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Not every actor nails it. These 10 stars prepared all wrong for their roles and the results were unforgettable.
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00:00Where acting is concerned, preparation is key, as even the least demanding role requires an actor to turn up to
00:06set with their lines learned and in appropriate physical condition to play their part.
00:11But sometimes, for one of many reasons, an actor shows up ready to film having prepared in the entirely wrong
00:18way.
00:18From learning the wrong accent, to bulking up too much, doing some misguided research, or even just shaving their whole
00:25beard off,
00:26in many cases, this caused issues on set and forced the filmmakers to pivot their original plans,
00:32coming up with a quick solution to ensure that filming as a whole wasn't impacted.
00:37So, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with actors who prepared totally wrong for a role.
00:43Ian McKellen learned the wrong accent, the keep.
00:47Ian McKellen is about as much of a pro as actors get, but in a recent interview with Variety,
00:53he revealed that a miscommunication between himself and director Michael Mann on 1983's cult horror film The Keep
01:00led to him learning the wrong accent for the part.
01:03According to McKellen, Mann told him to develop a Romanian accent to play the role of a Jewish history professor,
01:10prompting McKellen to characteristically whole-ass the job by visiting Romania and getting first-hand experience to learn the accent.
01:17But when the actor finally made it to set for the first day of shooting, Mann instead told him to
01:23play the role with a Chicago accent,
01:25which caused friction between the two.
01:28McKellen wasn't prepared to play the part with a twang from The Windy City,
01:31and so basically opted for a broader generic American accent.
01:35Combined with the hours he had to spend in the makeup chair each day in order to appear older,
01:40McKellen called The Keep his worst movie-making experience.
01:44Ryan Gosling gained too much weight, The Lovely Bones.
01:48For Peter Jackson's 2009 adaptation of hit novel The Lovely Bones,
01:53Ryan Gosling was initially cast to play Jack Salmon, the father of murdered protagonist Susie Salmon.
01:58Yet during the pre-production process, Gosling reportedly got twitchy about appearing too young for the part,
02:04given that the then 26-year-old actor had to persuasively resemble the father of a 14-year-old girl.
02:10And so Gosling made the decision to both grow a large beard and gain 60 pounds of weight
02:16by drinking melted Haagen-Dazs ice cream whenever he got thirsty.
02:20Ooh.
02:21Because Jackson was extremely busy during pre-production,
02:24he and Gosling had minimal communication until shooting approached.
02:28And when Gosling turned up on set,
02:30Jackson wasn't best thrilled at the radical choice he made without consulting him.
02:34And with that, Gosling was fired from the movie and, in his own words, was left fat and unemployed.
02:40Harris Dickinson studied being a mechanic for a cut plot, Triangle of Sadness.
02:45It's incredibly common for actors to extensively research the internal lives of their characters in order to get in character,
02:53such as working the job that their character does in the story.
02:56And so it seemed totally reasonable that up-and-comer Harris Dickinson studied as a car mechanic
03:02while prepping to play model Carl in the Oscar-nominated black comedy Triangle of Sadness.
03:08Except, wait a minute, was there anything in the movie about Carl being a mechanic while breaking into the modelling
03:13industry?
03:15Nope.
03:15Well, there was in the film's original script,
03:18which detailed that Carl was working as a mechanic when he was scouted to be a model.
03:23And so Dickinson did a lot of research around cars and being a mechanic,
03:27only to turn up on set and be told that this element of Carl's character had been excised from the
03:32script during revisions.
03:34I mean, there's nothing in the final film that prevents this from being Carl's secret backstory,
03:38so if it helped Dickinson develop a sense of his character regardless of the cuts, then what's the harm?
03:44Beyond all the wasted time, of course.
03:47Fran Drescher took vocal lessons to eliminate her nasal voice, the beautician and the beast.
03:52In 1997's rom-com The Beautician and the Beast, actress Fran Drescher,
03:57and current president of the Screen Actors Guild, don't you forget,
04:01portrayed Joy Miller, a New Yorker beautician who is mistaken for a science teacher by an Eastern European dictator.
