Male Actors’ Bad Behavior Toward Female Costars
Any woman in any industry can probably tell you a horror story about at least one male coworker. In Hollywood, it’s unsurprisingly no different.
Here are 18 times male actors were literal nightmares to their female costars:
1.
Margot Robbie had an unnamed male costar gift her a weight-loss book totally unprompted. She told Complex’s GOAT Talk, “Very, very early in my career, an actor I worked with — a male actor — gave me a book called Why French Women Don’t Get Fat. It was essentially a book telling you to eat less. I was like, ‘Woah, fuck you, dude.’ He essentially gave me a book to let me know that I should lose weight. … That was a very long [time ago]. I have no idea where he would even be now. Really back in the day.”
2.
In the name of “method acting,” Jared Leto gave his Suicide Squad costars some infamously shocking gifts, including sending Viola Davis a box of bullets. She told E! News, “It was a little worrisome. It made you a little bit nervous, and I’m pretty tough. You know, I got into a few fights when I was growing up…but it scared me a little bit.” She said that, when she met him out of character for the first time at an event, “Before that, I was only introduced to the Joker…and I almost had my pepper spray out. You know, ‘You remember that bullet you sent me?'”
Viola also told Vanity Fair, “He did some bad things, Jared Leto did. He gave some really horrific gifts. He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room. And the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out. And that was our introduction into Jared Leto. Now, I’m terrified just as a person… But the second part was, ‘Oh shit, I’ve got to have my stuff together.’ You talk about commitment. And then he sends Margot Robbie a black rat — it was still alive — in a box. She screamed, and then she kept it.”
3.
On Twitter, Bella Thorne called out her Girl costar Mickey Rourke’s alleged misconduct, writing, “This fucking dude. GROSS. I had to work with this man – In a scene where I’m on my knees with my hands zip tied around my back. He’s supposed to take a metal grinder to my knee cap and instead he used it on my genitals thru my jeans. Hitting them over and over again. I had bruises on my pelvic bone – Working with Mickey was one of the all time worst experiences of my life working as an actress.”
She continued, “So many gross stories of things he made me go thru on that movie, including in his last scene to speed up and rev his engine so he could cover me completely in dirt. Idk I guess he thought it was funny to humiliate me in front of the entire crew. Having to go in his trailer absolutely alone because he refused to speak to the director or producers – so I had to convince him to show up and complete his job, as he shouted crazy demands that he wanted from the producers. In fact I had to beg. Alone. In his trailer. Since the movie could not be finished without him. Everyone’s work would’ve just been lost and completely for nothing. I didn’t wanna do it. I was uncomfortable, but I did what I was asked to do and what was best for the movie. Mickey should’ve never put anybody in that movie in any of those positions that he did.”
4.
In Kramer vs. Kramer, Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep played a married couple going through a separation. During their first take of the scene where Joanna tells Ted she’s leaving him, Dustin allegedly improvised slapping Meryl in the face. In 2018, Meryl told the New York Times, “This is tricky because when you’re an actor, you’re in a scene, you have to feel free. I’m sure that I have inadvertently hurt people in physical scenes. But there’s a certain amount of forgiveness in that. But this was my first movie, and it was my first take in my first movie, and he just slapped me. And you see it in the movie. It was overstepping. But I think those things are being corrected in this moment.”
According to Vanity Fair, off camera, Dustin also taunted Meryl about the recent death of her boyfriend, John Cazale, and his cancer. In 2016, producer Richard Fischoff told the outlet, “He was goading her and provoking her, using stuff that he knew about her personal life and about John to get the response that he thought she should be giving in the performance.”
5.
In 2022, Miriam Margolyes alleged to I’ve Got News for You that her End of Days costar Arnold Schwarzenegger farted in her face on purpose. She said, “He’s a bit too full of himself, and I don’t care for him at all. He’s a Republican, which I don’t like. He was actually quite rude. He farted in my face. Now, I fart, of course, I do — but I don’t fart in people’s faces. He did it deliberately, right in my face. I was playing Satan’s sister, and he was killing me [in the scene], so he had me in a position where I couldn’t escape and lying on the floor. And he just farted. It wasn’t on film. It was in one of the pauses, but I haven’t forgiven him for it.”
