10 Actors Who Didn't Know They Were Being Filmed
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00:00Hello all of you beautiful people, Jules here for WhatCulture.com, and when it comes to making a
00:04film, there is one word above all else that is absolutely paramount, and that is cut. As soon
00:10as that word is mentioned, the action breaks and reality seeps back into the project, allowing the
00:15actors and crew to gather themselves, prepare for their next take, and basically just relax a bit.
00:20But sometimes, for reasons unbeknownst only to themselves, directors will sometimes keep rolling
00:25in the pursuit of some magic shot without the actor's knowledge, and sometimes these shots
00:29make their way into the final version. So let's take a look at them, as I'm Jules,
00:32this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 actors who didn't know they were being filmed.
00:3710. Michael Douglas – Traffic
00:39Midway through Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning drama Traffic, the US President's drug czar
00:44Robert Wakefield heads to the US-Mexico border in California, where he speaks with the US
00:49Customs Service official while observing inspections of cars that cross the border. This scene had all
00:54of the gritty authenticity of reality, and that's because basically it was.
00:58Soderbergh took Douglas to the actual border and had him meet with a real US Customs Service
01:03executive by the name of Rudy M. Camacho. This wasn't originally intended to be part of the film,
01:08but sensing worthwhile material on the horizon, the director quietly began filming the exchange
01:13with a small handheld camera without notifying Douglas. This explains why the video quality looks
01:18markedly less clear than the rest of the film. The garish, overexposed lighting suggests that
01:23Soderbergh basically just pointed his camera and shot without setting the scene up as usual.
01:27Similarly, the audio quality is of a much lower quality than in other scenes. Soderbergh reportedly
01:33hoped that Camacho wouldn't render the material unusable by referring to Douglas by his real name,
01:38which thankfully he didn't.
01:399. Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey – Dirty Dancing
01:43Of the many, many iconic scenes in Dirty Dancing, who can forget the irresistible moment where Baby and
01:50Johnny playfully flirt, dance and lip-sync with each other to Mickey and Sylvia's love is strange.
01:55Curiously though, this scene wasn't actually in the film's script, and was originally just a warm-up
02:01exercise undertaken by the actors to get into their character before shooting. However,
02:05the director decided to start rolling the cameras regardless without notifying the pair,
02:10and considering how close the camera ends up to them, we can safely assume that they just decided
02:14to go along with it without breaking character. That one of the film's most memorable moments
02:18wasn't originally planned, and on top of that was basically a stolen take, is absolutely incredible.
02:238. Tom Hanks – Cast Away
02:26There's no denying the over-the-odds commitment of Tom Hanks' Oscar-nominated performance
02:30in Cast Away, and by the actor's own admission, he more or less went crazy for real whilst playing
02:36the shipwrecked, stranded FedEx executive Chuck Noland. In a recent interview, Hanks stated that
02:41in addition to hearing the voice of inanimate volleyball Wilson in his head, he was often filmed
02:45by director Robert Zemeckis without the filmmaker shouting action or cut. As such, Hanks frequently wasn't
02:51sure if he was actually being filmed or not while carrying out his various survivalist actions.
02:56He had this to say,
02:57That movie was literally about physical action, and I don't even recall where the camera was set up.
03:02It was just always set up somewhere, because what I had to do was I had to lash a raft together,
03:07I had to open a coconut, I had to make a fire, I had to climb in or out of a cave. It was just me,
03:12and the box, and the lens, and the behaviour.
03:157. Jason Miller and Other Cast Members
03:18The Exorcist
03:19It's no secret that The Exorcist was one of the most infamously gruelling film shoots in Hollywood
03:24history, where Oscar-nominated director William Friedkin put his ensemble cast through near-literal
03:29hell in an attempt to create as authentically terrifying an experience as possible. This
03:34extended to the director even firing guns on set in order to produce genuinely startled reactions
03:38from the cast, resulting in actor Jason Miller, who played Father Damien, verbally confronting the
03:43filmmaker for the extreme practice. But Friedkin didn't only fire the gun during the actor's
03:48takes, he even set off the gun between takes. All the while, the cast were unaware that the
03:53director was surreptitiously filming their reactions. Many of these reportedly made it
03:58into the final cut of the film. The various jolting responses when Reagan makes noises in her room
04:02were actually the result of a brilliant but unhinged filmmaker shooting off a real gun on set,
04:07and legitimately scaring the hell out of his actors.
04:10Number 6. Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy. First Man. Now First Man is an especially interesting case for
04:17this list, as it wasn't so much that actors Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy didn't know that they were
04:21being filmed, but they didn't know that they were being filmed for the movie. You see, prior to
04:25principal photography, the director assembled Gosling and Foy with the young actors who would play their
04:31screen sons Rick and Mark, and filmed two weeks worth of rehearsal footage centred around the actors
04:36bonding as a faux family. But what the director didn't tell the four performers is that he always
04:41intended to use the footage for the final film, as he eventually did, even replacing existing written
04:46scenes. The film's Oscar-winning editor Tom Cross detailed the process. Some of that rehearsal footage
04:51replaced scripted scenes that we had of the family. Those actors are amazing with their characters in
04:56the scripted scenes, but they really became those characters, and you see a lot of that in all of
05:01the unscripted material we had. There's a big reason why we used a lot of that footage, because
05:05it just felt like we were flies on the wall watching real people in a documentary. While you
05:10couldn't blame an actor for potentially being frustrated that their low-pressure rehearsal
05:13footage ended up on cinema screens around the world, the relaxed authenticity of the end result
05:18absolutely speaks for itself.
