“I Didn’t Do Any Research”: 21 Actors Who Showed Up To Set With Basically Zero Preparation

1.

Marlon Brando actually refused to learn his lines when he played Superman’s father in Superman. It was literally in his contract that he wouldn’t have to — and that he’d only have to film for 12 days. He also originally wanted it to be a voice-only role, suggesting he appear to Superman as a suitcase or bagel (??). On-set, Brando used cue cards or had lines cleverly placed elsewhere, including on Superman’s diaper, in one flashback scene.

Costar Terence Stamp remembers seeing him on-set, where he asked Stamp if he’d read the script; Stamp said he had, and Marlon replied that he hadn’t. When Stamp asked him why, he apparently said he thought “it might be real crap” but that he needed the money.

This was all pretty evident in Brando’s terrible performance. He notably mispronounced “Krypton” the entire film (as Kristen Stewart recently pointed out). It likely didn’t matter to Brando, though — it was a massively lucrative deal, considering he negotiated 1.75 percent of backend profits in addition to his $3.7 million salary.

2.

That’s not the only performance where Brando was unprepared or difficult. He was only on set for three weeks for Apocalypse Now, but that didn’t stop him from causing problems. First of all, he did not lose weight as he’d promised, leading to costuming issues. He also argued for a full week with director Francis Ford Coppola about whether or not his character’s head should be shaved. Brando claimed he’d read the book the film was based on, Heart of Darkness, and didn’t think a shaved head would work for the character. However, he then came in with it shaved, admitting to Coppola that he had lied and had only just read the book the night prior.

Brando also tried to make huge changes to the script and refused to memorize lines. “I just listened to him talk about termites and life and issues. And then I would write up stuff at night and bring it back to him and try to work it in. A lot of the dialogue as Kurtz at the end was his,” Coppola said, adding that sometimes Brando was just talking about “other stuff,” and that he “adapted” Brando into the role.

“We did a deal where he would record these little monologues, these little passages that I wrote based on stuff he had talked about, and he would press the button and listen to the lines and do it,” Coppola continued. He ultimately blamed Brando’s “terrible memory,” adding that his pauses were him “trying to remember the lines!”

3.

Brando also did not read the script for The Island of Dr. Moreau, and showed up a week late for filming. (To be fair to Brando, his daughter had just died). Instead of cue cards, he had an assistant read his lines to him through an earpiece, and apparently did his own makeup, a bizarre white-faced look which would make it easier for a stand-in to frequently perform in his place. Filming would often start late, as Brando would refuse to leave his air-conditioned trailer (though costar Val Kilmer would do the same). Brando was hardly the only terrible thing about the film, which was rife with backstage drama, but based on his performance, it’s unsurprising that he won a Razzie.

4.

He even used cue cards for The Godfather, many of which were expertly hidden on the set or even held by a costar. This was apparently because he thought it helped him be more spontaneous, though when someone on set asked why, he simply replied, “Because I can read them that way.” Still, Brando won an Oscar for the role, so the whole cue cards thing can’t be all bad.

5.

Bill Murray memorably starred in the disastrous Garfield: The Movie as the voice of the iconic comic character. The move was a head-scratcher for Murray, but perhaps less so once you learn that he didn’t even read the whole script before signing on. “I sorta read a few pages of it and thought, Yeah, I’d like to do that,” he said. But the real reason he took it was that he thought it was written by the Coen brothers. “I looked at the script, and it said, ‘So-and-so and Joel Coen.’ And I thought: Christ, well, I love those Coens! They’re funny.” He was initially told a rate he considered too low, but the studio came back with a higher rate after speaking to him about the role (at which time it seems he still didn’t realize it was not, in fact, a Coen brothers movie.)

He actually forgot about the film until it was time to record his lines, at which time the film had finished shooting. “I worked all day and kept going, ‘That’s the line? Well, I can’t say that,'” he recalled. “And you sit there and go, What can I say that will make this funny? And make it make sense? And I worked. I was exhausted, soaked with sweat, and the lines got worse and worse.” Eventually, he insisted on seeing the film — and was not impressed with what he saw. After asking, “Who the hell cut this thing? Who did this? What the fuck was Coen thinking?”, he was finally informed that the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan Coen, did not write the script. And the Garfield writer Murray had confused for Joel Coen was actually Joel Cohen.

6.

Kit Harington did prepare for Pompeii — physically, at least. He was in the gym six days a week, with a whopping three workouts a day, to achieve the physique of a warrior. However, his preparation was lacking in other areas. “I’m ashamed to say I didn’t do a whole amount of historical research,” he admitted, adding that he “took the script as gospel.” He didn’t even go to Pompeii until after he’d finished shooting the project, though he said he was “pleasantly surprised to see that we were very historically accurate.” (Though this is up for debate.) The film was panned, so maybe there should’ve been a bit more prep?

7.

