Summary
Actors often regret filming certain scenes in movies due to unpleasant experiences or negative audience reactions.
Ben Stiller regrets his nude scene in Along Came Polly because he wasn’t informed about the possibility of using a body double.
Margot Robbie regrets a love scene in The Wolf of Wall Street because she got numerous paper cuts from fake money and wishes they had used real money instead.
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Filming a movie can be an exciting experience, but there are many cases where actors end up regretting filming some scenes, and there are different reasons for that. In every movie, there’s always a scene that can either make or break the whole project, and its success or failure depends on different factors: the actor’s performance, the script, the direction, and even the lighting. However, behind every memorable movie scene, there’s not always a happy or fun story, as more often than not, actors go through unpleasant experiences to get a scene just right, leading them to regret agreeing to them.
In other cases, it’s not so much that the experience of filming a scene was uncomfortable, but the audience’s reaction to the scene has made actors regret doing them in the first place. Some others have realized with time that some scenes should have never happened, and have now been very vocal about their regret and why it was wrong to film that scene. Here are 10 movie scenes that actors regret filming and what happened that made them rethink what they did.
10 Ben Stiller Regrets His Nude Scene In Along Came Polly
Along Came Polly is a rom-com directed by John Hamburg, and it follows Reuben Feffer (Ben Stiller) who reconnects and falls in love with his old classmate, Polly (Jennifer Aniston), but his wife Lisa (Debra Messing) returns to reconcile with him. In one scene, Stiller was convinced to appear nude from the back, which he told BBC that Hamburg promised him would cut out of the movie if it “didn’t get a laugh”. Stiller admitted he didn’t know if it was a funny scene or not because he had “never stayed long enough to see it”, and he was later told he could have had a double, but nobody told him that before filming the scene.
9 Margot Robbie Regrets The Wolf Of Wall Street “Pile Of Cash” Scene
Margot Robbie’s breakout role was Naomi Lapaglia in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, which recounts the rise and fall of stockbroker Jordan Belfort. Robbie played Belfort’s second wife, and she and co-star Leonardo DiCaprio shared a couple of love scenes throughout the movie, of which she now regrets one. Speaking to The Daily Beast, Robbie revealed that filming the “pile of cash” sex scene in The Wolf of Wall Street wasn’t a fun experience as she got “a million paper cuts” on her back from all the fake money. Robbie added that the crew was shocked to see all the paper cuts when they were done filming and that it might have been less painful to use real money.
8 Taylor Lautner Regrets Taking His Shirt Off In Twilight
The Twilight Saga boosted Taylor Lautner’s career and turned him into a teen sensation, but his biggest regret in these movies is one of the things that made him so popular with teenage viewers: taking his shirt off. For his performance in The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Lautner went through a physical transformation to reprise his role as Jacob Black, and it was so impressive that all the attention went to his body rather than his acting skills. Speaking to EW in 2009, Lautner said that, if he had to choose, he would never take his shirt off again in a movie, as he didn’t want to be known as “just a body”.
7 Amanda Seyfried Regrets Singing Live In Les Mis
Amanda Seyfried showed her singing talents in Mamma Mia!, and in 2012, she played Cosette in Tom Hooper’s musical film Les Misérables. Hooper opted for having the actors sing live on set and adding the orchestral accompaniment recorded in post-production, which definitely gave the movie a more natural and theater-like vibe. However, Amanda Seyfried told Vanity Fair that she didn’t feel she was entirely prepared for it as she had quit singing for many years and had only done Mamma Mia!, which didn’t require singing on set. Seyfried added that singing live on set for Les Misérables also required strength and stamina and she felt weak, so she wishes she could re-record her vocals in a studio.
6 Kurt Russell Regrets Destroying a Guitar in The Hateful Eight
Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight followed eight strangers who sought refuge from a blizzard in a stagecoach stopover, where some dangerous secrets about them were revealed. Among them was John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell), who was on his way to take fugitive “Crazy” Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to Red Rock to be hanged. In one scene, Daisy is playing the guitar and Ruth takes it away from her and smashes it, completely destroying it. The guitar wasn’t a prop but an antique 1870s Martin guitar lent by the Martin Guitar Museum, and which was supposed to be replaced by a prop. Unfortunately, it wasn’t replaced and Russell wasn’t informed that the guitar was real.