04:09In an attempt to more persuasively sell that balmy conceit,
04:13Drescher decided to ditch her signature nasal accent,
04:16even going to the bother of taking vocal lessons to subdue her natural nasal quality and sound less quote-unquote
04:23grating.
04:24But when Drescher made it to set sporting a new vocal tenor,
04:28the producers were taken aback and insisted that she toss all that voice training out with the bathwater.
04:33As it turns out, the filmmakers cast Drescher precisely because of her distinctive accent,
04:39as they felt it would further enhance the culture clash element of the silly story.
04:44All the same, Drescher received a Razzie nomination for Worst Actress for her work on the film,
04:49and reviews commonly cited her voice as annoying and off-putting.
04:54Whoopsie!
04:55Brian Cox lost £45 and dyed his hair red.
04:58Red Eye
04:59The great Brian Cox was cast in Wes Craven's 2005 thriller Red Eye
05:04after the filmmakers saw his terrific performance as CIA station chief in The Bourne Supremacy during pre-production.
05:11However, between being cast and turning up to shoot his supporting role in Craven's film
05:16as the father of Rachel McAdams' protagonist,
05:19Cox intentionally lost around £45 after being diagnosed with diabetes
05:23and had dyed his hair red to perform a play in Scotland.
05:27It wasn't quite what Craven and co. were expecting when they hired Cox.
05:31They anticipated a hefty, white-haired man to portray McAdams' father
05:35rather than the more slimmed-down, red-haired guy who showed up on set.
05:39There wasn't anything to be done about Cox's weight,
05:42but the production had the actor's hair dyed black.
05:45It's far from a subtle dye job and presumably aggressive enough
05:48to ensure that there wasn't even the faintest trace of red left on his noggin.
05:53I mean, the movie's not called Redhead, after all.
05:55At the time, Cox noted that even his own agent became concerned
06:00about how much the weight loss had changed his appearance,
06:03with the actor joking that he had made himself unemployable.
06:06But at least healthy, eh?
06:08Henry Fonda grew a moustache and wore dark contact lenses
06:12once upon a time in the West.
06:14It cannot be overstated how much of a big deal it was
06:17to see Henry Fonda playing the villainous outlaw Frank
06:21in 1968's western Once Upon a Time in the West.
06:25It was a far cry from the upstanding, heroic characters Fonda was better known for portraying,
06:30and after some initial trepidation, he agreed to take the part.
06:34But on the first day of shooting,
06:35Fonda arrived on set with a moustache and wearing brown contact lenses,
06:40feeling that the physical transformation would make it easier
06:42for audiences to accept him playing an evil character.
06:45Yet the director saw the matter completely differently
06:48and was excited to shock the audience by having Fonda play a child murderer.
06:53He wanted viewers to know precisely who they were looking at,
06:57to recognise Fonda's distinctive face and deep blue eyes,
07:00and so immediately ordered him to remove the contacts
07:03and have his tash shaved off.
07:05And boy, it was certainly the right decision,
07:08as that initial reveal of Frank's face just pops.
07:10Pops, Anoushka Hempel got a tan to play Dracula's bride.
07:16Scars of Dracula.
07:17Here's something you've probably never even thought about.
07:20Actors can create a cluster headache for make-up artists
07:23if they arrive on set fresh off a sun holiday,
07:26and it doesn't suit the director's vision for the character
07:29or even make basic narrative sense.
07:31Case in point, in 1970's Scars of Dracula,
07:35Anoushka Hempel was cast to play Dracula's imprisoned vampire mistress.
07:39The part required Hempel to be pale-skinned,
07:42being Dracula's vampiric plaything after all,
07:44and so make-up artist Roy Ashton became a teensy bit cheesed off
07:49when she reported to set sporting a deep tan
07:52from a recent holiday to sunny Barbados.