6.
On the Charlie’s Angels set, Lucy Liu stood up to Bill Murray for the way he spoke to everyone else on set. She told the Los Angeles Times’ Asian Enough podcast, “When we started to rehearse this scene, which was all of us in the agency, we had taken the weekend to rework that particular scene, and Bill Murray was not able to come because he had to attend some family gathering. So it was everyone else, and we just made the scene more fluid. I wish I had more to do with it, but I didn’t, because I was the last one cast, and I probably had the least amount of privilege in terms of creatively participating at that time. … As we’re doing the scene, Bill starts to sort of hurl insults, and I won’t get into the specifics, but it kept going on and on.”
She continued, “I was, like, ‘Wow, he seems like he’s looking straight at me.’ I couldn’t believe that [the comments] could be towards me, because what do I have to do with anything majorly important at that time? I literally do the look around my shoulder thing, like, who is he talking to behind me? I say, ‘I’m so sorry. Are you talking to me?’ And clearly he was, because then it started to become a one-on-one communication. Some of the language was inexcusable and unacceptable, and I was not going to just sit there and take it. So, yes, I stood up for myself, and I don’t regret it. Because no matter how low on the totem pole you may be or wherever you came from, there’s no need to condescend or to put other people down. And I would not stand down, and nor should I have.”
7.
Sarah Silverman also had a terrible time guest-starring on Seinfeld. On a 2021 episode of her podcast, she said, “I was Kramer’s girlfriend, and I will tell you this: Everyone was really nice, but I had a bad experience with Michael Richards. The first scene I shot, I’m in bed with Kramer, and he’s scared because he hears noises. He says something like, ‘What was that noise?’ Then my line is, ‘It’s probably the wind.'”
However, she flubbed her line and said, “It’s probably the rain.” Sarah continued, “This guy, Michael Richards, breaks character and just starts ripping me a new asshole… He points to the window and he goes, ‘Do you see rain in that window? Do you see rain in that window?’ and I go, ‘No,’ and he says, ‘Then why did you say rain? It’s not rain. There’s no rain in that window! The line is wind!'”
She felt a “lump in [her] throat” and was upset he got away with treating her that way. The next day, while shooting a diner scene, he acted polite and tried to talk to her. She recalled, “And finally, I just cut him off, and I say, ‘I don’t give a fuck!’ … And he’s kind of stunned, and it’s like he snapped out of it a little. He understood what I was saying was, ‘You don’t talk like that and act like nothing happened. I’m not going to be one of those people that joins in and acts like nothing happened. That was shitty behavior.'” Afterwards, he was more gracious.
8.
Elon Musk allegedly made Saturday Night Live cast member Chloe Fineman cry when he hosted the show in 2021. On Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, castmate Bowen Yang revealed “the worst SNL host behavior [he’s] witnessed,” saying, “This man, this person, this host made multiple cast members cry. On Wednesday, before the table read, because he hated the ideas.” A few months later, Chloe seemingly revealed the host’s identity in a since-deleted TikTok. Responding to an insulting tweet Elon Musk made about the show, she said, “I’m gonna come out and say, at long last, that I’m the cast member that he made cry, and he’s the host that made someone cry.”
She continued, “Maybe there are others. But I saw some articles and stuff and was like, ‘I’m not gonna say anything,’ but I’m like, no, if you’re going to go on your platform and be rude, guess what? You made I, Chloe Fineman, burst into tears because I stayed up all night writing this sketch, I was so excited, I came in, I asked if you had any questions, and you stared at me like you were firing me from Tesla and were like, ‘It’s not funny.’ I waited for you to be like, ‘Haha, JK.’ Then you started pawing through my script, like, flipping each page, being like, ‘I didn’t laugh, I didn’t laugh once, not one time.’ … Cut to the sketch made it on, and it was fine, and I actually had a really good time, and I thought you were really funny in it… But, you know, have a little manners here, sir!”
9.
