Fame and talent don’t always come with an easygoing personality. Hollywood has always been populated by performers whose brilliance on screen coexisted with a very different reality behind the camera, one that crew members, co-stars, and directors quietly whispered about for years, sometimes decades.
What makes this list genuinely interesting isn’t simply bad behavior for its own sake. In several cases, the difficulty came from a place of obsessive creative investment or ambition stretched past its natural limits. In others, there wasn’t much ambiguity at all. Either way, these ten legends left lasting impressions on everyone who worked alongside them.
1. Marlon Brando
Paramount Pictures initially did not want Brando in The Godfather, and the studio’s reluctance wasn’t without reason. He had developed a reputation for being enormously difficult on set, and by the early 1970s, that reputation was well earned. Brando used cue cards on set rather than memorizing his iconic lines, showing his unconventional approach to acting.
The film’s largest obstacle during Apocalypse Now was the erratic behaviour of Brando once production began. The actor arrived on location in Manila extremely overweight, forcing Coppola to edit around the character and change his initial plan. Brando was open in admitting that he did Apocalypse Now for the paycheck, with his contract stating he would be paid three and a half million dollars for four weeks of work on weekdays only. During Apocalypse Now, Brando had his lines fed to him through an earpiece, reflecting his unconventional process.
2. Faye Dunaway
The Oscar-winning star of Network and Chinatown brought with her a generous amount of clout and a reputation for being difficult on set. On the production of Mommie Dearest, things escalated considerably. Legendary costume designer Irene Sharaff, who had worked with Judy Garland at MGM in the 1940s, said she had never worked with anyone so selfish and erratic. Eventually Sharaff walked off the film.
The crew lived in fear of accidentally making eye contact with Dunaway. She often ordered the crew to clear the set, forcing them to hide behind the boom-mic operator, with some even draping themselves with cloth to hide their faces. Most members of the cast and crew of Mommie Dearest walked away vowing “never again.”
3. Kirk Douglas
Behind the scenes of his many great movie performances was a volatile and temperamental performer. According to People, Douglas was deemed “a screaming bully who directed his directors, threw tantrums on the set and carried an armor-plated wallet.” His good friend and fellow star Burt Lancaster agreed that his forceful personality made him difficult to work with. Lancaster would joke, “Kirk would be the first to admit he is a difficult person. I would be the second.”
Douglas had a way of asserting his authority on projects. According to Roger Ebert, Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory script was a very different beast from the one Douglas was presented with, and the latter was having none of it, demanding it be as raw and hard-hitting as the final film would be. Douglas did have an indelible influence on the world of movies, not least for his contribution to ending the Hollywood blacklist.
4. Val Kilmer
Kilmer garnered the reputation of being difficult to work with. He notoriously battled director John Frankenheimer on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau. Joel Schumacher, who directed Kilmer in Batman Forever, called his behavior towards a crew member “rude, childish, and inappropriate,” and Kilmer supposedly fought with camera operators and the wardrobe department on set.
Kilmer admits his behavior was “bizarre.” In 2020, the Top Gun actor talked about his reputation, saying that in an attempt to honor the truth and essence of each project, he had been deemed difficult and alienated the head of every major studio. It’s a rare moment of self-reflection from an actor whose talent was never in question, only his ability to direct it constructively toward those around him.
5. Russell Crowe
Russell Crowe built a career on commanding performances, yet that same forceful personality has long fueled stories about clashes behind the scenes. He has been linked to arguments, on-set friction, and a reputation for being quick-tempered when things do not go his way. Even Crowe himself has admitted that he has an attitude problem. His temper and difficult backstage demeanor earned him a bad reputation, starting with reports of his antics while filming Gladiator. He cemented himself as hard to work with when he was nearly fired from Robin Hood for constantly butting heads with director Ridley Scott.
Director Curtis Hanson said of Crowe, “What I speculate is that he’s difficult when he’s not trusting.” That list of people he didn’t trust apparently ran from hotel concierges to producers on Gladiator whom he reportedly threatened. Crowe famously has no agent and uses an unusual phone system that makes him hard to reach.