Harington’s Game of Thrones costar, Maisie Williams, didn’t prepare much for the fantasy show at all. As she was only 12 when she was cast, her mother didn’t allow her to read the books. “When I started, my mum deemed the books inappropriate,” she recalled. “But also, at the time I didn’t really appreciate the importance of reading to my craft. I was a non-actor who’d never trained. I never really had any passion for reading, I just was Arya when I was younger.” No word on if she’s read them since then, though she hadn’t by age 16.

“It’d be amazing to go back and read the books now, to see exactly what Arya was supposed to be like,” she said in 2016. “But I keep thinking how funny it’d be if someone sees me on the Underground reading Game Of Thrones,” she joked.

8.

While child actors are often, by nature, rather unprepared for roles – usually having limited prior experience and difficulty memorizing lines — you’d think a 12-year-old auditioning for a role in the film version of the world’s most popular young adult book would’ve read it. But that was the case for Tom Felton, who famously played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films. While auditioning for the role, the kids were asked about a scene from the books they were excited to watch come to life in the film. “I panicked, knowing full well that I didn’t know anything about the book. So I just said the same thing as the kid next to me and lied — pretty poorly, I imagine, because Chris Columbus, the director, saw straight through my lie. I think that was the first moment that he thought: Draco.”

He didn’t read the books after, either: “I’d like to tell you that the 12-year-old Tom was inspired to squirrel himself away with some Harry Potter books as a result of being involved with the auditions, but he wasn’t. It helped, I think. The filmmakers weren’t so much looking for actors; they were looking for people who were these characters.” He must have read the books at some point, as he wrote in his memoir that he was waiting to reread them for when he had kids. However, as he said he’d never reread them before, it’s safe to say he didn’t pore over the text.

Oh, and at the table read, he didn’t even know who most of the famous adult actors were. As he realized how celebrated they were, he had a bit of imposter syndrome. “I didn’t have to do 10 pages of dialogue to audition,” Felton said, recognizing his own lack of preparation. “All I did was turn up as a snotty kid who looked right and I got the part.” He didn’t think very highly of his acting ability, either: “I thought all I did was stand around and look miserable for a long time.”

9.

In another Harry Potter example, Michael Gambon, who replaced Richard Harris’s beloved version of Dumbledore after he passed away prior to the third film, also didn’t read any of the books prior to appearing in the series. “No point in reading the books because you’re playing with [screenwriter] Steve Kloves’ words,” Gambon said. This…didn’t exactly work out for Gambon. Many have criticized his version of Dumbledore as being too harsh, especially after an infamous scene in the fourth film where Dumbledore asks Harry whether he’s put his name in the goblet of fire.

10.

Ewan McGregor also didn’t read Jane Austen’s book Emma before starring in the film version as Frank Churchill. He called the film the worst thing he’d done work-wise, saying he wasn’t very good in it, and admitted he only took the role because he “thought [he] should be seen to be doing something different from Trainspotting.“

11.

Another actor who never read the books for the films they starred in is Billy Burke, who portrayed Bella’s dad, Charlie, in the Twilight films. Burke says he doesn’t “have the attention span” to finish a book, and that, as most of the info in the books wouldn’t be useful to him, he’d “rather not know” it. He’d actually never even heard of the books until he had a meeting with Catherine Hardwicke.

12.

Kellan Lutz also didn’t even know there were books when he arrived to film as Emmett in the series. “Once I was cast, I was flown out to Oregon to start shooting, and my friend Ashley Greene had all of the books,” he said, referencing the actor who played Alice. “She asked me if I had read the books, and I was like, ‘Haha, you’re joking. There are no books.” However, he quickly read up and “did [his] homework,” reading every book that was out, so it seemed he at least got up to speed quickly. And, unlike some others on this list, he had read the whole script. “I read the script while I was in Africa and fell in love with it. I loved the vampire story. It felt so new and fresh, not the typical ‘let’s kill the vampire with a pitchfork’ idea. It was really unique.”

13.

Ana de Armas famously threw herself into the role of Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, preparing so much that she actually wasn’t able to prepare much for her role in No Time to Die. She unexpectedly got called in to film the Bond film directly after filming for Blonde was pushed. “I went to London, and I only had, like, 10 days to two weeks of training, which is not much for everything I had to do, which made me very nervous,” she said. Still, things may have worked out if they’d filmed straight after — only, Daniel Craig got injured, leading to filming being delayed for that film, too.

It was delayed long enough that de Armas was able to film Blonde, once again immersing herself in that performance. By the time she was back on set for No Time to Die, she said, “All that training I did was kind of gone and forgotten!” However, she said, “But it all worked out, and I was working with the best team possible, and they made it happen, so I’m happy with it.” Her performance was solid, though it perhaps didn’t require much.

14.