05:20Number 5. Scott Capuro. Mrs. Doubtfire. What self-respecting Robin Williams fan doesn't love
05:26his iconic 1993 drama Mrs. Doubtfire. While Williams' sheer presence alone suggests a shoot
05:32that was heavy on improv and controlled chaos, according to one of the co-stars, director
05:36Chris Columbus employed his own sneaky tactics to get the most naturalistic work out of the
05:40entire cast. Comedian Scott Capuro, who played Aunt Jack, the partner of makeup artist Uncle
05:45Frank, recently explained the film's unconventional shooting style centred around Robin Williams'
05:50spontaneity. He said,
05:52I spent a week on Mrs. Doubtfire, and I never knew when the cameras were rolling. Robin would
05:56just start and be like, are we filming this? Is this in the movie? He'd do the scenes as
06:00scripted, and then toss the script away and try 1,000 other things. Clearly much of the
06:04film's success lies in the director's willingness to give Williams and his co-stars the room to
06:09experiment without the formality of action and cut. And just like that, a classic family
06:14dramedy was born.
06:15Number 4. Most of the cast. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
06:19One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is such an intimate and confined film that there didn't
06:23appear to be many opportunities for director Milos Forman to catch his cast unawares. Forman strove
06:29for absolute authenticity throughout shooting, even filming the movie at the novel setting of
06:33Oregon State Hospital, where cast members were assigned a real patient to shadow in order to
06:39get into character. Some of the cast members reportedly even slept on the hospital wards for
06:43the sake of further immersion. But because this apparently wasn't enough for the director,
06:47he also had regular character workshops during production to help the cast members develop
06:51various physical tics and psychological facets of their mentally ill characters. With these
06:56workshops taking place during principal photography, Forman was able to sneakily capture footage of the
07:01actors as they went in and out of character without ever telling them that he was shooting.
07:06And some of this footage reportedly ended up in the final film.
07:10Number 3. George C. Scott. Dr. Strangelove.
07:13Much like with the case of First Man, Stanley Kubrick didn't so much film an actor without
07:17their knowledge on Dr. Strangelove as he did wildly mislead them about the intent of said filming.
07:23In the devilishly entertaining 1964 war satire, George C. Scott played General Buck Turgidson.
07:30And according to none other than co-star James Earl Jones, Kubrick effectively tricked Scott into
07:34giving a performance that he didn't actually want to. Scott wanted to play the part completely straight,
07:39while Kubrick felt that it should be more farcical and over-the-top. In the end,
07:43Kubrick teased a compromise out of Scott by requesting him that he perform a number of
07:47outrageous takes as a practice and promised that he would never use them. In a ruse that Scott
07:51probably should have saw coming, Kubrick ended up using these sillier takes in the final cut,
07:56leaving Scott so irate that he vowed never to work with Kubrick again. And you know what? He didn't.
08:01Number 2. Robert Pattinson. Twilight.
08:03Even while doing the press rounds for the Twilight movies, Robert Pattinson could scarcely conceal
08:08his disinterest in the franchise, and on the DVD commentary for the original film,
08:13even admitted that he didn't realise the cameras were rolling during a particularly snoozy take.
08:18At roughly the 11 minute mark of the film, Bella enters the biology class and is seated next to
08:22Vampire Edward, who is looking more than a little sleepy. Pattinson said this of the scene,
08:27I didn't actually know that they were rolling when we were doing this scene, I was just kind of cold.
08:31If the intent to capture Pattinson unawares and milk the awkwardness of his and Bella's first
08:36meeting for every drop, then it certainly worked.
08:38And number 1. Jim Boughton. The Long Goodbye.
08:41Robert Altman's 1973 neo-noir classic The Long Goodbye features a supporting appearance by
08:46baseball player Jim Boughton, who plays Philip Marlowe's ill-fated close friend Terry Lennox.
08:52In the recently released biography about Boughton's life, Boughton, the life of a baseball original,
08:56he talks in detail about his experience acting on the film, namely,
09:00Altman throwing him in the deep end of a major Hollywood movie. Boughton was approached for
09:04the role by Gould himself, after Stacy Keach fell ill and couldn't play the part. Boughton expected
09:09to be screen-tested and given lines to learn, but Altman did neither, simply requesting his
09:14presence on set. Though Boughton was given a script, Altman told him to toss it once he showed up,
09:19while advising him, we're just going to have a conversation, say whatever you feel like saying.
09:23When Gould arrived on set and started talking to the man, he wasn't even aware that the cameras
09:27were rolling, and when asked if they were, Altman promptly shouted,
09:30Cut. Altman then filmed a few more off-hand takes of the two actors talking, producing enough
09:35improvised banter that he was able to cut a coherent conversation together. You'd never really guess
09:39from watching this early scene in question, such is the genius of an all-timer filmmaker like Robert
09:44Altman.