Leonardo DiCaprio slept in what to prepare for The Revenant?! Sorry, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Unconventional or over-the-top actor preparation for film and television roles often gets a lot of attention from the press, especially when the actor earns acclaim. Actors like Heath Ledger and Jim Carrey are legendary for the lengths they’ve taken to make their characters come to life. Meryl Streep is especially well-known for throwing herself into her roles and learning new skills to perfect her acting.
While these insane levels of preparation sometimes pay off, it isn’t always a guarantee of success. Sometimes, it’s not even a guarantee that an actor’s role will make it into the film at all. Plenty of actors have put tons of time into preparing for a role just for the movie to underperform or for their characters to be cut. Talk about a complete waste of time.
1. Bill Pullman And So Many Other People Were Cut From ‘The Thin Red Line,’ It Could’ve Been A Different Movie Entirely
The Thin Red Line is a beloved war movie with a star-studded ensemble cast that only grows in stature year after year. Had the movie kept every performance shot during production, the cast would have had even more big-name actors.
Several actors like Bill Pullman, who appeared in promotional images for the film, had their roles cut entirely from the final film. Mickey Rourke, who was also cut from the film, has since lamented the loss of his scenes, saying they contained some of his best work. It’s a shame that several talented actors wasted their time, not just preparing for their roles but also filming scenes just to not appear in the final cut.
2. Ashton Kutcher Got A Severe Case Of Pancreatitis From His ‘Jobs’ Diet
In order to get fully in character as Steve Jobs, Ashton Kutcher decided to follow the Apple founder’s strange diet, which consisted largely of fruits. Jobs passed due to complications from Pancreatic Cancer, though Kutcher probably didn’t realize this could have been linked to Jobs’ strange eating habits.
After trying to stick to Jobs’ diet, Kutcher wound up in the hospital with a bad case of Pancreatitis. In fact, Kutcher’s wife, actress Mila Kunis, recently revealed he was hospitalized twice throughout his time preparing for Jobs.
3. Aaron Eckhart Crashed Actual Support Groups For ‘Rabbit Hole’ And Lied About Having A Dead Son
Actor Aaron Eckhart revealed in an interview that he had gone to support groups for parents who had lost children in order to prepare for his role in Rabbit Hole. In a somewhat tasteless move, the actor even pretended to have lost his own child while there.
Though he criticized co-star Nicole Kidman for not joining him, it was Kidman who got an Oscar nomination for the film and not him. Not only was Eckhart’s time seemingly wasted at the group, but he also wasted the time of actual grieving parents in a pretty disgusting way just to turn in a less convincing performance than his co-star.
4. Jared Leto Went Method As The Joker, Only To Be Mostly Cut Out Of ‘Suicide Squad’
Jared Leto – for better or for worse – is wholly dedicated to method acting. This means when he played the Joker in Suicide Squad, he decided to act like an actual villain. He harassed his co-stars, sending them sex toys, used condoms, and a dead rat. Yeah.
Perhaps this unorthodox preparation would have been forgiven had Leto been able to deliver a stellar performance as the clown prince, but when the movie came out, the majority of his screen time had been cut. What was left did little to justify how horribly he’d acted toward his fellow actors.
5. Tom Cruise Learned How To HALO Jump For ‘M:I Fallout’ But The Scene Was Butchered By CGI
One of the biggest appeals of the Mission: Impossible franchise is seeing the practical stunts pulled off by series lead Tom Cruise. In the sixth film – Mission: Impossible – Fallout – Cruise performed a high-altitude skydive called a HALO jump. In fact, he performed the stunt 106 times with a broken ankle in order to get all the shots needed for the scene.
However, in the final cut of the film, there is a CGI storm that obscures some of the actual stuntwork. The landing is also done in less-than-stellar CGI, which could incorrectly lead audiences to assume the entire stunt was special effects.
6. Christian Bale Gained An Insane Amount Of Weight For ‘Batman Begins’ Before Being Told To Lose Muscle
Christian Bale is no stranger to transforming his body for roles. In fact, the actor is consistently gaining or losing weight to fit the look for a specific character. When it came time to bulk up for his role as Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, Bale may have gone a little overboard when it came to bulking up.
Bale gained about 100 pounds following his role in The Machinist to play Batman but was then forced to lose 30 in quick succession to fit the look the studio wanted. Perhaps he should’ve asked somebody about putting on all that muscle?
7. Val Kilmer Learned To Play The Guitar For ‘Top Secret!’ But They Didn’t Want Him To
In beloved ’80s spoof Top Secret!, Val Kilmer plays Nick Rivers, a rock star turned spy. The film’s three directors, Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers, told Kilmer that he needed to play the guitar for the role. Kilmer spent four months learning the instrument only to find out that the legendary comedy trio had been pulling a prank on him. On his first day on set, they told him to just pretend to play his instruments instead.
8. Leonardo DiCaprio Slept In Actual Animal Carcasses To Prepare For ‘The Revenant’ For Some Reason
In The Revenant, a frontiersman goes through hell after being bombarded by a bear and being left for dead by his companions. It turns out, Leonardo DiCaprio went through nearly as tough a time playing Glass as he actually ate raw bison meat and slept in the corpses of animals for the film.
The performance did earn Leo an Oscar, but plenty of actors have won an Oscar for just pretending to do gross things instead of actually doing them. It might be that Leo went the extra mile for no reason.
9. Jeremy Renner Learned Actual Archery To Play Hawkeye, Even Though It Really Wasn’t Needed
n preparation for his Marvel Cinematic Universe role as Hawkeye, actor Jeremy Renner spent time training with Olympic archers, learning how to properly shoot a bow. However, when it came time to actually play the part, Renner himself admitted the training wasn’t entirely helpful.
It turns out proper archery form differs quite a bit from the showy moves that Hawkeye employs in the various Avengers films, meaning Renner probably would have been fine without all the extra training.