Crazy Things Actors Demanded To Appear In A Movie

Reaching a certain level of fame and renown in Hollywood can grant you quite a bit of power, as the following actors' various on set demands reveal. Although movies need about a million people to get made, often times the leading players can be the "make or break" factor. So it makes sense that big wigs would want to please their lead actors by doing all that they can to comply with their every wish and whim. 

The term "diva" is frequently and unfortunately trotted out to describe female stars who are exhibiting demanding behavior, but these actors show that a person of any gender can break out the big guns when it comes to abnormal or surprising requests. Forget a backstage hide out with scented candles, a bowl of exclusively brown M&Ms, or a dedicated assistant. These leading men took it to the next level with their employment terms.

According to a New York magazine profile, Jack Nicholson originally turned down the role of mob boss Frank Costello in Martin Scorsese's film The Departed, telling the director, "I'd love to work with you, Marty, I've always wanted to work with you — and Leo — but I just can't do something because I like the idea. I gotta have a part that I'm interested in."

So the director collaborated with Nicholson to tailor the part to Nicholson's liking, acquiescing to his demands that the character have a sex scene involving two women, a sex toy, and copious illegal substances. Nicholson remarked, "I pushed that side [of Costello] pretty good. He's a mad, bad nut job, so he's evil sexually too." He also suggested a callback where he'd wear the same sex toy in an another especially memorable moment. "This was my idea and improvisational," Nicholson told Rolling Stone about that particular scene. "But that's what these parts are for me: spicing the movie."

The Yankees-loving Nicholson also refused to wear a certain baseball team's hat in a scene in the film, telling New York, "First of all, they wanted me to wear a Red Sox hat...but I said, all things being equal, I don't want to." Luckily, when you're Jack Nicholson, you don't have to. 

Tom Cruise has garnered quite a bit of press for doing his own stunts in a number of films. Less discussed has been the wardrobe demand the actor reportedly made to accommodate said stunt-doing. 

In 2013, the Daily Star alleged that Cruise "demands G-strings made from soft, stretchy material, allowing him to feel unrestricted when performing stunts and action sequences," with film wardrobe staff being ordered to have as many as 50 thongs at the ready. A source told the paper, "There aren't many movies where you don't see Tom rolling around on the ground or ­doing a back flip off the side of a skyscraper. Over the years it's taken its toll and he had his ­wardrobe department ­rustle him up a comfy thong. He was ­embarrassed at first but he sees it as a way of ­improving his flexibility as he gets older." When you're making a reported $43 million a year, whatever works.

This wasn't the first time that Cruise's favorite undergarment had come up for discussion in the press; in 2012, his former personal manager described to The Daily Mail how a young Cruise would "walk around my house in a little G-string strap and nothing else. I had a mirrored wall and he would stand in front of it, flexing his biceps and admiring himself."

During filming of 2012's Men in Black 3 in New York City, actor and fresh prince Will Smith wasn't going to settle for any old trailer to chill in between scenes. No, he needed one with multiple stories (we didn't even know they made those). 

According to a 2011 article from The Daily Mail, Smith's ginormous trailer was "1,150 square feet with two-bedrooms and two-baths" along with a movie room, marble floors, a bar, and an office large enough to accommodate 30 people. It cost a whopping $9,000 a week to rent. As if that wasn't enough, Smith also had another trailer just for his gym equipment. 

Unfortunately for Smith, the trailer wasn't super popular in the NYC neighborhood where filming was taking place and neighbors soon complained that it was blocking their views. The mayor's office released a statement saying, "To balance the interests of the production and the neighbourhood, we have instructed Men in Black III to relocate the trailer to a private lot." 

Sometimes mayor's offices just don't understand. 

In 2014, actor Ben Affleck told the New York Times about a dispute he and Gone Girl director David Fincher just barely managed to resolve. The cause? A baseball cap (paging Jack Nicholson).

In Boston Red Sox megafan Affleck's case, the offending hat featured a Yankee's logo. "I said, 'David, I love you, I would do anything for you,'" Affleck told the NYT. "'But I will not wear a Yankees hat. I just can't. I can't wear it because it's going to become a thing, David. I will never hear the end of it. I can't do it.' And I couldn't put it on my head." Eventually, Affleck agreed to wear a Mets hat, calling the compromise "very Switzerland." 

