The Directors Who Publicly Slated Their Actors

While helming 80s soft erotica '9 ½ Weeks’, director Adrian Lyne struggled to get the emotive performance he was hoping for from his female lead, the smouldering Kim Basinger. “Kim is a bit like a child,” he said. “In order for her to be angry I would rage at her and she would rage back at me. Mickey also had to do it. He frightened her. And that was done purposely.”

Oz directed the infamously combative Brando in 'The Score’ in 2001. Or tried to. “I said I directed the movie, but I really didn’t direct Marlon - 90 percent of the time, he wouldn’t listen to me,” he said. Their relationship got so bad that co-star Robert De Niro had to direct Brando, with Oz passing on instructions via a headset. The animosity was mutual. Brando would refer to Oz as 'Fozzy’ or 'Miss Piggy’, barbs aimed at his prior work on 'The Muppets’.

Things didn’t go at all well on the set of buddy movie 'Cop Out’ between Bruce Willis and his director Kevin Smith. “He turned out to be the unhappiest, most bitter, and meanest emo-b**ch I’ve ever met at any job I’ve held down. And mind you, I’ve worked at Domino’s Pizza,” wrote Smith in his memoir 'Tough Sh*t’, adding that Willis 'fostered an unpleasant and unproductive working environment whenever he was on set’.

'Dancer In The Dark’ might have signalled a more active move into acting for the eccentric Icelandic singer, but not if director Lars Von Trier had anything to do with it, who described dealing with her in vivid terms. “We knew that her and her people would always win because they didn’t care. They didn’t give a sh*t…It was like dealing with terrorists,” he said. She was none too complimentary towards his notorious working style. “He envies [women] and hates them for it. So he has to destroy them during the filming. And hide the evidence,” she said.

Ed Norton’s breakout performance in 'American History X’ was not without incident, but unusually, after the cameras had rolled. Director Tony Kaye’s first cut failed to impress New Line, so with Kaye’s blessing, Norton had a crack at editing it. Kaye wasn’t happy with what Norton produced either, saying that he had 'raped’ his movie, and calling him a 'narcissistic dilettante’. He later publicly disowned the film, and requested his name be removed from the credits.

Apart from being god-awful, 'Batman Forever’ also marked a breakdown in communications between Joel Schumacher, Val Kilmer and Tommy Lee Jones, Kilmer over his poor treatment of crew-members, and Lee Jones for acting up because he was reportedly 'threatened’ by the on-set presence of Jim Carrey. “I’m tired of defending overpaid, overprivileged actors,” he said. “I pray I don’t work with [Kilmer and Jones] again.”

These two clashed on the 'Transformers’ movie, with their differences coming to a head prior to sequel 'Dark of the Moon’. “I’m sorry, Megan,” said Bay, not sorry at all. “I’m sorry I made you work twelve hours. I’m sorry that I’m making you show up on time. Movies are not always warm and fuzzy.” In return, Fox compared Bay to Hitler, which got her fired from the franchise, and arguably had a pretty detrimental effect on her career as a whole.

Death threats. Always the sign of a healthy director/actor relationship. The pair – who made many films together – had always clashed, but things came to a head on 'Cobra Verde’, set in the wilds of Brazil, after Kinski threatened to walk. “You leave this jungle now and you’ll find eight bullets in you and the ninth one will be for me,” said Herzog.

The amiable brilliance of 'Tootsie’ masked some off-screen friction between director Sydney Pollack and Dustin Hoffman. “For whatever reason, I think Dustin feels that directors and actors are biological enemies, the way the mongoose and the cobra are enemies,” said Pollack. “He sees every picture as what he calls a ‘silent war.’ And he’s fought with most of his directors.”