35+ Times Actors Gave Unscripted And Authentic Performances

The comedic stylings of the British group Monty Python have become a worldwide sensation. You might imagine that a lot of their stuff has been prized, and we are sure that it has been. But maybe one of the most famous unscripted moments was one that got left in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

In the epic scene where the Roman emperor is reading a list of incarcerated wrongdoers with a lisp, the Roman soldier standing at attention desperately tried not to laugh. But couldn’t help himself, and this was left in the movie.

Working with child actors can be fun but it is also a little tricky because they haven’t developed all the skills necessary to be able to react in a truly honest way. The director of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe knew this.

That’s why he refused to let either of the smaller children see the set of Narnia until they started shooting. So the reactions of both the actress who played Lucy as well as the actor who played Edmund are very truthful.

The 1988 film Die Hard became a classic. This was partly due to the fantastic portrayal of the movie’s villain Hans Gruber by the late great Alan Rickman. But what you may not know is that Rickman’s face during the death scene is very real.

Doing his own stunts, the actor was told that they were going to release him on the count of three. But instead, they dropped him on the count of two, and that helped give his character a realistic facial expression.

If you’re into horror or science fiction, then one of your top 10 movies is probably the 1979 film by Ridley Scott, Alien. This movie was a blockbuster and came with a lot of really incredible special effects.

One of the most iconic moments is the chest-burster scene. The reactions of the cast here are genuine as the effects used during the scene were kept secret from them until that very moment.

Most Hollywood movies are filmed out of sequence. This is so that they can make sure they have all the right lighting and all the actors in those scenes are available. But Steven Spielberg opted to do something a little different in his classic alien film E.T.

He chose to film in the exact order the script was written, and that left the kids of the movie seeing the E.T. puppet for the first time as they filmed the scene. So the reactions are very honest as they were actually scared.

The movie The Usual Suspects was a pretty intense film with a great cast of actors. But just because it was serious doesn’t mean that there weren’t some shenanigans going on. In fact, one of those shenanigans actually made it to the final cut.

In the iconic line-up scene, Benicio Del Toro seems to have a little bit of a gas problem. This, of course, made the other actors laugh, and that was left in.

Sometimes when you’re filming, the director will decide to do something completely off-book just to get a realistic feel for whatever was going on at the moment.

This is what happened on the set of the 1993 film The Fugitive with Harrison Ford when it came to the interrogation scene. The director, Andrew Davis, did not give the script to Harrison, which resulted in everything that went on during this scene being improvised.

Maybe one of the hardest things for an actor to show is to be surprised, especially when they have to repeat a scene many times. So, sometimes this calls for the director to get a little creative.

In the film Elf, there’s a scene where Will Ferrell is playing with Jack-in-the-boxes. The director, Jon Favreau, used a remote control and activated them at different times so that it was always surprising.

Sometimes the improvisation that ends up staying in the movie comes from an actor trying to work his way through a prop malfunction. In the case of the 2008 film The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger relied heavily on his on-the-spot thinking when his prosthetic scars kept falling off.

He started to lick his lips as a solution to keep the scars in place and the director liked the way it looked. Over time, this lip-licking reaction became part of his character.

At the end of the ’90s teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You, the main character reads a very emotional poem. But the scene that ended up in the film was not the scene that was in the script.

After reading the poem aloud, the actress, Julia Stiles, actually began to cry. This was during the first take and because her emotions were truly genuine, the director decided that it worked much better than the intended scene.

On rare occasions, while on set, accidents can happen, and depending on how severe the injury is, actors can actually carry on shooting despite the pain. Such was the case for Leonardo DiCaprio’s gory scene in Django Unchained.

He was supposed to have blood on his hands but he accidentally cut his hand and continues to act while he was bleeding. In between takes, though, they would clean it and add fake blood.

When you’re thinking of iconic moments in comedy films, the scene where Steve Carell’s character gets waxed in The 40-Year-Old Virgin probably comes to mind. But the reaction you saw on screen was not really acting.

During this scene, the actor actually got his chest waxed by someone, so those screams were all improvised and very real. The person doing the waxing also was not a real beautician, so they had no idea what they were doing.

There are some iconic movie lines that, no matter if you’ve seen the movie or not, you probably have them once in your life. One of these comes from the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy.

There is a scene where Dustin Hoffman’s character yells at the taxi cab, “Hey, I’m walkin’ here!”. That line was not actually in the script. It was the actor’s very real response to traffic in New York City.

The character that Isla Fisher plays in Now You See Me has a very interesting magic trick seen in the movie. The trick takes place in a water tank where she is meant to escape from it easily.

In the film, she is supposed to look like she is drowning at one point. However, a prop got caught on the actress’s outfit, and so she actually was drowning and unable to get out of the water for several minutes.

There is no substitute when it comes to the actual reaction to pain than actually being in pain. Take, for instance, Viggo Mortensen and his broken toe during the filming of The Two Towers.

 In one scene, he became frustrated and kicked a helmet on the battlefield. After he did this, he released a horrifying scream, and that was because he had kicked it so hard that he broke his toe.

