Lights, camera, feuds!
Just because A-List actors are cast in a film together doesn’t always mean they’ll get along.
Whether it’s an actor’s method of preparation or questionable commitment to a role, there’s a plethora of reasons co-stars could butt heads.
In some instances, these experiences can be so bad that it means they’ll never ever work together again.
But for others, time heals their wounds and they’re able to at least co-exist on set again — even if it’s just for the fans’ sake.
Other actors on this list didn’t just affect their co-stars, but members of the production team, too.
Let’s just say there’s a reason why they tell you to meet your idols, let alone work with them and be crushed by their lack of professionalism.
But without further ado, here are the actors that at least one point in time never wanted to work together again.
Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel
Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel are perhaps one of the best-known examples of actors who refused to work together. The pair famously starred alongside each other in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, but drama stirred up in August 2016 when Johnson cryptically claimed some male actors on the project were unprofessional.
Johnson told Rolling Stone in April 2018 that the duo disagreed about professionalism and confirmed that they had shot their scenes for the eighth installment of the franchise separately.
“Vin and I had a few discussions, including an important face-to-face in my trailer,” Johnson told the rock bible. “And what I came to realize is that we have a fundamental difference in philosophies on how we approach moviemaking and collaborating. It took me some time, but I’m grateful for that clarity. Whether we work together again or not.”
Despite some other public hiccups — Johnson slammed Diesel for pubic “manipulation” after Diesel publicly begged him to return for “Fast X” despite the pair having a private conversation — Johnson declared a cease-fire in June.
“Last summer Vin and I put all the past behind us. We’ll lead with brotherhood and resolve – and always take care of the franchise, characters & FANS that we love,” Johnson wrote in a tweet one month before stunning audiences with a cameo in “Fast X.”
James Franco And Tyrese Gibson
James Franco and Tyrese Gibson starred together in the 2006 Navy boxing drama “Annapolis” in which Franco, a known method actor, would actually hit Gibson in the fight scenes.
“I never want to work with him again, and I’m sure he feels the same way,” Gibson told Playboy of Franco in 2007. “It felt very personal. It was f—ked up.”
The “Fast X” star elaborated on the experience in an interview with Elle that same year.
“James Franco is a Method actor. I respect Method actors, but he never snapped out of character,” he claimed.
“Whenever we’d have to get in the ring for boxing scenes, and even during practice, the dude was full-on hitting me.” He added, “I was always like, ‘James, lighten up, man. We’re just practicing.’ He never lightened up.”
Franco finally addressed Gibson’s remarks in an interview with GQ in 2008.
“I hear he wants to blow up my hotel room,” Franco first joked before taking responsibility for the pair’s rough start.
“I was probably a jerk,” he admitted. I was not purposely cruel to him, but I was probably so wrapped up in my performance that I was not as friendly as I could have been.”
Franco continued, “This is such a stupid issue I can’t believe I’m still talking about it. But when I’m asked about it in the press it makes it seem as if it’s still an issue. I think Tyrese is a sweet guy with a good heart. I wish him all the best.”
Will Smith and Janet Hubert
Janet Hubert portrayed Aunt Viv for the first three seasons of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
But the air was never clear between Hubert and Will Smith. The “Switch” rapper claimed Hubert was “difficult to work with” and that the pair had “creative differences” when she left the show in 1993.
“I can say straight up that Janet Hubert wanted the show to be ‘The Aunt Viv of Bel-Air Show’ because I know she is going to dog me in the press,” Smith said during a 1993 radio interview about her departure.
“She has basically gone from a quarter of a million dollars a year to nothing. She’s mad now but she’s been mad all along. She said once, ‘I’ve been in the business for 10 years and this snotty-nosed punk comes along and gets a show.’ No matter what, to her I’m just the Antichrist,” he claimed.
Hubert had her own choice words for Smith at the time, telling TMZ in 2011, “There will never be a reunion…as I will never do anything with an a—hole like Will Smith.”
“He is still an egomaniac and has not grown up,” she added. This constant reunion thing will never ever happen in my lifetime unless there is an apology, which he doesn’t know the word.”
But perhaps time heals all wounds as the pair put their differences aside in 2020 during the “Fresh Prince” reunion special on Max.
Hubert revealed her home life was in a dark place while working on the sitcom and claims Smith took her creative outlet away from her when she left the show.
Eventually, the pair hugged it out.
“I could not do a 30-year celebration of this show and not celebrate you, celebrate your contribution and celebrate your contribution to my life,” Smith told her.