Taika Waititi did basically no preparation for his role as Hitler in his film Jojo Rabbit — though it’s for a good reason. “I didn’t have to do any research, and I didn’t do any research. I didn’t base him on anything I’d seen about Hitler before,” Waititi told Deadline, pointing out that he’s not really portraying Hitler, but a child’s imagined version of him. “I just made him a version of myself that happened to have a bad haircut and a sh*tty little mustache. And a mediocre German accent,” Waititi said, saying it’d be “too weird to play the actual Hitler.” This is entirely fair — Jojo’s view of the war is childlike and propaganda-informed.

15.

This one isn’t his fault, but Christopher Plummer was barely able to do any preparation for his role as real-life figure J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World. The film was basically complete in early November when it was announced that Plummer would replace Kevin Spacey in the role after Spacey was accused of sexual assault. Plummer filmed his part in nine days, starting on November 20, just weeks after he nabbed the role and weeks before the film was released on December 25*. He knew very little about the Getty family and hadn’t done much research on them.

“I really followed the script and Ridley’s suggestions, which weren’t many because there wasn’t much time,” Plummer told the Hollywood Reporter. “So I had to invent certain things instinctively on my own; I just relied on my own imagination of what the man must’ve been.” He had to learn the lines so quickly that he found it difficult to remember them. He also didn’t watch footage of Spacey in the role for any help, though this was because he didn’t want to replicate Spacey’s performance.

Despite his lack of preparation, Plummer’s performance was critically acclaimed, and he became the oldest person ever nominated for an Oscar when he received a nod for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role.

16.

Similarly, Viggo Mortensen was unable to do much preparation for his role as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. This was because he was cast days after filming had already begun, replacing Stuart Townsend, who director Peter Jackson ultimately decided was too young for the role. “I felt unprepared,” Mortensen revealed to Yahoo Entertainment. “The other actors had been there for weeks and months in some cases preparing for the arduous task of shooting the whole trilogy.”

The first thing he did upon landing in New Zealand was to learn how to sword fight, after which he quickly started shooting. “It was nice to do something physical first. And then, the second thing I did was sitting in the corner of the pub in Bree smoking the pipe in the shadows. So those were both physical things that established the way the character moves and [his] physical presence. I was grateful that I wasn’t thrown right into a dialogue scene!” Viggo killed it in the role, despite his lack of prep.

17.

James McAvoy also came in super last-minute after replacing another actor. Joaquin Phoenix was originally cast as the lead in Split, but dropped out only weeks before filming began. McAvoy stepped in with just two weeks to prepare; this was an especially daunting task as the role required 24 distinct personalities, since the main character has Dissociative Identity Disorder. Some of the personalities, he knew how to play right away due to a strong script, but he was lost on others. “There were a couple of characters that took a little bit longer to find,” he recalled. “Patricia came real quick, Dennis came real quick. Hedwig took a little while. It wasn’t until the read-through for the table read which I was really nervous for.”

He remembered sitting there in front of studio executives, feeling like he hadn’t “found some of the characters.” However, he was quickly able to figure out how to play them, and ultimately decided that “sometimes coming in last minute is the best way.” He ended up nailing it, garnering critical acclaim — one reviewer called it “the performance of his career.”

18.

While Paul Dano had time to prepare for his role of Paul in There Will Be Blood, he was thrown a curveball when the film’s director, Paul Thomas Anderson, decided to give him an additional role. Kel O’Neill had initially been cast as Eli (who was not originally related to Paul) and had already filmed for weeks. However, O’Neill did not work well with Anderson, so Anderson gave Dano the role and made the characters twins. Dano only had about four days to prepare. “I just went for it, threw myself in there and gave it everything I had,” Dano said.

“That was just guts and instinct, not a lot of preparation. … I had to cut loose and go for it,” he said. It worked out for Dano, who was nominated for a BAFTA for his role as the twins.

19.

While Hugh Jackman has certainly done plenty of prep work to play Wolverine in subsequent films, he wasn’t able to do so for X-Men, the first film. This was because he was cast weeks into shooting, replacing Dougray Scott. He had only three weeks to get in shape for the role, and had apparently never lifted a weight before. In fact, Jackman said that they had to push back the first scene he was meant to shoot, which was a shirtless scene, because he needed time to bulk up.

Jackman was also not a comic fan and had never read the X-Men comics or even heard of Wolverine. He didn’t even know a wolverine was a real animal. However, Jackman quickly adapted, and it became one of his most iconic roles. Oh, and he’s since read “pretty much all” the comics over the years.

20.

Rafe Spall didn’t read the War of the Worlds book before appearing in the BBC’s TV version, though he did admit it was “another avenue that could aid” in his portrayal of the character. Even after filming, Spall still hasn’t read the book. “I felt alright with it and I wanted to treat is as a thing unto itself,” he said. Not everyone felt the same; some called Spall’s performance “flat.” Spall also doesn’t really like sci-fi to begin with, which makes his lack of commitment unsurprising.

21.

And finally, Sabrina Carpenter played a teenager learning to dance in the Netflix teen movie Work It — and purposely didn’t learn the choreography. However, this was actually for a reason. Her character was supposed to be struggling to learn to dance, so not knowing all the choreography helped make her look bad.