Peeling Back the Curtain on 35 Hollywood Actors – Part 5

Gloria Steinem talked Leonardo DiCaprio out of playing Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, saying, “Please, please don’t do this to those girls. The eyes of all 13-year-old girls are upon you and you can’t play a guy that tortures and kills women.”

2. Keanu Reeves was initially offered Val Kilmer’s role in the 1995 film Heat. He turned it down to play Hamlet in a 789 seat theatre in Manitoba.

3. When Robin Williams appeared on ‘Inside the Actors Studio’ in 2001, an audience member developed a hernia from laughing too hard and had to be taken away in an ambulance.

4. Ryan Gosling was cast in the movie ‘The Notebook’ because the director was looking for someone that was “not handsome” and “not cool.”

5. Tom Hardy was addicted to drugs and alcohol in his mid-20s. At one point he said that he was 'out of control' on drink and drugs before he turned his life around, and was lucky that he did not contract HIV while he was at his lowest.

Philip Seymour Hoffman had been sober for 23 years until he accepted an alcoholic beverage to celebrate the completion of ‘The Master.’ This resulted in relapse, after which he started to use prescription medication and the following year he was using heroin.

7. William Shatner is a trained Shakespearean stage actor. He was once considered an equal to Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and Robert Redford, but hurt his career by taking any offered role regardless of quality. That contributed to Shatner joining a no-name cast for 'Star Trek' in 1966.

8. In ‘Tropic Thunder,’ Robert Downey Jr.’s character says “I don’t drop character ‘til I’ve done the DVD commentary.” When doing the actual DVD commentary for the movie, RDJ does it in the characters Lincoln Osiris and Kirk Lazarus.

9. In 1974, Time magazine researchers learned, and informed Jack Nicholson (who was 37 at that time), that his sister was actually his mother, and his mother was his grandmother.

10. Brad Pitt voluntarily went to a dentist to have his front teeth chipped for the role of Tyler Durden in Fight Club. His teeth were fixed after he finished making the movie.

The Oscar-nominated documentary “Liberators” narrated by Denzel Washington, interviewing African American soldiers who liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp was pulled by PBS when an investigation showed no African American GI’s played a role in the liberation of Buchenwald.

12. Martha Stewart ended her relationship with Sir Anthony Hopkins after watching The Silence of the Lambs because she was unable to avoid associating Hopkins with the character of Hannibal Lecter.

13. Sean Connery was once filming a love scene when his co-star’s gangster boyfriend got jealous and pulled a gun on him. Connery grabbed the gun from his hand and twisted the guy’s wrist until he ran off the set.

14. Hollywood uses a measurement called Q scores to determine the likability of celebrities. The highest-ranking celebrities include Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman with 48 points, while Kim Kardashian was determined to have to lowest Q score with -71.

15. Ryan Reynolds has openly spoken about his lifelong struggle with anxiety, noting in 2018 that he carried out many interviews in the character of Deadpool to alleviate his fears.

Keanu Reeves was once forced into playing a serial killer in a movie due to a friend forging his signature on a contract. To avoid a lengthy legal process, Keanu just took the job.

17. Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg look so alike that they came to the agreement they’d just go with it when the fans got them confused.

18. Robin Williams accidentally broke Robert De Niro’s nose in the 1990 movie Awakenings, but De Niro was actually fine with it. He broke his nose back in the 1980 movie Raging Bull, so breaking it again in the other direction straightened it out.

19. Since the studio didn’t have enough budget to shoot Riddick (2013), Vin Diesel had to mortgage his house, obtain loans and spend most of his own money on the production.

20. Bruce Willis is partially deaf in his left ear due to some of the loud explosions and gunfire while filming Die Hard. “Due to an accident on the first Die Hard, I suffer two-thirds partial hearing loss in my left ear and have a tendency to say, ‘Whaaa?’” Willis said.

Chadwick Boseman was accepted into a prestigious summer theater program at Oxford University, but couldn’t afford to go. He secured funding through a private benefactor, who turned out to be Denzel Washington. Over 20 years later Chadwick thanked him in person at the premiere of “Black Panther.”

22. At the age of 11, Hugh Jackman decided against dance lessons because his older brother told him “dancing is for sissies.” Years later his brother apologized and encouraged him to follow his passion. Hugh signed up for lessons the following day and went on to win a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

23. George Clooney once contemplated suicide while recovering from a head injury sustained from filming a thriller movie, as the pain was so great. He basically bruised his brain and couldn’t take painkillers due to a family history of addiction. He had to use therapy to get through it.

24. Every door frame in Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace had to be taken down and rebuilt when they proved to be too low for 6’4 tall Liam Neeson. It cost the set-crew an extra $150,000.

25. Three cameras were standard in multi-cam TV filming prior to the 1970s. Then Garry Marshall needed a 4th camera to solely follow Robin Williams during Mork & Mindy filming since Williams was so unpredictable with his physical comedy.