10 Actors Who Infamously Stormed Off Set While Filming

Filming a movie can get more emotional than you might expect—and we don’t just mean on camera when actors are required to show their emotions based on the scenes they’re in. Behind the scenes and away from the camera, tensions often rise to the point of creative differences polluting working relationships. Actors, producers, screenwriters, and directors can have heated arguments about where a film or television show is going or how they see a script playing out. And sometimes, that can lead to some extremely aggressive and contentious moments.

That’s what this list is all about, in fact. Today, we’ll tell the sordid tales of ten actors who got so angry at their co-stars and/or other co-workers that they stormed off set in the middle of filming. It’s obviously incredibly unprofessional to leave a project right in the middle of it. But for these ten actors, tensions got so high that they couldn’t help it. So, in each case, we’ll leave you to be the judge: were they being divas? Or were they justified in walking away from filming in the middle of a gig?

Related: 10 Actors That Are Polar Opposites from Their Characters

10 Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio

Back in 1989, James Cameron was busy directing The Abyss, which starred Ed Harris. Alongside that veteran actor was the talented actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. In one scene in the film, Mastrantonio’s character is called to sacrifice herself. Then, she is revived by Ed’s character. It’s a heavy scene and one in which Cameron directed Harris to scream at Mary Elizabeth and slap her during the revival. The duo filmed the scene over and over again—to the point where Cameron’s camera actually ran out of film. But the scene didn’t stop!

Even though there was no film rolling, nobody told Ed or Mary Elizabeth. They both continued the scene involving the awful slapping and screaming for an audience of no one. And when they found out that the emotionally challenging moment hadn’t even been filmed, Harris and Mastrantonio were both livid. Mary Elizabeth was so mad about it that she (understandably) stormed off the set.

Years later, Harris recalled the difficult moment—and Mary Elizabeth’s strong reaction to it—in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I was slapping her across the face, and I see that they’ve run out of film in the camera—there’s a light on the camera—and nobody had said anything,” Harris said. “And Mary Elizabeth stood up and said, ‘We are not animals!’ and walked off the set. They were going to let me just keep slapping her around!” Wow. Pretty brutal!^[1]

9 Patrick Stewart

While he was working on the very first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, legendary actor Patrick Stewart once got so angry that he had to storm off set to contain himself. That seems unlikely based on Stewart’s impeccable reputation in Hollywood and among his fans, doesn’t it? But the incident really happened. And Stewart himself was the one who confirmed it while providing the context for the runaway!

Looking back on that difficult moment as part of his memoir Making It So, Stewart said that at the time, he was becoming mad over how he felt like his co-stars weren’t taking their work seriously. “I grew angry with the conduct of my peers,” Stewart wrote in the memoir, “and that’s when I called that meeting in which I lectured the cast for goofing off and responded to Denise Crosby’s, ‘We’ve got to have some fun sometimes, Patrick,’ comment by saying, ‘We are not here, Denise, to have fun.’” Whoa! And then he was gone—he stormed off to take a much-needed breather!

Stewart then went on to add: “In retrospect, everyone, me included, finds this story hilarious. But, in the moment when the cast erupted in hysterics at my pompous declaration, I didn’t handle it well. I didn’t enjoy being laughed at. I stormed off the set and into my trailer, slamming the door.” Hey, even the most beloved actors sometimes have moments of deep frustration.^[2]

8 Diana Rigg

While Diana Rigg was working on Game of Thrones, her frustration level at on-set antics was set to a hair trigger. It all started one day when she arrived on set to film her scenes when the crew was still setting up the shot. She recited her lines twice and then was asked to film a close-up as part of the scene. According to her former co-star Jessica Henwick, Rigg got so mad at the request that she simply walked off the set. And that was that!

Speaking to ET about Rigg’s rude on-set behavior, Henwick claimed: “[Rigg] walked onto the set, and she went, ‘I’m ready now!’ A cameraman came over and went, ‘Well, okay, but we haven’t finished setting up.’ She interrupted him and said, ‘Roll the cameras!’ And she just started doing her lines. She did two takes, and then the guy came over and was like, ‘Great, now we’re going to do a close-up.’ And she just stood up, and she went, ‘I’m done!’”

