The Dark Knight isn't so fearless after all.
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00:00 Sometimes, the production of a movie will require actors to do
00:03 something they might not be comfortable with, whether that's
00:05 learning an incredibly difficult skill or even facing a deep-seated
00:09 fear. Our big screen heroes might seem all cool and infallible,
00:14 but they're still mere mortals, just like the rest of us.
00:17 So, with that in mind, then, I'm Ellie with What Culture, here
00:20 with 10 movies that forced actors to face their fears.
00:24 Number 10. Ryan Reynolds' fear of flying in Green Lantern
00:28 There are many reasons why Ryan Reynolds probably regrets doing
00:32 Green Lantern. The film was trounced by critics and has become
00:36 such a laughingstock in the years since that Deadpool 2 even saw
00:40 Reynolds joke about killing himself before he could sign on for
00:44 the project. Green Lantern wasn't a total waste of time, though.
00:47 Not only did Reynolds meet his future wife, Blake, lively while
00:51 shooting the film, but the experience of starring in a superhero
00:54 epic also allowed the sharp-tongued Canadian to overcome one of
00:58 his biggest fears; flying. As Reynolds explained on the Today
01:02 show while promoting the film, "I'm a little afraid to fly.
01:06 I've always had problems with aeroplanes. In the film, I'm up
01:09 on high wires all the time. We were flying all over the place,
01:13 sometimes at 60 feet per second. It was really interesting and
01:17 really terrifying at first." Having a fear of flying and yet
01:20 signing up for a film where your character is a pilot who later
01:23 gains the power of flight? That's a boss move right there.
01:26 9. Salma Hayek's fear of snakes in From Dusk Till Dawn
01:32 Though you'd expect the filmmakers and actors to be on the same
01:35 page before agreeing to shoot a movie together, that isn't always
01:39 the case. Just ask Salma Hayek, who agreed to star in Quentin
01:42 Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's horror thriller From Dusk Till
01:46 Dawn, only to be thrown one hell of a curveball when the time came
01:50 to shoot her famous dance scene. That curveball? An enormous snake.
01:54 "I have a phobia," Hayek recalled in a chat with E! News. "It was
01:58 not in the script. I agreed to the movie, and then Robert
02:01 Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino decided that the dance is with
02:04 the snake on me." Understandably, she then refused to do the
02:08 scene, but when Rodriguez and Tarantino indicated they'd be
02:11 willing to replace her, Hayek opted to conquer her fear rather
02:14 than walk away. "Frankly, I really needed to pay the rent," she
02:18 added.
02:19 8. Daniel Craig's fear of heights in Casino Royale
02:23 It's easy to forget these days, but back in the mid-2000s, there
02:27 was a lot of backlash over the casting of Daniel Craig as the
02:31 next James Bond. As casting director Devi McWilliams recalled
02:35 in a recent chat with Entertainment Weekly, "It was unbelievably
02:39 negative, I have to say. The press response was awful, and I felt
02:42 so sorry for him." In the end, Craig proved the doubters wrong
02:46 when the brilliant Casino Royale released in November 2006.
02:50 But it wasn't just the press that the blue-eyed Brit had to
02:53 overcome in the early days of his 007 journey; it was his own
02:57 personal fears. More specifically, Craig's fear of heights reared
03:02 its head when he was told that he would have to climb a 200-foot
03:05 tall crane for the movie's opening parkour sequence.
03:08 "It was borderline fun and fear," said the actor, "but there was
03:12 no time for my fear of heights. You just have to do it."
03:15 And though Craig obviously didn't do every stunt in this
03:18 scene, he clearly did enough to make himself rather terrified.
03:22 7. Chris Evans' Fear of Taking on a Life-Changing Role in Captain
03:27 America The First Avenger
03:29 Chris Evans may be a kick-ass superhero on the big screen, but
03:32 he has just as much anxiety and stress in his life as anyone
03:36 else. In fact, it was these mental struggles that nearly
03:39 caused him to pass on the role of a lifetime, with the actor
03:43 initially refusing to don the stars and stripes of Captain
03:46 America because, in his own words, "it was the thing that I
03:49 was most scared of." While promoting Captain America The
03:52 First Avenger back in 2011, Evans described how he was
03:56 initially quite fearful of taking on the part, mainly
03:59 because he was hesitant to sign his soul away to a six-picture
04:03 deal, but also because he didn't want all the fame and
04:06 attention that would come with being a gigantic movie star.