There are all kinds of tricks of the trade when it comes to stunts in films. But sometimes, no matter how hard you try, stunts don’t look as real as actually completing the task at hand. That is why Cary Elwes got a little bump on the head during the filming of The Princess Bride.

In the scene where Christopher Guest’s character hits Cary in the head with a sword, the actor is actually getting hit in the head. The shot was great, but unfortunately, the actor ended up in the hospital.

When you are filming a movie that is focused on any type of combat sport like boxing, you want the fights to look really realistic. Most of the time, this can be done with some clever camera work and stunt doubles.

But when it came to Rocky IV, Sylvester Stallone really wanted the fight with Dolph Lundgren to be real. So he told him to just wail on him for the first 15 seconds. It looked great on film, but it landed Stallone in hospital for more than a week.

There were a lot of extra steps taken when it came to the filming of Saving Private Ryan, in order to create a realistic feel to the film. To do this, most of the cast wound up going to a 10-day boot camp, except for one lucky actor.

Matt Damon was denied attending this boot camp so that the rest of the cast would be a little more hostile to him, seeing as how he got out of the harsh treatment they had gone through.

Sometimes when filming, the director catches a spontaneous moment that is too good not to use. Take, for instance, the trip in the bleachers that the main character in The Princess Diaries experiences.

It had rained recently in the area they were shooting the film in and because of this, Anne Hathaway slipped in some water and landed on her bottom on the bleachers. The director loved it and left it in the film.

Some directors really like to get their actors in the mood, so they will create certain circumstances to do so. For the movie based on the French Revolution, Les Misérables, the director did just that.

To get into the spirit of the era, the director instructed the cast to quickly build a barricade in 10 minutes out of whatever they could find. This is the actual scene that ended up in the final cut.

The 1971 version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is an iconic film. Not only were there incredible effects but the set itself was amazing. Could you imagine being a kid and walking into that?

The film’s director actually decided to keep the children away from the set as it was being built so that when they walked in, they would have a jaw-dropping experience. It worked, and the scene made its way into the film.

The psychological thriller Seven was filled with a lot of disturbing imagery and subject matter. We can imagine there were a lot of unintended takes that wound up in the film.

One of those that we do know of is, of course, the reaction of John C. McGinley’s character when the body of sloth begins to move in the film. The actor apparently didn’t know it was a real person in makeup.

Most of the time, if there are harsh conditions while filming, the actors in the scenes will be warned of this and protected against them. This was the case on the set of the legendary movie Titanic.

The cast was warned that the water that would fill the set was cold… But they just weren’t told how cold. Needless to say, when Kate Winslet was in the water, it was so cold she was shivering, and that added to the realism, so it was left in the film.

Some actors like to stay in character and really give it their all, which means occasionally going above and beyond when it comes to the action scenes. That is what happened while filming the movie The Hateful Eight.

Kurt Russell actually smashed the guitar during a particular scene and didn’t realize it was an antique guitar which caused the other actor to react even more than they typically would have. The director liked the take, and so it became the final one.

A lot of actors actually enjoy doing their own stunts, and so it’s no surprise that when there came a time for one on the set of Back to the Future III, Michael J. Fox agreed to do a little stunt work. However, it didn’t quite go as planned.

During the scene where his character is strung up, he was unable to get his hands in place, and the rope actually began to choke him. Good thing someone realized this and got him down!

One of the most beloved romantic comedies ever made may just well be Pretty Woman. There are many iconic scenes in that movie. But one of them actually wasn’t quite scripted. We’re talking about the jewelry box snapping scene.

In this scene, Richard Gere did a little improvisation when he snapped the jewelry box shut as Julia Roberts was reaching for it. Because this wasn’t in the script, the reaction that Julia Roberts had was authentic.

For T.V. shows that run for a long time, the actors become like family after a while. That means when the show comes to an end, and there have to be goodbyes said, sometimes those emotions reflect exactly what’s happening in real life.

Take, for instance, the scene in The Office where Jenna Fischer is saying goodbye to Steve Carell. The tears were all very real and found their way into the final episode.

Comedians tend to be great at improvisation, and sometimes they bring that with them when they begin to diversify their roles and journey into more dramatic ones. One example can be seen in the fart story scene in Good Will Hunting.

Robin Williams improvised the whole story, and so the final scene of Matt Damon’s laughter was actually Damon really laughing, and it just was so authentic that it had to be kept.

If you are into film studies, then you know that one of the classics is the 1967 movie The Graduate. In its iconic final scene, the director got a little creative in order to elicit the most natural expressions from the actors.

He decided to not tell the two actors when he was going to cut and let the camera roll. That had to be a little uncomfortable for a while and the mood changes worked perfectly.

There are a lot of shocking things that went on during the making of the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was definitely a counterculture movie, and one of the scenes was even shocking to the cast.

In the scene where the body is unveiled, nobody knew that there would be a body under the dining table. Except for Tim Curry who had to unveil the cloth. So, the cast was shocked to see what was revealed.