And Rigg really meant it, too—she was DONE! Rigg, who died at 82 years old in 2020, couldn’t walk very fast at that point in her life, but she stormed off set to whatever degree that she could. Henwick explained: “Now, she can’t walk fast. She has to be helped. So basically, we just sat there and watched as Diana Rigg effectively did her own version of storming off the set, but it was at 0.1 miles per hour. She cracked me up.” Now, it cracks us up, too!^[3]

7 Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage was filming the movie The Old Way when he stormed off the set because the crew was putting everyone’s safety in jeopardy. The film’s armorer at the time (the person on set in charge of firearms and weapons) was Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. You may know that name, as she was also the armorer on the set of Rust when a gun Alec Baldwin was holding discharged unexpectedly, wounding the movie’s director and killing the cinematographer. Well, on the set of The Old Way prior to that, Gutierrez-Reed apparently failed to go through proper firearm safety protocols.

According to key grip Stu Brumbaugh, who worked on that film with Hannah, she allegedly fired live ammunition twice on set in a span of just three days—and she failed to warn cast members and crew workers each time. After the second firing incident, Cage flipped out and ran off set. Per The Wrap, he reportedly yelled in anger at Gutierrez-Reed over the two shootings: “Make an announcement, you just blew my f**king eardrums out!” Knowing what happened later on Rust, which eventually led to Gutierrez-Reed being sentenced to 18 months in prison on voluntary manslaughter charges, makes the Nicolas Cage incident that much more alarming.^[4]

6 James Caan

It all came down to choking (or possibly coughing) on a cookie. The late James Caan was busy filming a movie called Nailed when he got into an on-set fight with the director of the film, David O. Russell. At the time, Caan was filming a scene that called for his character to choke to death while eating a cookie. Russell wasn’t convinced about Caan’s portrayal of the choking incident, though. The director asked the legendary actor if he might consider doing both—coughing AND choking—with the cookie lodged in his character’s throat.

Caan pointed out (correctly, by the way) that you can’t exactly cough and choke at the same time. After all, if you’re able to cough, enough air is getting in and out that you’re not literally choking, you know? Russell didn’t see it that way, though. He took umbrage at Caan’s hesitance and then asked the veteran thespian if they could film the scene both ways and see which one turned out better. Caan didn’t care to do that, and he’d had enough with Russell. He stormed off the set and left the project. His part in the film was quickly recast.^[5]

5 Sharon Stone

Back in 2014, news broke that actress Sharon Stone had stormed off the set of the movie A Golden Boy. The film’s director, an Italian man named Pupi Avati, went to the media and took Stone to task for supposedly being unprofessional. He claimed that there had been too many people milling about on set for Stone’s liking while they were shooting. So, in the heat of the moment and after getting mad at all the people watching her work, Stone rushed away from the film and refused to shoot any more scenes until most of the non-essential crew left.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter after the fact, Avati claimed: “She immediately disappeared. We looked for her everywhere, but nothing! Then my brother received a phone call from Los Angeles from her manager: she wouldn’t come back on the set until the photographers and especially that damned TV cameramen had gone away. Obviously, we did so, and she, like nothing happened, shot the scene.” Sounds like diva behavior, doesn’t it?

Only maybe it didn’t quite happen like that. After Avati’s words reached the eyes and ears of media consumers worldwide, Stone’s camp pushed back hard at the allegations. When questioned about it, her reps flatly denied that Sharon had ever stormed off the set of A Golden Boy. That denial left the rumblings to die down well enough to the point where the media buzz was curtailed. But forever after, Stone’s career has been associated with that supposed on-set meltdown.^[6]

4 Chevy Chase

Toward the end of the third season of Community, iconic comedic actor Chevy Chase had such a difficult moment with the show’s creator, Dan Harmon, that he stormed off set. And the bitterness followed Chase so closely that Harmon had him booted from the show after that season! Per Deadline, tensions had been high between Chase and Harmon for a while as the production of the third season got into the swing of things. That included multiple prior walk-outs by Chase, who was protesting the way Harmon ran the show and treated his subordinates.

