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
00:04film, there 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,
00:18and basically just relax a bit. But sometimes, for reasons unbeknownst only to themselves,
00:23directors will sometimes keep rolling in the pursuit of some magic shot without the actor's
00:27knowledge, and sometimes these shots make their way into the final version. So let's take a look
00:32at them as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Actors Who Didn't Know They
00:36Were Being Filmed.
00:3710. Michael Douglas – Traffic
00:39Midway through Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning drama Traffic,
00:43the US President's drug czar Robert Wakefield heads to the US-Mexico border in California,
00:48where he speaks with a US Customs Service official while observing inspections of
00:52cars that cross the border. This scene had all of the gritty authenticity of reality,
00:56and that's because basically it was. Soderbergh took Douglas to the actual border and had him
01:01meet with a real US Customs Service executive by the name of Rudy M. Camacho. This wasn't
01:06originally intended to be part of the film, but sensing worthwhile material on the horizon,
01:10the director quietly began filming the exchange with a small handheld camera,
01:14without notifying Douglas. This explains why the video quality looks markedly less
01:19clear than the rest of the film. The garish, overexposed lighting suggests that Soderbergh
01:23just pointed his camera and shot without setting the scene up as usual. Similarly,
01:28the audio quality is of a much lower quality than in other scenes. Soderbergh reportedly
01:33hoped that Camacho wouldn't render the material unusable by referring to Douglas by his real name,
01:38which 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
01:55is strange. Curiously, though, this scene wasn't actually in the film's script,
01:59and was originally just a warm-up exercise undertaken by the actors to get into their
02:03character before shooting. However, the director decided to start rolling the cameras regardless
02:08without notifying the pair, and considering how close the camera ends up to them, we can safely
02:13assume that they just decided to go along with it without breaking character. That one of the
02:17film's most memorable moments wasn't originally planned, and on top of that was basically a stolen
02:22take is absolutely incredible.
02:238. Tom Hanks – Cast Away
02:26There's no denying the over-the-odds commitment of Tom Hanks' Oscar-nominated performance
02:30in Cast Away, and by the actor's own admission, he more or less went crazy for real whilst playing
02:36the shipwrecked, stranded FedEx executive Chuck Noland. In a recent interview, Hanks stated that
02:41in addition to hearing the voice of inanimate volleyball Wilson in his head, he was often
02:45filmed by director Robert Zemeckis without the filmmaker shouting action or cut. As such,
02:50Hanks frequently wasn't sure if he was actually being filmed or not while carrying out his various
02:55survivalist actions. 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,
03:06I had to open a coconut, I had to make a fire, I had to climb in or out of a cave.
03:11It was just me and the box and the lens and the behaviour.
03:15Jason 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
03:28literal hell in an attempt to create as authentically terrifying an experience as possible.
03:33This extended to the director even firing guns on set in order to produce genuinely startled
03:38reactions from the cast, resulting in actor Jason Miller, who played Father Damien,
03:42verbally confronting the filmmaker for the extreme practice.
03:45But Friedkin didn't only fire the gun during the actor's takes, he even set off the gun between
03:50takes. All the while, the cast were unaware that the director was surreptitiously filming
03:55their reactions. Many of these reportedly made it into the final cut of the film.
03:59The various jolting responses when Regan makes noises in her room were actually the result
04:04of a brilliant but unhinged filmmaker shooting off a real gun on set and legitimately scaring
04:09the hell out of his actors.
04:116. Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy – First 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 they were being filmed, but they didn't know 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,
04:32and filmed two weeks' worth of rehearsal footage centred around the actors bonding as a faux
04:37family. But what the director didn't tell the four performers is that he always intended to
04:41use the 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,
04:50"...some of that rehearsal footage replaced scripted scenes that we had of the family.
04:54Those actors are amazing with their characters in the scripted scenes,
04:57but they really became those characters, and you see a lot of that in all of the
05:01unscripted material we had. There's a big reason why we used a lot of that footage,
05:05because it just felt like we were flies on the wall watching real people in a documentary."
05:09While you couldn't blame an actor for potentially being frustrated that their
05:12low-pressure rehearsal footage ended up on cinema screens around the world,
05:16the relaxed authenticity of the end result absolutely speaks for itself.
