to just grab the kids and jump off.
- Paris Themmen (aka Mike TeaVee) mentioned in the DVD Commentary that the reason for his Motor Mouth delivery of his explanation to Wonka about "Wonkavision" sounding so "nasty and pissy" was that the director had deliberately pestered Paris to speak the lines louder, faster, nastier, clearer, etc. until in frustration he delivered the lines with the "visceral reaction" the director wanted out of him.
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.
X-Men:
- When Wolverine first confronts Magneto, the initial look of shock at Magneto's entrance was a result of Hugh Jackman's fear of what was happening around him. He was told Magneto would tear open the train car; he thought this meant ripping off the door, not half of the train being pulled apart by hydraulics. He mentioned having to study that shot when doing the reaction shots so he could reproduce all the various twitches and tics he went through.
- When Sabertooth throws Wolverine off the Statue of Liberty, the next scene is Wolvie slamming his claws into the side of the torch to stop falling. In an interview with Wizard, Jackman says the harness slipped and pinched him in a very uncomfortable place, as a result his screams of rage are actually genuine screams of pain.
During the production of A Walk to Remember, the actors playing Mandy Moore's popular classmates were told to distance themselves from her for a period of time, so she would feel unpopular and disliked. According to Mandy Moore, it didn't go as planned, as they caught up and became close when they were told they could be civil to her.
When Mapache says "You want Angel? I give you Angel" and then cuts his throat, setting off the climax of The Wild Bunch, the tube delivering the fake blood to the actor's throat malfunctioned, spouting much more fluid than expected. Sam Peckinpah kept the take because of the horrified and shocked reactions it got.
In the first Wrong Turn film, the actor playing Chris broke his ankle, making the scene where he was shot in the leg more convincing.
- Eliza Dushku dislocated her shoulder in a scene where she is maneuvering through the trees. You can actually hear it pop in the final cut.
- Two of the actors playing the killer mutants caught on fire for real. Some of the reactions were kept in.
In Young Frankenstein, in the scene where Dr. Frankenstein accidentally stabs himself in the thigh with a scalpel, Gene Wilder accidentally penetrated the protective pad beneath his trousers. That look of pain on his face is genuine.

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