Kevin Smith And Bruce Willis
Director Kevin Smith and Bruce Willis worked together on the 2010 buddy comedy “Cop Out.” Although Smith was a massive fan of Willis before production of the movie, he would later describe working with his hero as “soul crushing.”
“It was difficult,” Smith said on comedian Marc Maron’s podcast in 2011, adding that the “Die Hard” star “wouldn’t even sit for a f——g poster shoot.”
“Were it not for Tracy [Morgan, Willis’ co-star], I might have killed either myself or someone else in the making of f–king ‘Cop Out.’”
However, Smith walked back his criticism of Willis when the actor’s family announced his aphasia diagnosis — which as since been updated to frontotemporal dementia — in March 2022.
“Long before any of the ‘Cop Out’ stuff, I was a big Bruce Willis fan, so this is really heartbreaking to read,” Smith tweeted at the time. “He loved to act and sing and the loss of that has to be devastating for him.”
“I feel like an a–hole for my petty complaints from 2010. So sorry to BW and his family,” Smith concluded.
Alec Baldwin and Shia LaBeouf
Alec Baldwin and Shia LaBeouf didn’t exactly see eye to eye while preparing for the play “Orphans” in 2013.
The “Rust” actor claimed the “Honey Boy” star once “attacked” him in front of a stage full of people.
“He said, ‘You’re slowing me down, and you don’t know your lines. And if you don’t say your lines, I’m just going to keep saying my lines,’” Baldwin told Vulture in 2014 of LaBeouf.
“We all sat, frozen,” he continued. “I snorted a bit, and, turning to him in front of the whole cast, I asked, ‘If I don’t say my words fast enough, you’re going to just say your next line?’ I said. ‘You realize the lines are written in a certain order?’” Baldwin claimed. “He just glared at me.”
LaBeouf later dropped out of the play due to “creative differences.”
Baldwin also compared LaBeouf to a performative “celebrity chef” who didn’t want to put in hard work.
“Some of the greatest movie stars had really serious theatre careers and still do,” Baldwin said. “And many film actors, though, who are purely film actors, they’re kind of like celebrity chefs, you know what I mean?”
But LaBeouf would attempt to get the last word as he later tweet out emails allegedly between him and director Daniel Sullivan in which Sullivan seemingly warned him that Baldwin may not come to the theater prepared.
Ryan Reynolds and Wesley Snipes
In yet another example of method acting gone wrong, Wesley Snipes stayed in character as daywalker Blade during production of the “Blade Runner” movies.
But this didn’t exactly gel with the “Deadpool” star’s goofy personality — or anyone else on set, including director David S. Goyer.
Snipes reportedly barely talked to anyone on the set and referred to Reynolds as “the cracker,” and was allegedly difficult to work with.
But Reynolds didn’t hold it against Snipes, as he admitted in 2004 that he never even really met him.
“It’s always overblown,” he told IGN of the stories from filming being blown out of proportion.
“My personality is the polar opposite of Wesley. I never met Wesley, I only met Blade, and he is a method actor. Say what you want about that style of acting, I have the utmost respect for whatever it takes to get through this process. We all say that these actors make so much money and they live such a life of leisure and privilege, but that is a vulnerable process, stepping onto the set everyday and performing in front of 110 judgmental souls.”
Reynolds concluded,”So whatever it takes for him or anyone else to get through that in a way that is artistically fulfilling to them, I have the utmost respect for.”
However, Reynolds politely declined the idea of ever making a “Blade 4” when asked by a reporter in 2016.
Lucy Liu and Bill Murray
Bill Murray apparently wasn’t much of an angel to work on “Charlie’s Angels” in 2000.
Lucy Liu claimed in 2021 that the “Groundhog Day” star used langue on the set of the film that was “inexcusable and unacceptable,” which caused conflict between the two of them.
“I was not going to just sit there and take it. So, yes, I stood up for myself, and I don’t regret it,” she claimed on the Los Angeles Times’ “Asian Enough” podcast.
“As we’re doing the scene, Bill starts to sort of hurl insults, and I won’t get into the specifics, but it kept going on and on. I was, like, “Wow, he seems like he’s looking straight at me.” I couldn’t believe that [the comments] could be towards me, because what do I have to do with anything majorly important at that time?”
Liu continued, “I literally do the look around my shoulder thing, like, who is he talking to behind me? I say, “I’m so sorry. Are you talking to me?” And clearly he was, because then it started to become a one-on-one communication.”
Of course, the “Kill Bill” star isn’t the only one of Murray’s co-star’s to have accused him of bad behavior on set. Chevy Chase, Geena Davis, Richard Dreyfuss, Seth Green, and Solange Knowles all had their issues with him, too — just to name a few.