Actors Who Should Have Been Fired From Their Roles

Movie stars: They're those people science has succinctly proven to be the world's most talented, beautiful, inspiring, and perfect humans. And those Hollywood stars are just like us — at least in the sense that they need to acquire and keep jobs to earn a living. They make millions to play make believe and dress in pretty costumes and eat catered food, but technically, that is a job.

Another way that celebrities are like us non-celebrities is that under it all, they're just human beings ... which means they can and do make mistakes. Accidents will happen, but most people go out of their way, all day every day, to make sure they don't make mistakes at work, because those can get a person fired. Why mess up that good thing that provides money for food, housing, and novelty T-shirts? Apparently, this notion is unfamiliar to a handful of actors who did bad things during the production of a movie — so bad that their bosses had good reason to fire them.

A lot of Hollywood big shots happily play "the game," keeping any on-set drama a secret and insisting that rumors about a difficult star were blown out of proportion. But Kevin Smith is not that kind of filmmaker — he loves to deliver brutally honest real talk about his life and work on his podcast, social media, and at speaking engagements. If we're to take him at his word, then Bruce Willis is so hard to work with it's a wonder anyone is willing to keep him on set.

Smith directed the 2010 action comedy Cop Out, but stories about disagreements with Willis leaked during production in the summer of 2009. The National Enquirer (via /Film) reported that Willis skipped the movie's wrap party, an event where Smith toasted the cast and crew thusly: "I want to thank everyone who worked on the film, except for Bruce Willis, who is a f***ing d**k!" 

Smith evidently had a hard time doing his job, claiming Willis wouldn't and couldn't be directed. Smith told WTF with Marc Maron (via Uproxx), that Willis wouldn't even sit for a photo shoot to serve as the basis for the film's marketing. Come on, Bruce, playing with others and promoting the movie are part of the job ... and you can be easily replaced with Jason Statham.

One way to get yourself fired is to go off on a co-worker over some tiny slight, which is what Christian Bale did in 2008 on the set of Terminator: Salvation. Bale starred as John Connor, the man who will save humanity from the rise of the machines. According to The Guardian, while Bale was trying to remain deep in character as that intense individual when director of photography Shane Hurlbut was also trying to do his job and accidentally walked into Bale's eye line. That set Bale off on a rage spiral of a monologue so incendiary and full of screaming and swearing that it's a wonder nobody got punched.

A sampling: "Am I going to walk around and rip your f***ing lights down in the middle of a scene? Then why the f**k are you walking right through? Ah-da-da-da-dah like this in the background. What the f**k is it with you? What don't you f***ing understand?"

A recording of the takedown went viral, and a few months later, Bale apologized in an interview with L.A. radio station KROQ (via The Telegraph). "I was out of order beyond belief," he said. "I make no excuses for it."

Most actors show up to set each day of a movie shoot thrilled to be there and well prepared, knowing their lines and having a lock on their approach to the role, but at least once, Oscar-nominee Edward Norton reported to work far too prepared. In this case, Norton seemingly overstepped his bounds as an actor when he tried to help out with costumes — despite nobody asking for his help — and created a lot of extra work for someone else.

In the 2002 dark comedy Death to Smoochy, Norton plays a guy who hosts a kiddie TV show while dressed in a rhino costume. For his off-stage scenes, Norton's character was a bit of a hippie, for which costume designer Jane Ruhm put together an appropriate selection of garments. However, Norton took it upon himself to commission Armani to design for him the ultimate hippie outfit: a suit made of hemp. Then he reportedly left Ruhm to go through what she told Premiere (via the Los Angeles Times) included "millions of phone calls and negotiations" to get the suit to the set.

Lindsay Lohan's acting career and famously hard-partying extracurricular activities clashed in a big way on the set of Georgia Rule, a 2007 comedy/drama in which Lohan portrayed a drinking, drugging, sex-having, wild and crazy teen who gets sent to her grandma's house to forcibly clean up her act. While the movie had a great cast (it also starred Felicity Huffman and Jane Fonda), it's probably most remembered for being the production that nearly fired Lohan.

James G. Robinson, CEO Morgan Creek Productions, fired off an angry letter to Lohan (which was soon made public via The Smoking Gun and People) berating her work ethic, or lack thereof. "You and your representatives have told us that your various late arrivals and absences from the set have been the result of illness; today we were told it was 'heat exhaustion.' We are well aware that your ongoing all night heavy partying is the real reason for your so called 'exhaustion.'" Burn!

Lohan apparently got her ducks in a row, because she finished filming the movie.

Desperate Housewives was an ensemble TV show if there ever was one, with so many women on Wisteria Lane involved in unbelievable, life-shattering drama week after week. Cast members Nicolette Sheridan and Marcia Cross had experience in night-time soaps with their roles on Knots Landing and Melrose Place, respectively, and Felicity Huffman would ultimately win an Emmy for her work on the series. But don't tell any of that to Teri Hatcher — the veteran of Lois & Clark and Radio Shack commercials allegedly brought a huge amount of tension to the set of Desperate Housewives with her bad diva behavior.

One egregious example: Vanity Fair ran a cover story on the Housewives in 2005, which necessitated a fashion shoot with the cast dressed in vintage swimsuits. So as to keep the people that weren't Teri Hatcher happy, People reported that an ABC operative told Vanity Fair employees to not give star treatment to Hatcher, such as getting first choice of swimsuits or being placed in the center of photographs. Nevertheless, Hatcher got to the site of the shoot first, and according to Today, both of those things happened anyway. When Cross realized that Hatcher had got her way, she reportedly walked off the set.