# What’s the most outrageous thing an actor has done for a role? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 26, 2011, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236 "2011-05-26T01:53:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Small\_Hen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ad7895/32.png) [@Small\_Hen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Small_Hen)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/1 "2011-05-26T01:53:44Z")
I’ve heard a few times about how, for the movie Vampire’s Kiss, Nicholas Cage had two teeth extracted and ate live cockroaches on film, and no doubt has done a host of other bizarre things for his art over the years. Benicio Del Turo burned the insides of his wrists with cigarettes several times (leading to an infection), along with gaining 50 pounds, to play Oscar Acosta in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. His costar, Johnny Depp, allowed Hunter S Thompson to shave his head with a straight razor - which, depending on what Hunter had imbibed that day, might have been the more insane method acting choice. Brown Bunny star Chloe Sevigny…well, if you don’t remember what she did, just google her. But not at work. And then there’s Devine and the dog shit. I’m sure there’s dozens of examples I’ve forgotten, or don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![ladyfoxfyre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ad7895/32.png) [@ladyfoxfyre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ladyfoxfyre)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/2 "2011-05-26T01:55:12Z")
Probably Christian Bale’s devastating weight loss for his role in The Machinist. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/3 "2011-05-26T01:56:26Z")
> [@ladyfoxfyre](#): > > Probably Christian Bale’s devastating weight loss for his role in The Machinist. [Yeah, that is what I thought of first.](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8JJe7S6qQ6c/Rz3rI2_yQjI/AAAAAAAAAgw/On-fUBsVIH4/s400/stickman.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/4 "2011-05-26T01:58:22Z")
[Oh, and here is his next movie, Batman.](http://www.empireonline.com/images/features/buffed-up-actors/christian-bale-batman-begins.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/5 "2011-05-26T02:04:31Z")
> [@Small\_Hen](#): > > Benicio Del Turo burned the insides of his wrists with cigarettes several times (leading to an infection), along with gaining 50 pounds, to play Oscar Acosta in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. . “Fear & Loathing…” was one of the few movies that I have ever got up and walked out of the theater on, (I thought the 45 minutes of it that I stayed for was torture) but I know the book quite well, and I am wondering if you can recall the scene in which this happened, as I can’t remember anything like that happening in the novel… That said, I don’t know if I could put a lit cigarette out on my wrist for $10,000 in cash, as a bad burn hurts me more than any other kind of wound or pain. I would much rather have a tooth pulled with no Novocaine than willingly get a severe burn… ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanub/32/132_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/6 "2011-05-26T02:12:35Z")
> [@ladyfoxfyre](#): > > Probably Christian Bale’s devastating weight loss for his role in The Machinist. Ditto this. And he didn’t look much meatier in “The Fighter” either. I thought Natalie Portman shaving her head for “V for Vendetta” was pretty bold but I think as far as women’s roles go, Renee Zellweger gaining however much weight for “Bridget Jone’s Diary” was damned gutsy considering being an overweight woman _anywhere_ is practically a capital offense, nevermind Hollywood. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/7 "2011-05-26T02:15:36Z")
> [@Small\_Hen](#): > > Brown Bunny star Chloe Sevigny…well, if you don’t remember what she did, just google her. But not at work. Sevigny is not the first (or last) actress to have sex in a mainstream movie. Raffaela Anderson, Gry Bay, Maruschka Detmers, Caroline Ducey, Kerry Fox, Karen Lancaume, Sook-Yin Lee, and Margo Stilley have all performed sexual acts on camera. ---
**Author:** ![Small\_Hen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ad7895/32.png) [@Small\_Hen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Small_Hen)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/8 "2011-05-26T02:15:37Z")
> [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](#): > > “Fear & Loathing…” was one of the few movies that I have ever got up and walked out of the theater on, (I thought the 45 minutes of it that I stayed for was torture) but I know the book quite well, and I am wondering if you can recall the scene in which this happened, as I can’t remember anything like that happening in the novel… > > That said, I don’t know if I could put a lit cigarette out on my wrist for $10,000 in cash, as a bad burn hurts me more than any other kind of wound or pain. > > I would much rather have a tooth pulled with no Novocaine than willingly get a severe burn… It wasn’t a scene in the movie. Oscar Acosta had the scars on his wrists in real life, so Del Turo scarred himself off camera (as opposed to using a make up artist, for some reason), and the burns ended up infected. ---
**Author:** ![Feyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/fbc32d/32.png) [@Feyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Feyrat)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/9 "2011-05-26T06:18:11Z")
I would counter the Christian Bale vote with Tom Hanks’ drastic weight gain, then loss of 55 lbs, for Cast Away. Or, you know, all the stunts Jackie Chan does on his own… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/10 "2011-05-26T06:29:31Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Sevigny is not the first (or last) actress to have sex in a mainstream movie. Raffaela Anderson, Gry Bay, Maruschka Detmers, Caroline Ducey, Kerry Fox, Karen Lancaume, Sook-Yin Lee, and Margo Stilley have all performed sexual acts on camera. And Chloe Sevigny was also, at the time, dating the director of the film, Vincent Gallo, and he was the person that Sevigny was with in the scene/scenes, so I would assume that made it at least a tiny bit easier for her to “perform.” ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/11 "2011-05-26T07:40:09Z")