Sure, actors can act surprised but their reactions would be a lot more believable if they were actually kept in the dark about a secret. So, for the actors of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, the final scene, and the big reveal were kept on the down-low.

None of the cast knew which character was making the big return or that a character was even making a big return. To do this, the actor went uncredited until the final scene had been filmed.

Once again, directors will do anything to get a lifelike reaction, especially when it’s supposed to be shocking. For Jennifer Lawrence, who played Katniss in The Hunger Games, the director would have to be a little sneaky when it came to a particular video.

After Peeta was captured, Katniss sees a video of him with sunken features, so in order to get an authentic response from Lawrence, the director made sure that she and the actor hadn’t seen each other in a while.

Even comedies have some tragic occurrences, especially when they run for as long as a show like How I Met Your Mother. In one of these traumatic moments, the director of the episode was able to catch Jason Segel’s real reaction to a sad event.

The actor was not told that his character’s father was going to die, and so when the scene was shot, he reacted the way any real son would.

Some directors go above and beyond the call of duty to try to make their actors really get into their character. On the set of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, the director took it upon himself to heighten the actor’s insecurities.

To do this, he would yell at Shelly Duvall and berate her, all in his quest to make sure that in every scene she was in, her character looked uncomfortable and indecisive.

Some of the most iconic quotes from films are adlibs. Take, for instance, the one in Jaws where Roy Schneider simply says, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat!” This line was not actually in the script.

The actor had come up with the sentence after overhearing some conversations of the crew and eventually found a perfect place in the film to utter the words. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Sometimes actors really feel a particular scene and add a little flourish or movement that makes the scene even more memorable. So in one episode of the NBC show The Office, Steve Carell found one of those moments.

There was an episode called “Gay Witch Hunt” in which Carell felt the scene called for a bit of a lip lock. The other actor didn’t know this, and so the surprise was very real and made for perfect T.V drama.

There are many ways to elicit emotions from your actors, and one of those is through music. So when the director of Joker was filming the iconic mirror scene, he thought playing the soundtrack might help Joaquin Phoenix get into his character.

But in the first take, the director noticed that Joaquin had released a tear. And he decided to stop filming there because he felt this was the perfect scene.

In big-budget Hollywood blockbuster action films, there are tons of explosions and gunfire. So you probably assume that all the actors are aware of what’s happening but that’s not always the case.

The actor Tricky who played Zorg’s henchman in the sci-fi adventure The Fifth Element actually had a moment of genuine fear. No one told him how big an explosion was going to be, and so his real reaction was caught on film.

“The first rule of Fight Club is you never talk about Fight Club” – this line and so much more about the film Fight Club were very iconic. Surprisingly, several of these scenes were a result of the actor’s real-life reactions.

Maybe the biggest was in the first fight scene with Edward Norton and Brad Pitt, where Norton actually punched Pitt in the ear. The director had told him to make contact anywhere, and so he did. Needless to say, Pitt was a little surprised!

Boyz N The Hood was directed by John Singleton, and as the director, he knew that he had to get creative with shocking the actors during the gunfire scenes. To do this, he left some important facts out when he was giving a rundown to the actors before shooting.

What did exactly did he leave out? The fact that real-life gunfire was going to be used in the scene. So, their reaction to this made its way to theater screens across the nation.

The character Pennywise from the 2017 version of Stephen King’s IT was much scarier than in the original. Wanting to elicit more fear when it came to the facial reactions and emotions of the young actors in the film, the director chose to keep what the wicked clown was going to look like a secret.

This tactic worked really well because when the young actors finally saw the clown, they were scared and shocked.

No matter what type of movies you love, when you hear the words ‘pea soup’, most of us often think of the iconic scene from the horror classic The Exorcist. But what a lot of people don’t know is that the actors only thought the soup would hit them in their chests.

Instead of that, though, the director decided to spray the pea soup right into the faces of the actors. Their final reaction was the one we all saw in the film.

Birdman was an interesting take on being a superhero. You follow this character as he begins to unravel and eventually finds himself in underwear in the middle of Times Square. When you look at this scene, it looks like there are an awful lot of extras around.

But in truth, Michael Keaton, who played the lead role in this film, was in the middle of Times Square with a bunch of real people milling around him. It made for a pretty epic scene and a real improvisational moment.

Sometimes when you’re filming a movie, especially if you don’t have as big a budget as you would like, you have to do some things on the fly. That might include having your lead actor run up and down a street with everyday people going about their day.

That’s what happened in the 1976 film Rocky when Stallone ran up and down the Italian marketplace street. In fact, the man that tosses Rocky an orange was completely unscripted and yet still made it into the film.

When The Blair Witch Project came out in theaters, there was a lot of fuss about it. Many people thought it was real and well done, while others thought it was way too creepy. But one thing most people didn’t realize was that almost the entire film was improvised.

The actual film only had 35 pages to the script. And so, when the actors were released into the woods, they were told to go with the flow and see what happened.