07:54Though Ashton evidently did his best to apply make-up to Hempel's face and body
07:59to give her a more pallid complexion,
08:01there's no mistaking her very obvious tan throughout the film,
08:05especially in comparison to Christopher Lee's more appropriately pasty,
08:09washed-out appearance.
08:11Given that Hempel bears a fair amount of skin throughout the film,
08:14there was surely only so much that they could do to conceal her golden glow.
08:19Dermot Crowley shaved his beard,
08:21Star Wars Episode VI Return of the Jedi.
08:24You may not remember the name Crix Maidine,
08:26but you might recall the rebel general in Star Wars Episode VI Return of the Jedi
08:30who devises the plan to destroy the second Death Star's shield generator.
08:35More to the point,
08:36there's a good chance you notice the very obvious fake beard glued to the guy's face,
08:40because apparently a $40 million sci-fi epic
08:43couldn't afford some decent facial hair make-up.
08:46Yet there's more to the story than this.
08:48Maidine's actor, Dermot Crowley,
08:50risked causing a not-insignificant kerfuffle for the production
08:54when he turned up to set with a clean-shaven face,
08:57given that even the most minor of Star Wars characters
09:00have their own action figures and peripheral merchandise prepared in advance.
09:04When Crowley reported to set to shoot his small role,
09:07the action figures for Maidine had already been manufactured
09:10and showed him rocking a decent growth of facial hair.
09:13And so, in order to not create a legal issue with the toy company,
09:17Crowley was quickly fitted with the infamously naff fake beard.
09:21I mean, just look at that thing.
09:23Henry Cavill got too ripped to play in Everyman,
09:26the cold light of day.
09:27When you think Everyman, you probably don't imagine Henry Cavill,
09:31an actor who, for the last decade,
09:33has mostly portrayed impossibly buff,
09:35larger-than-life heroes like Superman.
09:37All the same, Cavill wasn't quite so known for being a beefcake
09:40back in 2011,
09:42when he was hired to star in the action thriller
09:45The Cold Light of Day
09:46as a regular bloke who is forced to take action
09:48when his family is kidnapped.
09:50However, Cavill had recently finished shooting
09:52the fantasy action film Immortals,
09:55where he played the extremely ripped Greek mythic hero Theseus.
09:58And so, when he made it to set to shoot his new movie,
10:01he still retained much of that chiseled physique.
10:04The director soundly informed Cavill
10:06that his look was entirely wrong
10:08for a character who was intended to be an Everyman,
10:10and he needed to shed as much of his muscle tone as possible
10:13in the days before filming was to start.
10:16Cavill apparently achieved this
10:17by eating and drinking whatever he wanted
10:19and doing no exercise whatsoever.
10:22The end result ultimately isn't very convincing,
10:25but there nothing in this movie is,
10:27so he shouldn't feel too bad.
10:28Ryan Phillippe dyed his hair blue
10:30without telling anyone,
10:32playing by heart.
10:33A slightly less troublesome entry
10:35than most on this list now,
10:36albeit one that still shows an actor
10:38making a judgement call about their character's appearance
10:40without consulting anybody else.
10:42For the 1998 dramedy Playing by Heart,
10:45Ryan Phillippe decided
10:46to dye his hair blue
10:47and didn't run this decision
10:49by the writer, director, producers,
10:51the makeup department, or anyone else.
10:53Phillippe simply decided
10:55to show up on set sporting a dyed head of hair,
10:58surprising the cast and crew,
10:59but the director ultimately decided
11:01that he liked the look
11:02and it suited Phillippe's character
11:04and so allowed the actor to keep it.
11:06It's also worth noting
11:07that Phillippe's co-star Angelina Jolie
11:10similarly has her hair dyed red
11:12throughout the film.
11:13The reports vary online
11:14as to whether or not this was motivated
11:16by Phillippe's radical hair colour change
11:18or not.
11:19All the same,
11:20Phillippe's unexpected dye job
11:21makes this otherwise forgettably competent movie
11:24just a little more memorable.
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