Per The Decider in 2015, during director's commentary for the film, Fincher called Affleck out for "not being very professional as an actor" and noted that the disagreement shut down production of the film for four days.  

In 1988, actor Gary Busey had a close brush with death when he was involved in a motorcycle accident that left him with severe head trauma. In a later interview with Larry King, Busey would describe how he'd actually died on the operating table after surgery, telling King, "I saw angels. I was surrounded by angels. And they don't look like what they look like on Christmas cards. They're big balls of light that float and carry nothing but love and warmth."

Busey certainly carried the experience with him to the set of the 2003 film Quigley. According to an AV/Club Toronto interview with co-star Curtis Jackson (via Vulture), Busey was appalled by a set that had been created to resemble heaven. Jackson told the site, "[Busey] looked around and said, 'I can't play this scene.' They were three days behind at this point. But Busey said, 'It's nothing like this. I've been to heaven and it doesn't look like this. That sofa's all wrong. That mirror is ridiculous. They don't even have mirrors!'"

As Uproxx described, Busey then got into a physical argument with another actor who had also had a near-death experience, and everyone had to be sent home.

Actor Crispin Glover was so appalled by the dialogue that he'd have to recite as his character Thin Man in Charlie's Angels that, according to The Guardian, he attended a meeting and told the director that he'd be performing the role as a mute instead. Surprisingly, the film's director agreed to this massive creative overall, and Glover was allowed to appear in total silence for the entirety of the movie. "The dialogue was just expositional," Glover explained to the paper. He noted during an "Ask Me Anything" feature for Reddit in 2016 that he'd had the most input he'd ever had on a character on Thin Man, telling fans, "I was very pleased with how the character came out."

Glover later told Dazed that the role in Charlie's Angels had had a positive impact on his career, saying, "After Charlie's Angels came out I started getting better roles that also paid better ... I've been able to divorce myself from the content of the films I act in and look at acting as a craft through which I'm helping other filmmakers to accomplish what it is they want to do." 

A win for all, expositional dialogue aside. 

Jamie Foxx was riding high on his Academy Award win for Ray when he signed on to co-star in Miami Vice with Colin Farrell, and if reports are to be believed, he arrived to set with a whole boatload of demands. 

According to Slate, after a real shooting took place during production near location in the Dominican Republic, Foxx headed straight back to the safety of the U.S. This caused director Michael Mann to rewrite the film's ending, which he likened to "turning an oil tanker around on a dime." Mann did claim, however, that the "the [reworked] Miami ending worked out to be the better ending." 

Additionally, Foxx refused to fly commercial to location, so the studio was forced to supply him with a private jet. Finally, "there was an early problem because Foxx was getting paid less than Farrell even though he was now an Academy Award winner. Foxx got a big raise while Farrell took a bit of a cut." 

Stars, they're just like... never mind. 

For his part, Mann refused to talk negatively about his leading man, telling Slate, "He has a unique process of acting, and most people don't understand it."

In 2013, word broke that actor Bruce Willis would not be appearing in The Expendables 3. The reason? Willis had reportedly demanded $4 million for four days of shooting on location in Bulgaria, and wouldn't agree to a paltry fee of $3 million instead. Harrison Ford was promptly hired to replace Willis in the ensemble cast that also included action movie alum like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jason Statham. 

Fellow The Expendables 3 cast member Sylvester Stallone would go on to tweet about Willis, writing (via The Guardian), "WILLIS OUT ... HARRISON FORD IN!!!! GREAT NEWS!!!!! Been waiting years for this!!!!" He followed up with another tweet, supposedly in reference to Willis' demands: "GREEDY AND LAZY ... A SURE FORMULA FOR CAREER FAILURE." 

A source close to the film's production told The Hollywood Reporter about Ford's hiring, "I think [Willis] was pretty surprised he was replaced in 72 hours by Harrison Ford – a better actor, a much nicer person and a more interesting direction for the film."