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10 Actors Who Didn't Know They Were Being Filmed
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00:00Hello all of you beautiful people, Jules here for WhatCulture.com, and when it comes to making a film,
00:04there is one word above all else that is absolutely paramount, and that is cut.
00:10As soon as that word is mentioned, the action breaks and reality seeps back into the project,
00:15allowing the actors and crew to gather themselves, prepare for their next take, and basically just relax a bit.
00:20But sometimes, for reasons unbeknownst only to themselves, directors will sometimes keep rolling
00:25in the pursuit of some magic shot without the actor's knowledge,
00:28and sometimes these shots make their way into the final version.
00:31So let's take a look at them, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:34and these are 10 actors who didn't know they were being filmed.
00:3710. Michael Douglas – Traffic
00:39Midway through Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning drama Traffic, the US President's drug czar Robert
00:45Wakefield heads to the US-Mexico border in California, where he speaks with the US Customs Service
00:50official while observing inspections of cars that cross the border. This scene had all of the gritty
00:55authenticity of reality, and that's because basically it was. Soderbergh took Douglas to the
01:00actual border and had him meet with a real US Customs Service executive by the name of Rudy M.
01:05Camacho. This wasn't originally intended to be part of the film, but sensing worthwhile material on the
01:10horizon, the director quietly began filming the exchange with a small handheld camera without
01:15notifying Douglas. This explains why the video quality looks markedly less clear than the rest of
01:20the film. The garish, overexposed lighting suggests that Soderbergh basically just pointed his camera
01:25and shot without setting the scene up as usual. Similarly, the audio quality is of a much lower
01:30quality than in other scenes. Soderbergh reportedly hoped that Camacho wouldn't render the material
01:35unusable by referring to Douglas by his real name, which thankfully, he didn't.
01:399. Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey – Dirty Dancing
01:43Of the many, many iconic scenes in Dirty Dancing, who can forget the irresistible moment where Baby
01:49and Johnny playfully flirt, dance and lip-sync with each other to Mickey and Sylvia's love
01:54is strange. Curiously, though, this scene wasn't actually in the film's script, and was originally
02:00just a warm-up exercise undertaken by the actors to get into their character before shooting. However,
02:05the director decided to start rolling the cameras regardless without notifying the pair,
02:10and considering how close the camera ends up to them, we can safely assume that they just decided
02:14to go along with it without breaking character. That one of the film's most memorable moments
02:18wasn't originally planned, and on top of that was basically a stolen take, is absolutely incredible.
02:248. Tom Hanks – Cast Away
02:26There's no denying the over-the-odds commitment of Tom Hanks' Oscar-nominated performance in Cast Away,
02:32and by the actor's own admission, he more or less went crazy for real whilst playing the shipwrecked,
02:37stranded FedEx executive Chuck Noland. In a recent interview, Hanks stated that in addition
02:41to hearing the voice of inanimate volleyball Wilson in his head, he was often filmed by
02:46director Robert Zemeckis without the filmmaker shouting action or cut. As such, Hanks frequently
02:51wasn't sure if he was actually being filmed or not while carrying out his various survivalist
02:55actions. He had this to say,
02:57That movie was literally about physical action, and I don't even recall where the camera was set up.
03:02It was just always set up somewhere, because what I had to do was I had to lash a raft together,
03:07I had to open a coconut, I had to make a fire, I had to climb in or out of a cave. It was just me,
03:12and the box, and the lens, and the behaviour.
03:157. Jason Miller and Other Cast Members
03:18The Exorcist
03:19It's no secret that The Exorcist was one of the most infamously gruelling film shoots in Hollywood
03:24history, where Oscar-nominated director William Friedkin put his ensemble cast through near-literal
03:29hell in an attempt to create as authentically terrifying an experience as possible. This
03:34extended to the director even firing guns on set in order to produce genuinely startled reactions
03:39from the cast, resulting in actor Jason Miller, who played Father Damien, verbally confronting the
03:43filmmaker for the extreme practice. But Friedkin didn't only fire the gun during the actor's takes,
03:49he even set off the gun between takes. All the while, the cast were unaware that the director
03:53was surreptitiously filming their reactions. Many of these reportedly made it into the final cut
03:58of the film. The various jolting responses when Regan makes noises in her room were actually the
04:03result of a brilliant but unhinged filmmaker shooting off a real gun on set, and legitimately
04:08scaring the hell out of his actors.
04:106. Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy
04:13First Man
04:14First Man is an especially interesting case for this list, as it wasn't so much that actors Ryan
04:19Gosling and Claire Foy didn't know that they were being filmed, but they didn't know that they were
04:23being filmed for the movie. You see, prior to principal photography, the director assembled
04:28Gosling and Foy with the young actors who would play their screen sons Rick and Mark, and filmed
04:33two weeks' worth of rehearsal footage centred around the actors bonding as a faux family.
04:38But what the director didn't tell the four performers is that he always intended to use
04:41the footage for the final film, as he eventually did, even replacing existing written scenes.