Speaking to Billboard in 2016, Leigh shared that Russell “felt terrible” after learning that the guitar wasn’t a prop, and when he found out, “his eyes literally welled up”. As a result of this incident, the Martin Guitar Museum no longer lends props to film productions.
5 Hugh Jackman Regrets His Date Scene In Movie 43
Movie 43 is regarded as one of the worst films of all time, so it’s not surprising that many actors regret agreeing to appear in it. Among them is Hugh Jackman, who stars in the segment “The Catch”, where he plays Davis, the city’s most eligible bachelor who goes on a blind date with businesswoman Beth (Kate Winslet) – however, Davis had a pair of testicles dangling from his neck, which only Beth found to be shocking and abnormal. In an interview with himself for Yahoo!, Jackman gave his past self a very valuable piece of advice: don’t believe those who offer him a role where he will have testicles around his neck as part of a “hilarious ensemble of some of the funniest movies of all time”.
4 Burt Reynolds Regretted A Dangerous Stunt In Deliverance
Deliverance is a thriller directed by John Boorman and based on the 1970 novel of the same name by James Dickey. Deliverance is infamous for a very graphic and disturbing scene, but the one that Burt Reynolds regrets is all about a stunt that left him with a broken tailbone. In a scene where the canoe of Reynolds’ character goes over a waterfall, Boorman wanted to use a dummy, but Reynolds insisted on performing his own stunt and went down the waterfall himself. Reynolds landed on rocks and broke his tailbone (via THR). To make it worse, Norm Macdonald shared on The Howard Stern Show in 2016 (via CinemaBlend) that Boorman told Reynolds (while he recovered at the hospital) that the stunt didn’t even look real.
Elliot Page rose to fame for his role as Juno MacGuff in Jason Reitman’s Juno. Juno is a teenager dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and the consequences of it, including the decision to give the baby up for adoption. In one scene where Juno discusses potential baby names with Mark (Jason Bateman), who is adopting the baby with his wife, Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), he mentions “Madison”, to which Juno says “isn’t that, like, a little gay?”. Speaking to Bustle in 2017, Page admitted the joke “wasn’t something I totally registered at the time”, but now he realized the problem with it, and even refused to say the joke during a table read of Juno’s script for Planned Parenthood.
2 Kate Winslet Regrets The Illustration Scene In Titanic
James Cameron’s Titanic is full of memorable scenes, of which some have become part of pop culture. One of its most famous scenes is when Rose (Kate Winslet) asks Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) to draw her “like one of his French girls”, only wearing the Heart of the Ocean necklace. Winslet has come to regret the scene not because of the experience of filming it but because of the impact it had, as some fans have asked her to sign pictures of herself naked, which she told Yahoo! she refuses to do as it “feels very uncomfortable”.
1 Sharon Stone Regrets The Interrogation Scene In Basic Instinct
Basic Instinct is a neo-noir erotic thriller directed by Paul Verhoeven, and it follows police detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas), who during the investigation of the murder of a wealthy rockstar, gets involved in a passionate relationship with writer and prime suspect Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone). Unfortunately, Basic Instinct is best known for one graphic scene where Stone wasn’t wearing underwear.
Stone has repeatedly called out Verhoeven for this as she was tricked into doing the scene, explaining in her memoir (via Vanity Fair) that Verhoeven convinced her to take her underwear off as “the white was reflecting the light”, but that nothing would be shown as there would be a shadow. That wasn’t the case at all and Stone’s crotch was completely exposed in the final cut of the movie. When Stone watched the film, she slapped Verhoeven and called her lawyer.
Sources: BBC, The Daily Beast, EW, Vanity Fair, Billboard, Yahoo!, THR, The Howard Stern Show, Bustle