Actors Who Never Recovered From Their Most Distressing Roles

Heather Donahue in The Blair Witch Project

The cast of The Blair Witch Project had no idea what they were getting themselves into. The actors were basically dumped in the woods and tormented relentlessly for eight days straight. In order to elicit an authentic reaction, the directors stalked the actors during the day and shook their tents at night. They also fed them less and less food each day so they would become increasingly more delirious.

However, due to the film's unusual marketing strategy, Heather Donahue had to pretend to be dead. "My obituary was published when I was 24," she wrote in The Guardian. "It's a complicated thing to be dead when you're still very much alive and eager to make a name for yourself."

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The More You Know

  • Rowan Atkinson – also known as Mr. Bean – is the voice of Zazu in The Lion King.
  • Ronald Reagan was originally announced as the lead for Casablanca. The proclamation turned out to simply be a ruse to keep the actor’s name in the press.
  • Beck Hansen wrote and composed the music played by the fictional band S*x Bob-omb in the movie "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World".
  • The bridge blown up by Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was prematurely detonated by a Spanish Army Captain. Upon learning of his mistake the Captain ordered his troops to rebuild the bridge, only for it to suffer another explosion once complete.
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