05:205. Scott Capuro – Mrs. Doubtfire
05:23What self-respecting Robin Williams fan doesn't love his iconic 1993 drama Mrs. Doubtfire? While
05:29Williams' sheer presence alone suggests a shoot that was heavy on improv and controlled chaos,
05:34according to one of the co-stars, director Chris Columbus employed his own sneaky tactics to get
05:38the most naturalistic work out of the entire cast. Comedian Scott Capuro, who played Aunt Jack,
05:44the partner of makeup artist Uncle Frank, recently explained the film's unconventional
05:48shooting style centred around Robin Williams' spontaneity. He said,
05:52"...I spent a week on Mrs. Doubtfire, and I never knew when the cameras were rolling.
05:56Robin would just start and be like, are we filming this? Is this in the movie? He'd do
05:59the scenes as scripted and then toss the script away and try 1,000 other things."
06:03Clearly, much of the film's success lies in the director's willingness to give Williams
06:07and his co-stars the room to experiment without the formality of action and cut,
06:12and just like that, a classic family dramedy was born.
06:154. Most of the Cast – One 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 Miloš Forman to catch his cast unawares.
06:28Forman strove for absolute authenticity throughout shooting, even filming the movie
06:32at the novel setting of Oregon State Hospital, where cast members were assigned a real patient
06:37to shadow in order to get into character. Some of the cast members reportedly even
06:41slept on the hospital wards for the sake of further immersion. But because this
06:45apparently wasn't enough for the director, he also had regular character workshops during production
06:50to help the cast members develop various physical tics and psychological facets
06:54of their mentally ill characters. With these workshops taking place during principal photography,
06:59Forman was able to sneakily capture footage of the actors as they went in and out of character
07:04without ever telling them that he was shooting, and some of this footage reportedly ended up
07:09in the final film. 3. George C. Scott – Dr. Strangelove
07:13Much like with the case of First Man, Stanley Kubrick didn't so much film an actor without
07:18their knowledge on Dr. Strangelove as he did wildly mislead them about the intent of said
07:23filming. In the devilishly entertaining 1964 war satire, George C. Scott played General Buck
07:29Turgidson. And according to none other than co-star James Earl Jones, Kubrick effectively
07:33tricked Scott into giving a performance that he didn't actually want to. Scott wanted to play
07:38the part completely straight, while Kubrick felt that it should be more farcical and over-the-top.
07:42In the end, Kubrick teased a compromise out of Scott by requesting him that he perform a number
07:47of outrageous takes as a practice and promised that he would never use them. In a ruse that
07:51Scott probably should have saw coming, Kubrick ended up using these sillier takes in the final
07:56cut, leaving Scott so irate that he vowed never to work with Kubrick again. And you know what?
08:00He didn't. 2. Robert Pattinson – Twilight
08:04Even while doing the press rounds for the Twilight movies, Robert Pattinson could scarcely conceal
08:08his disinterest in the franchise, and on the DVD commentary for the original film,
08:13even admitted that he didn't realise the cameras were rolling during a particularly snoozy take.
08:17At roughly the 11-minute mark of the film, Bella enters the biology class and is seated next to
08:22Vampire Edward, who's looking more than a little sleepy. Pattinson said this of the scene,
08:27"...I didn't actually know that they were rolling when we were doing this scene. I was
08:30just kind of cold." If the intent to capture Pattinson unawares and milk the awkwardness
08:35of his and Bella's first meeting for every drop, then it certainly worked.
08:381. Jim Bouton – The Long Goodbye
08:41Robert Altman's 1973 neo-noir classic The Long Goodbye features a supporting appearance by
08:46baseball player Jim Bouton, who plays Philip Marlowe's ill-fated close friend Terry Lennox.
08:52In the recently released biography about Bouton's life, Bouton, The Life of a Baseball Original,
08:56he talks in detail about his experience acting on the film, namely Altman throwing him in the
09:01deep end of a major Hollywood movie. Bouton was approached for the role by Gould himself,
09:06after Stacey Keech fell ill and couldn't play the part. Bouton expected to be screen-tested
09:10and given lines to learn, but Altman did neither, simply requesting his presence on set.
09:15Though Bouton was given a script, Altman told him to toss it once he showed up,
09:19while advising him, we're just going to have a conversation, say whatever you feel like saying.
09:23When Gould arrived on set and started talking to the man, he wasn't even aware that the cameras
09:27were rolling, and when asked if they were, Altman promptly shouted, cut. Altman then filmed a few
09:32more off-hand takes of the two actors talking, producing enough improvised banter that he was
09:36able to cut a coherent conversation together. You'd never really guess from watching this
09:40early scene in question, such is the genius of an all-timer filmmaker like Robert Altman.