Acting requires a lot of bravery and putting yourself out there in some pretty interesting ways. This doesn't mean that actors are always comfortable with what they have to do in a scene, no matter how professional or seasoned they are. There are quite a few actors who have admitted to getting drunk before they could shoot a film scene, which more often than not has to do with getting sexy. But there are also some circumstances where drinking is encouraged for improvisation, dancing, surviving the cold, or simply just getting into the character. Here are 13 actors that have admitted to drinking on set.
13 Johnny Depp
While shooting The Rum Diary, Johnny Depp and director Bruce Robinson kept a bottle of Chivas Regal with them the whole time they were shooting. Really, how could they not considering the movie was based on a book by Hunter S. Thompson? The director of the film Bruce Robinson hadn't directed a film in 19 years before Johnny convinced him to take on this one, and while writing the film adaption from the book, Bruce actually broke a six and a half year sobriety streak. The film was completely shot in Puerto Rico, and was in development for seven years before it was done.
12 Margot Robbie
The actress was supposedly a little nervous about shooting her scenes with Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, so she did some tequila shots before. Of the scene, she has said, "The whole thing ended up being quite comical. We [had to] entice this dog to jump in the bed and bite at Leo's feet . . . so we had dog trainers at the end of the bed [with] dog treats . . . we're putting chicken liver on Leo's toes."
11 Anna Kendrick
The indie film Drinking Buddies starring Anna Kendrick, Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, and Joe Swanberg was mostly improvised, and Anna was surprised to find that her beer on set was real. As she said once in an interview, "I was like, ‘I’m super drunk right now!’ And so as soon as the take was over, I had to announce to everybody that I was drunk at work. I was horrified by the idea that I was going to be the next troublesome star who got drunk and started flipping over tables or whatever. I just tried to sit quietly until I sobered up."
10 Jennifer Lawrence
Jennifer Lawrence recently admitted that she got drunk to shoot her first intimate scene with Chris Pratt in Passengers. It doesn't sound like it helped much however, since most of her buzz wore off while they were still on set and she started to get hungover before she was done. She said in an interview that when she got home, she felt kind of anxious and freaked out about it.
9 Billy Bob Thornton
In Bad Santa, Billy Bob Thornton is drunk a lot, so he felt it would be appropriate to just get drunk himself. In the film, he plays a department store Santa Claus who is a bit down and out... and a full-on alcoholic. Billy Bob was quite open about the fact that he was actually drunk for a lot of it. As he said, "If you're going to play a guy like this, you can't be sort of drunk, you know? And I wasn't sort of drunk. You have to go completely into it."
8 Robert Pattinson
In the film The Rover, Robert Pattinson had to work in the cold and harsh Australian outback. To get through filming, he reportedly drank a bunch of vodka. Director Guy Pearce said at a panel to promote the film that Robert "handled himself really well" despite the circumstances but that "he drank more vodka than I advised him to drink."
7 Bob Hoskins And John Leguizamo
Did you even know that Super Mario Bros was made into a film? Well, it was, back in 1993. Actor Bob Hoskins admitted that it was the worst film he's ever made. The actors were well aware of how terrible the finished product was going to be during shooting, so they decided to just get drunk to get through it. In John Leguizamo's 2006 autobiography, he admitted that they got so drunk that he accidentally broke one of Bob's fingers while shooting a scene.
6 Mila Kunis And Natalie Portman
In Black Swan, the actresses have a pretty steamy love scene, so they supposedly shared a bottle of tequila ahead of time to get nice and loosened up. Mila later denied the claims, but both the direction and someone else on set also claimed that the actresses were "in their cups" during shooting. Most likely, Mila denied it to keep her professional image, as not everyone thinks that drinking on the job is super appropriate.
5 Martin Sheen
In the opening sequence of Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen's character is quite drunk in a hotel room, and as it turns out so was he. Director Francis Ford Coppola gave him the go ahead to get super tipsy to shoot and then just let the camera roll as he got more and more drunk. The scene was unscripted and during filming he actually broke a mirror with his hand, cut himself, started crying, and almost attacked Francis off camera. This film was notorious for its grueling shoot, and Martin actually had a heart attack.
4 Shia LaBeouf
In Lawless, Shia LaBeouf played a bootlegger during prohibition, so he felt it was only appropriate to drink plenty of moonshine during filming. However, the story goes that Shia might have taken the drinking a little further than he should have in order to remain professional on set. Mia Wasikowska, who played his love interest, said that she actually tried to quit because she wasn't comfortable working with him in that manner. He supposedly went overboard in the aggression department.
3 Edward Norton And Brad Pitt
There's a scene in Fight Club where Edward Norton and Brad Pitt are drunkenly hitting golf. It turns out that not only were they actually drunk in the scene but the setup wasn't even planned. The actors were actually just drunkenly hitting golf balls into the food truck during some down time and David Fincher decided to catch it on tape and put it in the movie. He started rolling the camera and feeding them lines, which ended up working incredibly well so it's now in the movie that we all know and love.
2 Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, And Matt Dillon
The 1998 film Wild Things was, well, wildly popular, and many consider it to be one of the most erotic mainstream films out there. There's a famous threesome scene involving Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, and Matt Dillon. Neve spilled in an interview that the three of them decided to get drunk together first.
1 Fred Astaire
In the 1942 film Holiday Inn, Fred Astaire was quite drunk for one of the scenes... if you trust the word of his daughter Ava. He has a drunken dancing scene which he prepared for by taking two shots of bourbon. But then he proceeded to take an additional shot before each additional scene, which landed him at a total of eight shots after seven takes. They ended up using the final take which means that Fred is plenty drunk in the shot used in the film. And yet he's still an unbelievably good dancer.
sources: cnn.com, dailymail.co.uk, cinemablend.com
