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The Dark Knight isn't so fearless after all.
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00:00Sometimes, the production of a movie will require actors to do something they might not be comfortable with,
00:05whether that's learning an incredibly difficult skill or even facing a deep-seated fear.
00:10Our big-screen heroes might seem all cool and infallible, but they're still mere mortals, just like the rest of us.
00:17So, with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture here with 10 movies that forced actors to face their fears.
00:2410. Ryan Reynolds' Fear of Flying in Green Lantern
00:29There are many reasons why Ryan Reynolds probably regrets doing Green Lantern.
00:33The film was trounced by critics and has become such a laughingstock in the years since
00:39that Deadpool, too, even saw Reynolds joke about killing himself before he could sign on for the project.
00:45Green Lantern wasn't a total waste of time, though.
00:48Not only did Reynolds meet his future wife, Blake, lively while shooting the film,
00:52but the experience of starring in a superhero epic also allowed the sharp-tongued Canadian
00:57to overcome one of his biggest fears.
01:00Flying.
01:01As Reynolds explained on the Today Show while promoting the film,
01:04I'm a little afraid to fly.
01:06I've always had problems with aeroplanes.
01:09In the film, I'm up on high wires all the time.
01:11We were flying all over the place, sometimes it's 60 feet per second.
01:15It was really interesting and really terrifying at first.
01:19Having a fear of flying and yet signing up for a film where your character is a pilot who later
01:23gains the power of flight?
01:25That's a boss move right there.
01:279. Salma Hayek's Fear of Snakes in From Dusk Till Dawn
01:32Though you'd expect the filmmakers and actors to be on the same page before agreeing to shoot
01:37a movie together, that isn't always the case.
01:40Just ask Salma Hayek, who agreed to star in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's
01:45horror thriller From Dusk Till Dawn, only to be thrown one hell of a curveball when the
01:49time came to shoot her famous dance scene.
01:52That curveball?
01:53An enormous snake.
01:54I have a phobia, Hayek recalled in a chat with E! News.
01:58It was not in the script.
01:59I agreed to the movie, and then Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino decided that the dance
02:04is with the snake on me.
02:06Understandably, she then refused to do the scene, but when Rodriguez and Tarantino indicated
02:10they'd be willing to replace her, Hayek opted to conquer her fear rather than walk away.
02:16Frankly, I really needed to pay the rent, she added.
02:198. Daniel Craig's Fear of Heights in Casino Royale
02:23It's easy to forget these days, but back in the mid-2000s, there was a lot of backlash
02:29over the casting of Daniel Craig as the next James Bond.
02:32As casting director Debbie McWilliams recalled in a recent chat with Entertainment Weekly,
02:37It was unbelievably negative, I have to say.
02:41The press response was awful, and I felt so sorry for him.
02:44In the end, Craig proved the doubters wrong when the brilliant Casino Royale released in
02:49November 2006.
02:50But it wasn't just the press that the blue-eyed Brit had to overcome in the early days of his
02:55007 journey.
02:57It was his own personal fears.
02:59More specifically, Craig's fear of heights reared its head when he was told that he would
03:03have to climb a 200-foot-tall crane for the movie's opening parkour sequence.
03:08It was borderline fun and fear, said the actor, but there was no time for my fear of heights.
03:14You just have to do it.
03:15And though Craig obviously didn't do every stunt in this scene, he clearly did enough
03:19to make himself rather terrified.
03:227. Chris Evans' Fear of Taking on a Life-Changing Role in Captain America The First Avenger
03:29Chris Evans may be a kick-ass superhero on the big screen, but he has just as much anxiety
03:34and stress in his life as anyone else. In fact, it was these mental struggles that nearly caused
03:40him to pass on the role of a lifetime, with the actor initially refusing to don the stars
03:45and stripes of Captain America, because, in his own words, it was the thing that I was
03:50most scared of.
03:51While promoting Captain America The First Avenger back in 2011, Evans described how he was initially
03:57quite fearful of taking on the part, mainly because he was hesitant to sign his soul away
04:02to a six-picture deal, but also because he didn't want all the fame and attention that
04:07would come with being a gigantic movie star. He said,
04:10I chose to do this movie because it was the thing that I think I was the most scared of.
04:14I was scared because initially it was nine pictures, then it came down to six movies.
04:19Even six movies, that's ten years, dude. My freedom is gone if I do this movie.
04:24It clearly worked out for the best, though, and in recent years, Evans has talked about
04:28how pushing through that fear and taking the role was one of the best decisions he ever made.
04:346. Jennifer Aniston's Fear of Going Underwater in Cake
04:38Due to her career-defining role in 90s sitcom Friends, we don't tend to think of Jennifer
04:44Aniston as a dramatic actress. However, in 2014, she was racking up award nominations all
04:50over the place for her work in indie flick Cake, where she plays a woman suffering from
04:55chronic pain after surviving a car accident that killed her son. It was a tough role to
05:00take on in general, but Aniston found one particular aspect of the shoot far more challenging than
05:05the rest. In a chat with E! News, she described how a select few scenes in which her character
05:10undergoes water therapy were incredibly difficult for her to do, all because of a childhood incident
05:16that led to her developing a fear of being submerged. She said,
05:20I was a kid and I was riding this tricycle around a swimming pool, and I drove my tricycle
05:25into the swimming pool and I didn't let go, and my brother tried to help me. So I can't
05:29go underwater and no one will believe me. I honestly can't.
05:32Aniston's fear was so tricky to overcome that it reportedly took around 30 takes to
05:37get a single pool shot done right. In the end, though, she received a ton of critical
05:42acclaim for her performance, so her bravery paid off.
