Times Directors Brutally Crossed The Line For The Sake Of A Scene

There's a skill that all actors possess, and while some are much better at it than others, it's universal: they act. This means that you can take an actor and place them into a scene, and they'll pretend they're scared, aroused, angry, or whatever a scene requires. This is true of all people in the profession, so when a director decides that they need to go above and beyond to evoke more from their actors, people take notice.

Unfortunately, this often results in some performers having a terrible time on set, and, as you'll see, it primarily impacts women. Sure, there's the occasional extra step a director will take for their male actors, but a disturbing number of directors tend to cross the line for a scene when a female actor is the subject. That said, the film industry has a checkered past (and present) when it comes to misogyny, and those who bear the brunt of it haven't all remained quiet.

When a director, even one we hold in high regard, pushes things beyond the reasonable or expected, they may get the scene they want, but at the cost of anyone involved. Numerous permanent injuries, mental anguish, and other traumatic experiences have befallen actors in such instances. Some of the lengths directors have gone to in order to get everything "just right" may surprise you.

The rom-com coming-of-age film "The To-Do List" centers around recent high school graduate Brandy Klark (Aubrey Plaza). Because she feels she needs a bit more experience exploring her sexuality before beginning college, Brandy sets a goal to have sex with her crush and finish her to-do list. The film examines Brandy's sexuality through a variety of scenes and includes a somewhat explicit sequence in which Brandy masturbates on a bed — with the camera directly above Plaza.

Maggie Carrey directed the film, and when Plaza asked about the scene, Carrey flat-out told her to masturbate for real. Plaza could have easily pretended to do this as part of her craft, but the director adamant said that she needed to do it for real. Plaza opened up about the scene and her directions for it during an appearance on "Conan" in 2013. Plaza imagined the camera would pan up as her hand went down, but Carrey had other ideas.

"I thought I was doing one thing, and then when I showed up, it was a whole different thing," Plaza told Conan O'Brien. "It was a full-body shot ... I asked the director, 'What should I do?' And she said, 'Masturbate like it says in the script.'" To her credit, despite being incredibly uncomfortable, Plaza did as instructed, and Carrey has called Plaza brave and said that she was game for everything she asked of her.

"The Blair Witch Project" came out in 1999 and exploded into an unexpected blockbuster. The film cost a mere $600,000 to make and raked in more than $248 million worldwide. In it, three young filmmakers set out to shoot a documentary about the Blair Witch. They ultimately disappear, and their so-called "found footage" emerges as what we see as "The Blair Witch Project."

Shooting the film required a great deal of ad-libbing, and the directors, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, pushed their cast to the limit to provoke the desired emotional response. Myrick and Sánchez constantly mistreated and terrified the cast — Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams — as Leonard explained in an interview with Vice.

"We shook their tent; we played sounds of little kids playing outside their tent; we made noises in the middle of the night; we led them to this crazy house at the end ...," Myrick told Vice. "We basically just played the Blair Witch." Donahue added, "They let us know that our safety was their concern, but our comfort was not." Essentially, the directors made the actors' lives miserable throughout the shoot, which resulted in believable performances and a compelling film.

"Die Hard" changed how filmmakers created action movies and it remains influential decades later. It's why salaries increased drastically, it made Bruce Willis an action superstar, and it's why people post memes of "It's not Christmas until Hans Gruber falls from Nakatomi Plaza" every year. Those ubiquitous memes are the result of the penultimate scene. John McClane (Willis) shoots Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), sending him backward.

Gruber falls through a window, dangling high over the street below. The scene shows a close-up of Gruber's face leading up to and at the moment he drops. The look on Rickman's face is genuine, but that's not only because he was a brilliant actor. Rickman knew he would drop 40 feet to a crash pad below but was misinformed about the timing. Rickman prepared himself to fall on the count of three.

