19 Times Male Directors Were Literal Nightmares To Female Actors

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For as long as Hollywood has been around, male directors have been mistreating female actors, pushing them to work in extreme conditions, verbally abusing them on set, and harassing them behind the scenes. In recent years, those women have started to speak out against such treatment, sharing their horror stories from set.

1. Sam Levinson, the creator, writer, and director of Euphoria has been at the center of numerous on-set controversies, many of which involve asking actresses to perform nude for seemingly no reason. Sydney Sweeney, Chloe Cherry, Martha Kelly, and Minka Kelly all discussed asking Levinson to rewrite scenes to make them feel more comfortable.

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Levinson's other alleged issues include a rumored feud with Barbie Ferreira, who exited the show after Season 2, and poor working conditions that include grueling 16-hour shoot days.

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2. While filming The Shining, Stanley Kubrick forced Shelley Duvall into fits of hysteria for over a year. Talking to The Hollywood Reporter about the 56-week shoot, she said, “[Kubrick] doesn’t print anything until at least the 35th take. Thirty-five takes, running and crying and carrying a little boy, it gets hard. But after a while, your body rebels. It says: ‘Stop doing this to me. I don’t want to cry every day.’"

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The film's infamous bat scene was shot 127 times, leaving Duvall with a raw throat, injured hands, and severe dehydration. At the end of filming, Duvall presented Kubrick with chunks of hair that had fallen out due to the stress of filming.

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3. On the set of Justice League, director Joss Whedon got upset when Gal Gadot refused to film a sexualized scene and "kind of threatened my career and said if I did something, he would make my career miserable," according to Gadot.

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"I was shocked by the way that he spoke with me," Gadot told ELLE. "You're dizzy because you can't believe this was just said to you. And if he says it to me, then obviously he says it to many other people." Fellow Justice League star Ray Fisher also said Whedon was "gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable" on set.

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4. Following the Justice League allegations, Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Charisma Carpenter accused Whedon of being "casually cruel," bodyshaming her among other offenses. Numerous other Buffy co-stars, including Amber Benson and Michelle Trachtenberg, also spoke out about Whedon's toxic work environment, where he boasted about making people on set cry.

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5. Alfred Hitchcock had prop men flinging live birds at Tippi Hedren for five straight days while filming The Birds after promising her that only anamorphic birds would be used. After a piece of her cheek was gouged out, she was taken to a doctor who asked if Hitchcock was trying to kill her.

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Later in her career, Hedren said that Hitchcock purposefully isolated her on set, refusing to let other members of the cast and crew speak to her. She also alleged that he sexually harassed her, attempting to kiss her and telling her about dreams where she was in love with him.

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6. Megan Fox was fired from the Transformers franchise after she compared Michael Bay's directing style to both Adolf Hitler and Napoleon. "He’s like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad man reputation," she said. "He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. He’s a nightmare to work for." The specifics of what went down on set have been kept secret, but Fox has said that the story of her washing his car in an audition is an urban legend.

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7. While filming Blue Is the Warmest Color, director Abdellatif Kechiche forced stars Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos to physically fight, with Seydoux hitting Exarchopoulos hundreds of times and Exarchopoulos cutting herself on a glass door. The pair also filmed a single sex scene for 10 days due to the director's extreme perfectionism.

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8. Steel Magnolias's director, Herbert Ross, was so rude to his cast, including Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, and Julia Roberts, that the women bonded through their hatred of him. “My deepest memories of the film were how we bonded together after he told one of us or all of us we couldn’t act," Field said. "He went after Julia with a vengeance. This was pretty much her first big film."

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MacLaine also remembered Ross telling Parton that she needed acting lessons. Her response: “I’m not an actress, I’m Dolly Parton. I’m a personality who has been hired to do this movie. You’re the director. It’s your job to make me look like I’m acting.”

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9. While stories of tumultuous movie sets often leak online, it's rare actually to see recordings. On the set of I Heart Huckabees, David O. Russell and Lily Tomlin butted heads, leading to an infamous filmed meltdown by Russell. Clearly exasperated, Tomlin also took out her aggression on Russell while trapped in a car with Dustin Hoffman and Isabelle Huppert. Do yourself a favor and watch both clips.

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10. Russell has a reputation for poor behavior on set, getting into a fist fight with George Clooney while filming Three Kings and making Amy Adams cry nearly every day on the set of American Hustle. Adams told GQ UK that Russell would scream during takes, ordered her to punch Bradley Cooper repeatedly, and treated the entire crew badly.

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11. While Kate Winslet and her Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron seem to have a good relationship now, in 1998, she said, “I would only work for Jim Cameron again for a lot of money." This came after she chipped a bone, almost drowned, sustained bruises, and nearly caught hypothermia after spending hours in cold water while filming Titanic.

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12. Both Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair broke bones under William Friedkin's direction in The Exorcist. Burstyn was yanked backward so hard at Friedkin's orders that she broke her tailbone and still suffers chronic pain. The shot of her getting injured was used in the final film.

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Similarly, Linda Blair fractured her spine thanks to not being strapped well to the rocking bed in a shot also used in the film. She was later diagnosed with scoliosis as a result.

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13. Roman Polanski and Faye Dunaway faced off on the set of Chinatown, leading to a spectacular Hollywood legend in which after he refused to let her use the bathroom in between takes, she threw a cup of her own urine at the director. When asked about this in a 2008 interview, however, she stormed out, refusing to say if that actually happened.

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What's more substantiated is that the two did not get along and that at one point, Polanski, known for being a dictatorial perfectionist, yanked a hair out of Dunaway's head that was supposedly ruining the shot.

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14. In the wake of #MeToo, the actor and musician Björk accused director Lars Von Trier of sexually harassing her on the set of Dancer in the Dark. According to Björk, he would frequently wrap his arms around her on set and once threatened to climb into her hotel room at night.

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15. While on the set of Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Quentin Tarantino pressured Uma Thurman to perform a stunt-driving feat despite her desire to have a stunt double do it. As a result, she crashed into a tree and sustained permanent damage to her neck and knee.

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16. Bernardo Bertolucci coerced Maria Schneider, who was only 19 years old, into filming a scene where Marlon Brando sexually assaults her using butter as a lubricant in Last Tango in Paris. Schneider was only informed about the scene (sans butter) moments before filming. "I was crying real tears. I felt humiliated," she said later.

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17. Shane Black cast Steve Wilder, his longtime friend and a registered sex offender, in The Predator without telling any cast members, including Olivia Munn, who acted opposite him. While the scene, in which Wilder tries to flirt with Munn, was eventually cut from the film, Munn described the situation as "both surprising and unsettling."

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18. While filming Good Time, Josh Safdie cast a 17-year-old girl in a sex scene with Buddy Duress, a non-actor who had just been released from prison and was high while filming. Duress then exposed himself to her on camera. Allegedly, Safdie let the film keep rolling rather than yelling cut, which led to a feud with his brother and then-directing partner, Benny Safdie.

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19. And finally, the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni feud is a masterclass in he said/she said mudslinging, with both claiming the other was a nightmare to work with on the set of It Ends with Us. However, their co-star Jenny Slate said that filming had been "gross and disturbing" and that she'd complained to the studio about Baldoni's overly familiar behavior that allegedly included unwanted hugging, improvised kissing in scenes, and inappropriate comments.

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With the various legal suits settled, we'll let you parse through the LENGTHY Wikipedia entry at your leisure.

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