05:455. Ethan Hawke's Fear of Scary Movies in Sinister
05:50Ethan Hawke and director Scott Derrickson are currently in theatres with their critically
05:55acclaimed horror flick The Black Phone, but this isn't the first time they've collaborated
06:00to create a spooktacular time at the movies. In 2012, their first horror film together,
06:06Sinister, was also well received by critics, with praise going to its strong performances,
06:11shocking finale, and creepy atmosphere. It's an effective movie, no doubt, and it was the
06:16thought of being involved with something so scary that nearly made Hawke pass on the role entirely.
06:22For years, I never wanted to make one of these movies, he said, while promoting the film.
06:26It's because I thought it would be absolutely terrifying to make it. Producer Jason Blum had
06:31actually been trying to get Hawke to do a horror movie since Paranormal Activity in 2007,
06:37but the actor always refused, simply because he thought the experience would be too traumatic.
06:42In the end, though, Hawke discovered that making horror movies was surprisingly fun.
06:46He went on to make The Purge in 2013, and with The Black Phone's success,
06:51there will undoubtedly be more big-screen scares in his future.
06:544. Robert Pattinson's Fear of Horses in Water for Elephants
07:00Robert Pattinson was last seen as the embodiment of bad guys' fear in Matt Reeves' The Batman,
07:06but that doesn't mean the actor is a fearless badass in reality. In fact,
07:10our current Dark Knight has a fear that some might think is a tad unusual. He's scared of horses.
07:15Pattinson was forced to confront this fear while making his 2011 romantic drama Water for Elephants,
07:21in which he stars as a promising veterinary student who ends up getting a job at the circus.
07:27This required him to interact with animals like elephants and horses, and though the filmmakers
07:31didn't force him to put his jockeying skills to the test, he did have an encounter with a horse
07:36that left him rather shaken. He said,
07:39I had to get knocked down by a horse. That was terrifying. It was just one split second,
07:43but it was a fully grown stallion. I'm kind of relatively scared of horses as well.
07:48Pattinson also revealed that one of his Elephant co-stars picked him up using its mouth,
07:52so it doesn't really seem like the guy had the best of luck around animals.
07:563. Emma Watson's Fear of Singing in Beauty and the Beast
08:00We all have those moments where we think that we're pretty good at singing. In the shower,
08:05most of us can belt out a tune like nobody's watching, which hopefully they aren't. And who
08:10doesn't feel like a pop star after a bit of drunken karaoke? Emma Watson is under no such
08:15illusions, however, with the actress not being confident that she had the vocal chops to star
08:20as Belle in Disney's live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast. She described the prospect
08:25of singing on such a grand stage as terrifying, because it was something she'd never attempted
08:29before. There's no doubt that starring as an iconic Disney character in a $200 million
08:35blockbuster was a daunting hill to climb, but the experience of making Beauty and the Beast
08:40actually helped Watson combat her fear. She said,
08:43I was afraid to sing in front of three people, and by the end, I was singing live in front of 300.
08:48She also received praise for her performance, and the film grossed over a billion dollars to boot,
08:53so not really a bad result.
08:552. Ryan Reynolds' Claustrophobia in Buried
08:59A year before he battled his fear of flying in Green Lantern, Ryan Reynolds was conquering
09:04another much more potent personal demon during the production of his 2010 thriller Buried,
09:10Claustrophobia. In the movie, Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, a truck driver working in Iraq who wakes up
09:17to discover that he's been buried alive. As you'd expect, much of the film was shot with Reynolds
09:22lying in an actual coffin, and this led to the actor's suffering from anxiety, insomnia,
09:27and complete and utter panic for the duration of filming.
09:30I'd go home and I'd pace until sunup, like a vampire, and then climb into a coffin to film,
09:35he said. I was losing my mind. I hadn't slept in days, weeks.
09:39Reynolds also suffered from frequent panic attacks due to being enclosed in such a tight space for
09:44hours on end. Even worse, director Rodrigo Cortez has mentioned that one of the coffins used during
09:49filming was specially reinforced so that Reynolds could feel the pressure of all the sand piling on top
09:55of him. All things considered, it's really no surprise that he was freaking out on a regular
09:59basis. Number 1. Christian Bale's Fear of the Batsuit in Batman Begins
10:04Going back and watching Batman Begins, it's clear as day that the Batsuit wasn't very comfortable for
10:10Christian Bale to wear. For starters, the design of the cowl meant that he couldn't simply turn his
10:16head, he had to turn his entire upper body if he wanted to look in a different direction.
10:20And then there's the fact that being bolted into a sweaty rubber suit for hours at a time doesn't
10:25sound like the most enjoyable of experiences. The actor himself would agree with that, but you might
10:31be surprised to learn just how uncomfortable the suit truly was. Bale hated it to the point of fear,
10:36and even came close to throwing in the towel and asking the filmmakers to recast the role.
10:41I felt like they should recast, Bale recalled, while promoting 2012's The Dark Knight Rises.
10:46I really did, because it was so claustrophobic that I didn't feel like I could breathe.
10:51I felt they've made a mistake and I can't do this.
10:54Fortunately, Bale developed a method to overcome this anxiety, and would ask the crew to leave
10:59him alone for 15 or 20 minutes while he performed some breathing exercises.
11:03The success of Batman Begins would then lead to one of the greatest movie sequels ever made,
11:08where Bale was granted the suit upgrade he was clearly in need of.
11:12And that concludes our list. If you can think of any that we missed, then do let us know
11:17in the comments below, and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe, and tap
11:21that notification bell. Also head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across
11:26various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with WhatCulture,
11:30I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.
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