Charles Picerni, the stunt coordinator who set everything up, told his people to let him go on the count of one. It's not entirely clear if director John McTiernan compelled his stunt coordinator to do this, but he was definitely on board and put the shot in the final cut. Rickman didn't recall the countdown but said he wanted to do the stunt himself, explaining, "They were very careful to make it my very last shot on the film."

"The Exorcist" is a terrifying movie that quickly became a cultural icon of American cinema. In the film, Ellen Burstyn plays Chris MacNeil, a mother who desperately seeks the help of two Catholic priests to exorcise a demon from her daughter, Reagan (Linda Blair). The director, William Friedkin, wanted to ensure his actors looked afraid whenever necessary, so he did something behind the scenes to make that happen.

The director explained in a Reddit AMA that he had his prop man fire blank shotgun shells in the air randomly to keep them on their toes. "It's, of course, very difficult to say to an actor, 'Now you are looking at the face of the demon' and expect him or her to be frightened when he or she is, in fact, looking at the face of a 12-year-old girl in makeup," Friedkin said. "The unexpected sound of a gun helps to produce the desired response."

Friedkin had no problem messing with his actors, and in the infamous pea soup scene where Reagan projectile vomits in Father Damien Karras' (Jason Miller) face, Friedkin assured him he'd be hit in the chest (via Den of Geek). That certainly elicited a natural response from the actor, and in another interaction with Father William O'Malley — a legit priest working on the film — Friedkin slapped him across the face (via The Week).

Alfred Hitchcock gained a reputation for doing whatever was necessary to get a shot and was renowned for his skills. Arguably, he's one of the most influential directors of all time, and plenty of actors wanted to be in his movies. One such actor, Tippi Hedren, appeared in two Hitchcock pictures, "Marnie" and "The Birds." The latter marked Hedren's debut film, and it ranks among Hitchcock's greatest thrillers.

In the movie, Melanie Daniels (Hedren) walks into an attic and is assaulted from all sides by killer birds. It's one of the most important scenes in the film, and it was horrific for Hedren. Hitchcock once said, "All actors should be treated as cattle;" he demonstrated this during the production of "The Birds," with the attic scene proving his utter disregard for Hedren. Before the scene, he promised Hedren he'd only use robots, not live birds.

Hedren, in her memoir, "Tippi," explained that wasn't the case. "Hitchcock had outlined it for me in great detail," she wrote. "It would be just me and a flock of relentless, homicidal mechanical birds. I'd have no way to escape, and I would end up on the floor, completely terrorized and almost mortally wounded. He lied." (via British Vogue). Hitchcock ordered live ravens, pigeons, and doves thrown at Hedren without warning, terrorizing and injuring the actor, leaving her physically and emotionally exhausted.

Uma Thurman plays Beatrix Kiddo, aka "The Bride," in Quentin Tarantino's two-part feature, "Kill Bill," and she suffered for the role. Thurman worked with Tarantino on "Pulp Fiction" and returned as the lead to slaughter bad guys and do so spectacularly. The film puts the term "over the top" to shame and is excessive in its depiction of violence. Unfortunately, it's also the reason Thurman has lasting physical injuries.

Thurman opened up about an accident she had on set in an interview with The New York Times titled, "This Is Why Uma Thurman Is Angry." Thurman recounted how she filmed the monologue scene while driving a car. She was scared she'd be hurt, but Tarantino assured her she'd be fine, and he wanted her to "hit 40 miles per hour or your hair won't blow the right way, and I'll make you do it again."

Inevitably, Thurman crashed into a palm tree, was seriously injured, and contends with permanent neck and knee problems. She had a massive fight with Tarantino when she returned from the hospital and needed to get her attorney involved to see the car. The accident led to a falling out between Thurman and Tarantino. Finally, after 15 years, the director gave her the footage. Thurman labeled the studio's reluctance to oblige a cover-up and pointed fingers at the now-incarcerated Harvey Weinstein (among others).