Saturday Night Live cast member Jane Curtin stopped talking to executive producer Lorne Michaels over his alleged refusal to address her castmate John Belushi’s behavior (he dealt with drug misuse). In Live from New York, she said, “Lorne and I stopped speaking. It was during the second year. He wouldn’t answer my questions. I would say, ‘Why aren’t you doing something about John? I found him going through my purse. He set your loft on fire. His behavior is reprehensible. Do something!’ And he didn’t. He would just sort of throw his hands in the air. Lorne cannot confront an issue. So I thought, Well, this is pointless. I’m not going to talk to him anymore.”
John Belushi didn’t just cause problems with his castmates. He allegedly wouldn’t do sketches penned by the show’s women writers. On The Oprah Winfrey Show, Jane said, “Their battles were constant. [The women writers] were working against John, who said women are just fundamentally not funny. So you’d go to a table read, and if a woman writer had written a piece for John, he would not read it in his full voice. He felt as though it was his duty to sabotage pieces written by women.”
10.
During Saturday Night Live rehearsals in 1997, host/former cast member Chevy Chase reportedly hit cast member Cheri Oteri’s head. He hasn’t been permitted to host the show since.
11.
After Blake Lively filed a lawsuit against her It Ends With Us costar/director Justin Baldoni, Abigail Breslin spoke out about the retaliation she personally faced after reporting a male costar’s behavior. In a Tumblr post, she said, “In light of recent events regarding the attempt to destroy the career and livelihood of a fellow actress and woman, I have felt compelled to write this, as I have unfortunately been subject to the same toxic masculinity throughout my life. In my recent career, I’ve brought forward concerns about a male colleague and was deemed ‘hysterical.’ I was told my fears were figments of my imagination. Now, as I’m seeing this pattern pop up more, I realize this is the norm…”
She continued, “When a suit was filed against me by a former employer, (the suit was withdrawn), after making a confidential complaint against a coworker for unprofessional behavior, I had the silly and naive impression they would believe me. I am not known as a liar in my field of work, no matter how vocal I may be. Hence, why I’ve been working for 25 years. Instead of being believed and protected, a suit was filed against me for having the audacity to speak up. I was publicly shamed and defamed in the process. A reputation I had cultivated for over 2 decades had now been tainted as I became the crazy, paranoid and to quote directly, ‘hysterical and wild’ woman, who apparently just had it in for men. My previous abuse was also brought up as ‘unfounded claims’, and I was made to seem like someone who just goes after men, rather than being seen as someone who has been dealing as a professional in this world, since I was a child, standing up for herself.”
12.
In her memoir Love, Pamela, Pamela Anderson alleged that Tim Allen flashed her on the set of Home Improvement. She wrote, “On the first day of filming, I walked out of my dressing room, and Tim was in the hallway in his robe. He opened his robe and flashed me quickly — completely naked underneath. He said it was only fair because he had seen me naked. Now we’re even. I laughed uncomfortably.”
13.
On her podcast Bitch Sesh, Casey Wilson said that her The Santa Clauses costar Tim Allen was “such a bitch” to work with. She called it the “worst, truly single worst experience [she’s] ever had with a costar ever.” She said, “[In our scene] I’m supposed to throw things at him. He’s coming down the chimney, obviously as Santa. And I am woken up thinking there’s an intruder — basically like a home invasion scene…I basically hear him — he goes, ‘You gotta tell her to stop stepping on my lines.’ The producer turns to me with horror on his face and has to walk one foot to me, and he goes, ‘Tim would ask that you stopped stepping on his lines.’ … When he was done, he was so fucking rude. Never made eye contact, never said anything. It was so uncomfortable.”
She said, “It’s the end, and Tim Allen goes, ‘Leaving!’, takes his Santa cape, picks it up, and drops it on the floor and walks out. And they hustle in his stand-in; lovely man, who was much nicer to act against. People are scurrying to pick up his velvet Santa coat. He’s a bitch. And this is the best… I will not say who said this. This was someone that I do not know, perhaps in the crew. [The person] breezes past me and just goes, ‘You’re seeing him on a good day.'”
14.