[Lon Chaney Senior](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lon_Chaney,_Sr.). > [@](#): > > When a makeup is as painful as that which I wore as Blizzard in The Penalty (1920/I), when I had my legs strapped up and couldn’t bear it that way more than 20 minutes at a time - when I have to be a cripple, as in The Miracle Man (1919) or have to keep a certain attitude of body, as I did in Shadows (1922/I), it sometimes takes a good deal of imagination to forget your physical sufferings. Yet, at that, the subconscious mind has a marvelous way of making you keep the right attitudes and make the right gestures when you are actually acting. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/12 "2011-05-26T10:12:25Z")
> [@Superdude](#): > > And Chloe Sevigny was also, at the time, dating the director of the film, Vincent Gallo, and he was the person that Sevigny was with in the scene/scenes, so I would assume that made it at least a tiny bit easier for her to “perform.” Actually she _had_ dated the director in the past but they weren’t a couple when she did that scene. But, she’s a bit of a slut- a mean master thespian!- and didn’t find it to be a big deal. 😃 When **Sean Penn** was preparing for one of his very first roles, Bad Boys, he and the director were out together and Penn wanted to actually commit a purse snatching to ‘get into the role’. The director talked him out of it. Kind of shows you that, although he is a great actor, he’s also always been a selfish, narcissistic, pretentious asshole… ---
**Author:** ![postcards](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8e8cbc/32.png) [@postcards](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/postcards)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/13 "2011-05-26T13:05:15Z")
> [@Small\_Hen](#): > > I’ve heard a few times about how, for the movie Vampire’s Kiss, Nicholas Cage had two teeth extracted and ate .. That was [Birdy](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086969/trivia). Dunno about the roaches, though. Weight gain: Robert Diniro in Raging Bull Martin Sheen sliced his arm open in that scene from Apocalypse Now where he broke the mirror. That was all his blood. (He also had a heart attack during filming; however Coppala neglected to include this in the final print.) ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/14 "2011-05-26T13:16:02Z")
I remeber reading that some actor once had some teeth pulled without anesthesia for a role, but I really don’t want to look for it. _shudder_ ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/15 "2011-05-26T13:36:53Z")
Madonna in **Dangerous Game**. You can tell, to the second, when she realizes that Harvey Keitel isn’t in character talking to her character, that he is actually slagging her, personally, for being “commercial trash” and not a serious actress in independent films. She doesn’t break character or storm off, and she does go on to make 8 more movies (with another two apparently in the pipeline), but watching this feels like creepy voyeurism. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/16 "2011-05-26T13:40:06Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > When **Sean Penn** was preparing for one of his very first roles, Bad Boys, he and the director were out together and Penn wanted to actually commit a purse snatching to ‘get into the role’. The director talked him out of it. Kind of shows you that, although he is a great actor, he’s also always been a selfish, narcissistic, pretentious asshole… When Winona Ryder was pinched for shoplifting, she initially claimed that she did it in preparation for a role in **Shop Girl** , the Steve Martin movie that ultimately starred Claire Danes. I think she backed off that claim pretty quick. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/17 "2011-05-26T17:46:59Z")
> [@Small\_Hen](#): > > I’ve heard a few times about how, for the movie Vampire’s Kiss, Nicholas Cage had two teeth extracted… As has been stated below, he had them removed for Birdy. Could someone remind me what it was in his role that required him to have two missing teeth? ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/18 "2011-05-26T17:54:37Z")
> [@postcards](#): > > Martin Sheen sliced his arm open in that scene from Apocalypse Now where he broke the mirror. That was all his blood. Yeah, but he necessarily didn’t do that for the role. He was just piss drunk and Coppola let the cameras roll, and that was the result. Joaquin Phoenix pretending to go crazy has to rank up there somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/19 "2011-05-26T17:55:59Z")
[not really] James Franco cutting off half his right arm in _127 hours._ [/not really] And Buddy Ebsen almost dying from the aluminum dust he was covered with, playing the tin woodsman in \*The Wizard of Oz. \*He had to give up the role. ---
**Author:** ![gurujulp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ba9def/32.png) [@gurujulp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gurujulp)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236/20 "2011-05-26T18:48:23Z")
> [@Fiddle\_Peghead](#): > > As has been stated below, he had them removed for Birdy. Could someone remind me what it was in his role that required him to have two missing teeth? He thought he was a vampire, so I am betting something to do with vampire teeth… [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-most-outrageous-thing-an-actor-has-done-for-a-role/583236.md?page=2)