04:09 He said, "I chose to do this movie because it was the thing
04:12 that I think I was the most scared of. I was scared because
04:15 initially it was nine pictures. Then it came down to six
04:18 movies. Even six movies, that's ten years, dude. My freedom
04:22 is gone if I do this movie." It clearly worked out for the
04:25 best, though, and in recent years, Evans has talked about
04:28 how pushing through that fear and taking the role was one of
04:31 the best decisions he ever made.
04:33 Number 6. Jennifer Aniston's Fear of Going Underwater in
04:37 Cake Due to her career-defining role in 90s sitcom
04:41 Friends, we don't tend to think of Jennifer Aniston as a
04:44 dramatic actress. However, in 2014, she was racking up award
04:49 nominations all over the place for her work in indie flick
04:52 Cake, where she plays a woman suffering from chronic pain
04:56 after surviving a car accident that killed her son. It was a
04:59 tough role to take on in general, but Aniston found one
05:02 particular aspect of the shoot far more challenging than the
05:05 rest. In a chat with E! News, she described how a select few
05:09 scenes in which her character undergoes water therapy were
05:12 incredibly difficult for her to do, all because of a childhood
05:16 incident that led to her developing a fear of being
05:18 submerged. She said, "I was a kid and I was riding this
05:21 tricycle around a swimming pool, and I drove my tricycle
05:25 into the swimming pool and I didn't let go, and my brother
05:27 tried to help me. So I can't go underwater and no one will
05:31 believe me. I honestly can't." Aniston's fear was so tricky
05:34 to overcome that it reportedly took around 30 takes to get a
05:37 single pool shot done right. In the end, though, she received
05:41 a ton of critical acclaim for her performance, so her bravery
05:44 paid off.
05:45 Number 5. Ethan Hawke's fear of scary movies in Sinister
05:50 Ethan Hawke and director Scott Derrickson are currently in
05:53 theatres with their critically acclaimed horror flick The
05:56 Black Phone, but this isn't the first time they've
05:59 collaborated to create a spooktacular time at the movies.
06:03 In 2012, their first horror film together, Sinister, was also
06:07 well-received by critics, with praise going to its strong
06:10 performances, shocking finale, and creepy atmosphere.
06:13 "It's an effective movie, no doubt, and it was the thought of
06:16 being involved with something so scary that nearly made Hawke
06:20 pass on the role entirely. For years I never wanted to make
06:23 one of these movies," he said while promoting the film.
06:26 "It's because I thought it would be absolutely terrifying to
06:28 make it."
06:29 Producer Jason Blum had actually been trying to get Hawke to do
06:33 a horror movie since Paranormal Activity in 2007, but the actor
06:37 always refused, simply because he thought the experience would
06:41 be too traumatic. In the end, though, Hawke discovered that
06:44 making horror movies was surprisingly fun. He went on to
06:47 make The Purge in 2013, and with The Black Phone's success,
06:50 there will undoubtedly be more big screen scares in his future.
06:54 4. Robert Pattinson's fear of horses in Water for Elephants
07:00 Robert Pattinson was last seen as the embodiment of bad guy's
07:03 fear in Matt Reeves' The Batman, but that doesn't mean the actor
07:07 is a fearless badass in reality. In fact, our current Dark
07:10 Knight has a fear that some might think is a tad unusual;
07:13 he's scared of horses. Pattinson was forced to confront this
07:17 fear while making his 2011 romantic drama Water for
07:21 Elephants, in which he stars as a promising veterinary student
07:24 who ends up getting a job at the circus. This required him to
07:27 interact with animals like elephants and horses, and though
07:30 the filmmakers didn't force him to put his jockeying skills to
07:34 the test, he did have an encounter with a horse that left
07:36 him rather shaken. He said, "I had to get knocked down by a
07:40 horse. That was terrifying. It was just one split second, but
07:43 it was a fully grown stallion. I'm kind of relatively scared
07:46 of horses as well." Pattinson also revealed that one of his
07:49 elephant co-stars picked him up using its mouth, so it doesn't
07:53 really seem like the guy had the best of luck around animals.