04:47The film's Oscar-winning editor Tom Cross detailed the process. Some of that rehearsal footage
04:51replaced scripted scenes that we had of the family. Those actors are amazing with their
04:56characters in the scripted scenes, but they really became those characters, and you see
05:00a lot of that in all of the unscripted material we had. There's a big reason why we used a lot
05:04of that footage, because it just felt like we were flies on the wall watching real people
05:08in a documentary. While you couldn't blame an actor for potentially being frustrated that
05:12their low-pressure rehearsal footage ended up on cinema screens around the world, the relaxed
05:16authenticity of the end result absolutely speaks for itself.
05:205. Scott Capuro
05:22Mrs. Doubtfire
05:23What self-respecting Robin Williams fan doesn't love his iconic 1993 drama Mrs. Doubtfire?
05:29While Williams' sheer presence alone suggests a shoot that was heavy on improv and controlled
05:34chaos, according to one of the co-stars, director Chris Columbus employed his own sneaky tactics
05:38to get the most naturalistic work out of the entire cast. Comedian Scott Capuro, who played
05:43Aunt Jack, the partner of makeup artist Uncle Frank, recently explained the film's unconventional
05:48shooting style centred around Robin Williams' spontaneity. He said,
05:52I spent a week on Mrs. Doubtfire, and I never knew when the cameras were rolling. Robin would
05:56just start and be like, are we filming this? Is this in the movie? He'd do the scenes as
06:00scripted and then toss the script away and try 1,000 other things. Clearly much of the film's
06:05success lies in the director's willingness to give Williams and his co-stars the room to experiment
06:09without the formality of action and cut. And just like that, a classic family dramedy was born.
06:154. Most of the Cast
06:17One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
06:19One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is such an intimate and confined film that there didn't
06:23appear to be many opportunities for director Milos Forman to catch his cast unawares. Forman strove
06:29for absolute authenticity throughout shooting, even filming the movie at the novel setting of Oregon
06:34State Hospital, where cast members were assigned a real patient to shadow in order to get into
06:39character. Some of the cast members reportedly even slept on the hospital wards for the sake
06:43of further immersion. But because this apparently wasn't enough for the director, he also had regular
06:48character workshops during production to help the cast members develop various physical tics and
06:53psychological facets of their mentally ill characters. With these workshops taking place
06:57during principal photography, Forman was able to sneakily capture footage of the actors as they went in
07:03and out of character without ever telling them that he was shooting. And some of this footage
07:07reportedly ended up in the final film.
07:103. George C. Scott
07:12Dr. Strangelove
07:13Much like with the case of First Man, Stanley Kubrick didn't so much film an actor without
07:17their knowledge on Dr. Strangelove as he did wildly mislead them about the intent of said filming.
07:23In the devilishly entertaining 1964 war satire, George C. Scott played General Buck Turgidson.
07:29And according to none other than co-star James Earl Jones, Kubrick effectively tricked Scott
07:34into giving a performance that he didn't actually want to. Scott wanted to play the part completely
07:38straight, while Kubrick felt that it should be more farcical and over-the-top. In the end,
07:43Kubrick teased a compromise out of Scott by requesting him that he perform a number of
07:47outrageous takes as a practice and promised that he would never use them. In a ruse that Scott probably
07:52should have saw coming, Kubrick ended up using these sillier takes in the final cut, leaving Scott so irate
07:58that he vowed never to work with Kubrick again. And you know what? He didn't.
08:012. Robert Pattinson
08:03Twilight
08:03Even while doing the press rounds for the Twilight movies, Robert Pattinson could scarcely conceal his
08:09disinterest in the franchise, and on the DVD commentary for the original film, he even admitted
08:13that he didn't realise the cameras were rolling during a particularly snoozy take. At roughly the
08:1811-minute mark of the film, Bella enters the biology class and is seated next to Vampire Edward,
08:24who is looking more than a little sleepy. Pattinson said this of the scene,
08:27I didn't actually know that they were rolling when we were doing this scene, I was just kind of cold.
08:31If the intent to capture Pattinson unawares and milk the awkwardness of his and Bella's first
08:36meeting for every drop, then it certainly worked.
08:381. Jim Boughton
08:39The Long Goodbye
08:41Robert Altman's 1973 neo-noir classic The Long Goodbye features a supporting appearance by
08:46baseball player Jim Boughton, who plays Philip Marlowe's ill-fated close friend Terry Lennox.
08:52In the recently released biography about Boughton's life, Boughton, the life of a baseball original,
08:56he talks in detail about his experience acting on the film, namely,
09:00Altman throwing him in the deep end of a major Hollywood movie. Boughton was approached for
09:04the role by Gould himself, after Stacy Keach fell ill and couldn't play the part. Boughton expected to
09:10be screen tested and given lines to learn, but Altman did neither, simply requesting his presence on
09:15set. Though Boughton was given a script, Altman told him to toss it once he showed up, while advising
09:19him, we're just going to have a conversation, say whatever you feel like saying. When Gould arrived on set
09:24and started talking to the man, he wasn't even aware that the cameras were rolling, and when asked
09:28if they were, Altman promptly shouted,
09:30CUT! Altman then filmed a few more offhand takes of the two actors talking, producing enough
09:35improvised banter that he was able to cut a coherent conversation together. You'd never really guess
09:39from watching this early scene in question, such is the genius of an all-timer filmmaker like Robert
09:44Altman.
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