Discussing the “most difficult celebrity” she’s worked with on Watch What Happens Live, Busy Philipps said, “James Franco and I really didn’t get along when we were on Freaks and Geeks. We were 19, and we really, really disliked each other. It’s well-documented. He shoved me to the ground once. It was really brutal… We’re friends now and we really like each other now, as adults, but as kids, we did not get along.”
15.
Amy Hill didn’t like working on The Cat in the Hat because of Mike Myers’s behavior. She told the AV Club, “He is like a little hermit. He would come in and, I guess, be in hair and makeup. We would wait. I’d be there at the crack of dawn, waiting. We would all be waiting for Mike Myers to come. He had his handlers dress his trailer, and his area was all covered with tenting because he didn’t want anybody seeing him. It was so weird. It was just the worst. It was like I was there forever, and my daughter was 2 and a half, and I felt like I was missing her first everything. I was miserable. I just thought it was really rude for him to not take all of us into consideration.”
“And the director [Bo Welch] was really lovely, but it was his first time directing, and he deferred to Mike so much. Mike would do a take, and then he’d go over and look at the monitors, and then he’d talk to the director, and then we’d do another take. It was just a horrible, nightmarish experience. I don’t think he got to know anybody. He’d just be with his people and walk away. People would come, and then he’d stand there. There was a guy who held his chocolates in a little Tupperware. Whenever he needed chocolate, he’d come running over and give him a chocolate. That’s what divas are like, I guess. Or people who need therapy,” she said.
16.
Laura Benanti told That’s a Gay Ass Podcast that she “never liked” Zachary Levi, whom she costarred with in a 2016 Broadway run of She Loves Me. She said, “Everyone was like, ‘He’s so great!’ And I was like, ‘No, he’s not. He’s sucking up all the fucking energy in this room.'” He tried “to mansplain everybody’s part to them” and kept trying to host dance parties. She said, “He really sucked everybody in with his dance party energy, like, ‘We’re doing a dance party at half-hour.’ I was like, ‘Good luck, have fun.'”
She also called Zachary out for his Instagram Live where he implied that their fellow costar Gavin Creel died as a result of the COVID-19 vaccine. She said, “For him to use Gavin’s memory — a person he was not friends with — to use his memory for his political agenda and to watch him try to make himself cry until he had one single tear, which he did not wipe away, I was like, ‘Fuck you forever.'”
17.
Charlize Theron reportedly had a contentious working relationship with Tom Hardy on Mad Max: Fury Road. According to Mark Goellnicht, a camera operator who was interviewed for the book Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road, the actors argued after Tom was three hours late, while Charlize had been waiting on set in costume the entire time. Mark said, “[Tom] was quite aggressive. She really felt threatened, and that was the turning point because then she said, ‘I want someone as protection.’ She then had a producer that was assigned to be with her all the time.”
In an interview for the same tell-all book, Charlize corroborated Mark’s account. She said, “It got to a place where it was kind of out of hand, and there was a sense that maybe sending a woman producer [Denise Di Novi] down could maybe equalize some of it. A lot of what I felt was coming my way from Doug [Mitchell, another producer] was … oh, [screw] it. I’ll just say it. It was a man forgiving another man for really bad behavior, and I didn’t feel safe.” She said that, after the director barred Denise from set, she “still felt pretty naked and alone” and like she was “walking on thin ice.”
18.
And finally, in Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman by Sam Wasson, Patricia Neal said, “I had done scenes with George [Peppard] at the Actors Studio. I had a very good time, and I adored him, but years later, when I got Breakfast at Tiffany’s, something happened. I was thrilled when I heard we were going to be in it together, but it wasn’t long until I saw that, since I last saw him, he had grown so cold and conceited. On one occasion, Blake [Edwards, the director] and George almost had a fistfight. We were trying to block a scene, and George wanted to change everything that Blake had planned, and George got so terrible that Blake almost hit him. I got them to stop, but I think George got his way. I hated him from that moment on.”
George was also allegedly unkind to Audrey Hepburn. Producer Richard Shepherd said, “I must say, there wasn’t a human being that Audrey Hepburn didn’t have a kind word for, except George Peppard. She didn’t like him at all. She thought he was pompous. When she wasn’t around, he referred to her as ‘The Happy Nun.'”
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