07:56 3. Emma Watson's fear of singing in Beauty and the Beast
08:00 We all have those moments where we think that we're pretty
08:03 good at singing. In the shower, most of us can belt out a tune
08:07 like nobody's watching, which hopefully they aren't. And who
08:10 doesn't feel like a pop star after a bit of drunken karaoke?
08:13 Emma Watson is under no such illusions, however, with the
08:16 actress not being confident that she had the vocal chops to
08:19 star as Belle in Disney's live-action remake of Beauty and
08:22 the Beast. She described the prospect of singing on such a
08:25 grand stage as "terrifying" because it was something she'd
08:28 never attempted before. There's no doubt that starring as an
08:32 iconic Disney character in a $200 million blockbuster was a
08:35 daunting hill to climb. But the experience of making Beauty and
08:39 the Beast actually helped Watson combat her fear. She said,
08:42 "I was afraid to sing in front of three people, and by the end
08:45 I was singing live in front of 300." She also received praise
08:49 for her performance, and the film grossed over a billion
08:52 dollars to boot. So, not really a bad result.
08:54 2. Ryan Reynolds' claustrophobia in Buried
08:59 A year before he battled his fear of flying in Green Lantern,
09:03 Ryan Reynolds was conquering another, much more potent
09:06 personal demon during the production of his 2010 thriller
09:09 Buried - claustrophobia. In the movie, Reynolds plays Paul
09:13 Conroy, a truck driver working in Iraq who wakes up to discover
09:17 that he's been buried alive. As you'd expect, much of the film
09:20 was shot with Reynolds lying in an actual coffin, and this led
09:24 to the actor suffering from anxiety, insomnia, and complete
09:27 and utter panic for the duration of filming. "I'd go home and
09:30 I'd pace until sun up, like a vampire, and then climb into a
09:33 coffin to film," he said. "I was losing my mind. I hadn't slept
09:37 in days, weeks." Reynolds also suffered from frequent panic
09:41 attacks due to being enclosed in such a tight space for hours
09:44 on end. Even worse, director Rodrigo Cortez has mentioned that
09:47 one of the coffins used during filming was specially
09:50 reinforced so that Reynolds could feel the pressure of all
09:53 the sand piling on top of him. All things considered, it's
09:56 really no surprise that he was freaking out on a regular
09:59 basis.
09:59 Number 1 - Christian Bale's fear of the Batsuit in Batman
10:04 Begins Going back and watching Batman Begins, it's
10:07 clear as day that the Batsuit wasn't very comfortable for
10:10 Christian Bale to wear. For starters, the design of the cowl
10:13 meant that he couldn't simply turn his head; he had to turn
10:17 his entire upper body if he wanted to look in a different
10:19 direction. And then there's the fact that being bolted into a
10:23 sweaty rubber suit for hours at a time doesn't sound like the
10:25 most enjoyable of experiences. The actor himself would agree
10:29 with that, but you might be surprised to learn just how
10:32 uncomfortable the suit truly was. Bale hated it to the point
10:35 of fear, and even came close to throwing in the towel and
10:38 asking the filmmakers to recast the role. "I felt like they
10:41 should recast," Bale recalled while promoting 2012's The Dark
10:45 Knight Rises. "I really did because it was so claustrophobic
10:49 that I didn't feel like I could breathe. I felt, 'They've
10:51 made a mistake and I can't do this.'"
10:53 Fortunately, Bale developed a method to overcome this anxiety
10:57 and would ask the crew to leave him alone for 15 or 20 minutes
11:00 while he performed some breathing exercises. The success
11:03 of Batman Begins would then lead to one of the greatest movie
11:07 sequels ever made, where Bale was granted the suit upgrade he
11:10 was clearly in need of.
11:12 And that concludes our list. If you can think of any that we
11:15 missed, then do let us know in the comments below. And while
11:18 you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that
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11:24 there. And I can be found across various social medias just by
11:27 searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with What Culture,
11:30 I hope you have a magical day and I'll see you real soon.