6. Christian Bale
Christian Bale’s reputation for intensity sharpened after widely circulated audio captured him berating a crew member during Terminator Salvation. The outburst became a defining moment in public perception, even as Bale apologized and explained the pressure of staying in character for a high-stakes scene. In the recording, Bale can be heard engaging in shouting and profanities towards the director of photography for apparently walking into his line of vision during a scene.
Bale transforms completely for his roles, losing or gaining massive amounts of weight. This dedication is impressive, but his perfectionism can make him difficult to work with. Directors and crew members have described walking on eggshells around him during tense filming days. Many colleagues still describe him as professional and exacting, yet the incident continues to shadow discussions of his on-set presence. Reports often frame Bale as a committed performer who demands focus and precision.
7. Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Day-Lewis falls squarely under the “intense method acting” category. Most complaints made against him occurred from his time working on the sets of My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood, and Gangs of New York. He reportedly stays in character even when the cameras aren’t rolling, leading to awkward interactions like when he had crew members wheel him around on the set of My Left Foot, a film where he played a paralyzed character.
When you think of method actors, Daniel Day-Lewis comes to mind. In My Left Foot, he insisted on remaining in character as a paralyzed man, confining himself to a wheelchair even off-set. Fellow cast members had to accommodate his self-imposed physical limitations. Day-Lewis has appeared in remarkably few films given his decades-long career, which itself speaks to a working style that was, by most accounts, simply not built for volume or ease.
8. Bruce Willis
Bruce Willis transformed from a beloved action star into someone directors dreaded working with over the years. Reports from recent films described him as disengaged and unprofessional. He would show up unprepared and refuse to do more than one or two takes. Kevin Smith famously called working with Willis a “soul-crushing experience” after directing him in Cop Out. The actor wouldn’t participate in discussions and seemed bored throughout filming.
As his career wound down, crew members reported he demanded huge paychecks while putting in minimal effort. His decline from Hollywood favorite to difficult has-been happened surprisingly fast. The situation was later complicated by the revelation of his aphasia diagnosis, which cast some of his later behavior in a different and more sympathetic light. Still, the years of reported disengagement left a complicated legacy.
9. Mel Gibson
Mel Gibson’s reputation crashed after recorded rants revealed ugly personality traits that shocked Hollywood. His on-set behavior, combined with public controversies, made him nearly unemployable for years. Actors refused to work alongside him because of his documented outbursts. Gibson’s fall from grace was widely publicized, and actors have spoken about his unsavory behavior on the sets of classic films, with Winona Ryder recalling how he had insulted her in the nineties, which Gibson denies.
Even before the recordings, crew members whispered about his temper and controlling directing style. He demanded perfection from everyone while sometimes showing up unprepared himself. His talent as a director can’t erase the damage his behavior caused to relationships throughout the industry. Gibson has made a partial comeback in recent years, though the road back was long and contested.
10. Katherine Heigl
Heigl acquired quite the reputation for being both difficult and demanding on set. In addition to her diva-like attitude, she also has a track record for badmouthing projects she works on once they are released, namely Knocked Up and Grey’s Anatomy. On multiple occasions, Heigl was accused of annoying co-actors due to wardrobe grievances and script differences. She even remarked that the movie Knocked Up was sexist, a film in which she starred and was brought into the global spotlight, and she did this after the film released and she was paid.
It was Heigl who left Grey’s Anatomy with a reputation for being difficult to work with, despite the fact that others on the show may have been the ones everyone was actually walking on eggshells for. Some observers believe this displays the double standards women face in Hollywood. After stalling for a bit, her career was on the upswing with Netflix’s Firefly Lane, suggesting that reputations in Hollywood, however stubborn, are rarely the final word on any career.
What ties most of these stories together isn’t pure malice. It’s the collision between enormous talent and the structural pressures of movie-making, where egos, ambition, and artistic perfectionism can curdle into something genuinely costly for everyone on set. Some of these figures have reckoned with their behavior publicly. Others have not. The work they left behind endures regardless, which is perhaps the strangest part of all.
