Scenes That Pushed Actors To Almost Quit

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No one said being a Hollywood star was easy. Most films have a few hiccups: production snafus, casting changes, rewrites — it's all in a good day's work. Most actors tend to roll with the punches, but this isn't always the case. What's Hollywood, after all, without a little bit of drama?

Some scenes proved so grueling that stars nearly quit in the middle of production. That infamous baseball bat scene in The Shining? Actress Shelley Duvall allegedly shot that 127 times. The iconic "Bohemian Rhapsody" sing-along in Wayne's World almost didn't happen. And shooting was so torturous on the set of How the Grinch Stole Christmas that the film's makeup artist later sought therapy to deal with it. 

Grueling moments like these may have made actors question whether or not they should walk away, but the results proved tremendously successful. For some, those tough times were rewarded with critical acclaim; others were inspired to find their true calling outside Tinseltown. Their stories prove that sometimes a diva is merely a person with an other-worldly amount of patience that finally ran out. Let's relive these life-changing horror stories together, shall we?

There are few '90s films as classic as Wayne's World, with its slapstick comedy, big hair, and epic Queen sing-a-long. The film, which was developed out of a Saturday Night Live sketch with the same name, helped launched "Bohemian Rhapsody" into infamy. According to Rolling Stone, after Mike Myers' Wayne Campbell popped his favorite cassette into Garth's tape deck, the 1975 song became popular again in the real world, too, hitting No. 2 on the pop charts in the States in 1992. Throughout history, this classic scene has been referenced, parodied, and remixed to no end — but it almost didn't happen at all.

Mike Myers nearly quit Wayne's World over the famed sing-a-long scene. The actor allegedly based the bit on his real-life memories of arguing with friends over who would sing which part of the song when it came on the radio. Unfortunately, producers were pushing for a Guns 'N' Roses song and almost got their way — not!

Myers told Rolling Stone that he almost quit over that song. "At one point I said to everybody, 'I'm out. I don't want to make this movie if it's not 'Bohemian Rhapsody.' I just love the song. It's ballsy that it's that long. It's ballsy that it's two songs in one, that's it's opera ... I didn't think of another possibility."

Producer Lorne Michaels eventually caved, and we think everyone can agree that the world is a better place for it. 

The 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds has been hailed as one of the best horror movies of all time, but greatness comes with a price. That famous bedroom scene –the one where character Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren's) endures a vicious attack from a flock of birds – looks so terrifyingly realistic because it was realistic. 

According to Hedren's memoir (via People), the actress endured inhuman conditions while filming that scene. Hitchcock had allegedly promised the actress that they'd use mechanical birds for the attack, but she was later informed that the prop birds weren't working, so they had to use live ones. She made it through five grueling days of filming as wranglers threw handfuls of live birds at her body. On the final day, Hitchcock loosely tied live birds to her costume, which frantically pecked at her face.

"I was too focused on my own survival to notice, but I was told later that it was even more horrifying and heartbreaking for the crew to watch than the previous four days had been," she wrote.

Hedren's final straw was when a bird pecked her dangerously close to her eye. She told the director "I'm done" and sobbed until everyone left the room. Hedren was reluctantly given a week off on a doctor's recommendation.

Jim Carrey bit off a little more than he could chew when he signed up to play the grouchy, green monster in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. In fact, he almost didn't make it past the first day of filming. To become the beloved villain, Carrey had to spend around eight and a half hours in hair and makeup — a grueling process that allegedly turned him into a real-life Grinch behind-the-scenes.

"The first day was eight and a half hours, and I went back to my trailer and put my leg through the wall, and I told [director] Ron Howard that I couldn't do the movie," Carrey said in an interview on The Graham Norton Show.

To solve the problem, producer Brian Grazer hired a former CIA specialist to help Carrey learn how to withstand literal torture. It turns out that the makeup artists probably could have benefited from the same training. Special-effects makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji admitted to Vulture that he started seeing a therapist after dealing with Carrey's erratic behavior on set.

For many, The Abyss remains a nearly-forgotten blip in director James Cameron's vast catalog. The sci-fi thriller is somehow regularly overlooked even though it raked in more cash than The Terminator and has higher ratings that Avatar and Titanic. It even earned four Academy Award nominations and pulled in the Oscar for best visual effects (at the time, it was widely praised for being shot in the world's largest fresh water tank), reported The Atlantic.

Though The Abyss failed to see the critical success of some of Cameron's other films, the actors will never forget the trauma endured filming some of the flick's most grueling and dramatic moments. According to The New York Times, Cameron hired no stunt divers, and actor to Ed Harris almost drowned on set. To make matters worse, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio allegedly stormed off after a cameramen ran out of tape during an excruciatingly physical scene.

In the scene, Harris aggressively tries to revive Mastrantonio's character after she sacrifices herself. He described the incident to Entertainment Weekly: "[I was] screaming at her to come back and wake up, and I was slapping her across the face and I see that they've run out of film in the camera — there's a light on the camera — and nobody had said anything. And Mary Elizabeth stood up and said, 'We are not animals!' and walked off the set. They were going to let me just keep slapping here around."

The Shining remains one of the most iconic horror movies of all time, but it's not just the script that's frightening. Apparently, filming was equally as nightmarish for Shelley Duvall, who played Wendy Torrance alongside Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance.

Stanley Kubrick has long been regarded as an innovator when it comes to directing, but the stress of his filming style took an emotional and physical toll on Duvall. She was allegedly forced to perform the anxiety-riddled bat scene 127 times and grew so physically ill that her hair was falling out in clumps.

Duvall admitted to Roger Ebert that the experience was "almost unbearable," hinting at the fact that she nearly threw in the towel. In the book The Complete Kubrick, Duvall also spoke about the severity of the situation. "From May until October I was really in and out of ill health because the stress of the role was so great. Stanley pushed me and prodded me further than I've ever been pushed before. It's the most difficult role I've ever had to play," she said.

Was it worth it? That's up for debate. Duvall earned a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for worst actress for her role, but she wasn't sweating it. In 1981, she told People, "When somebody recognizes you at a Dairy Queen in Texas, you're a star." If only poor Wendy had that attitude when her husband starting losing his mind in that secluded mansion.