Then, during the final episode of the season, Chase had it, and he stormed off set one more time. While the specific disagreement that time around wasn’t reported, the continued contentious behavior between the two of them was enough to seal the deal. Chase’s final storm-out was the last straw for Harmon, who booted Chase from future seasons.

To make things even more interesting, at the next day’s cast and crew wrap party, Harmon gave a speech about the incident to everyone assembled. In his remarks, Harmon allegedly slammed Chase with some very harsh words sent out in front of everyone. That enraged Chase even further, and he again walked out—this time, leaving early from the wrap party. The next day, he called Harmon’s phone and left an equally scathing voicemail. Bitterness all around!^[7]

3 Joaquin Phoenix

Scarlett Johansson came across co-star Joaquin Phoenix in a perilous place while the two were working on Her together. Awkwardly, the duo was filming an orgasm scene for the production when Phoenix abruptly had to excuse himself from the set. Johansson could commiserate with him on it, though, as even she thought the scene was “bizarre” and “gross.”

She revealed those thoughts—and Phoenix’s self-removal from the Her set—later in an interview on the Armchair Expert podcast. Explaining the situation to podcast host Dax Shepard, Johansson said: “We tried to get through one take, and he was like, losing it. He left the studio. He needed a break. You definitely don’t want to hear what you sound like having an orgasm. You definitely don’t want to hear what you sound like having a fake orgasm. Ew.” Ew indeed!

Interestingly, that’s not even the only time Phoenix has left the set in the middle of a production over something difficult that was taking place on camera. While filming The Joker, director Todd Phillips revealed that Phoenix was known to very often rush away from set “in the middle of the scene.” Phoenix would just “walk away and walk out” of the studio in certain unpredictable moments if he “wasn’t feeling it” with what was happening in the script. Oookay!^[8]

2 Frankie Muniz

Frankie Muniz didn’t just storm off the set when he was a child starring on the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle.” No, he stormed off set… and then didn’t return for more than two months! The walk-out came in a bid to protest the toxic environment that the show’s producers had supposedly foisted upon Muniz and the other child stars on the show. Years later, while Muniz was starring on the Australian reality TV show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me out of Here, he very cryptically detailed what happened. But he clearly still felt some type of way about it because he only referred to those creating the toxicity as “certain people” rather than naming them by name.

“There were two episodes I’m not in,” Muniz remembered years later as an adult during his time on the reality TV series that filmed Down Under. “I walked off the set. Everyone was so afraid to stand up when certain people were controlling or rude or disrespectful. Like, they walked on pins and needles… I was so mortified by seeing people afraid to stand up for themselves, I was like, ‘Say something.’ I didn’t care if they told me I was never going back because it was worth it to me.” Hey, at least he had a good reason for rushing away. Hopefully, things got better after that!^[9]

1 Emma Watson

Emma Watson’s guest-starring turn on This Is the End created a cascade of rumors that she had stormed off the set in the middle of filming. As the story went, Watson supposedly had a major disagreement with star Seth Rogen and the producers over a last-minute change in the script. And as it turns out, that rumor was true—Emma really did leave the set in the middle of filming. But it wasn’t quite for the reason that the rumor-spreaders initially thought. Oh, and it also didn’t help that Rogen himself fanned the flames of those rumors when he spoke to British GQ about the movie and suggested Watson had run away from production after a heated disagreement.

Once the rumors really started churning online, Rogen was forced to take to Twitter and confirm them while debunking some key details. “The scene was not what was originally scripted,” Rogen wrote when it came to what happened with Watson leaving the set. “It was getting improvised, changed drastically, and it was not what she agreed to. The narrative that she was in some way uncool or unprofessional is complete bull s**t. I, for sure, should have communicated better, and because I didn’t, she was put in an uncomfortable situation. She and I spoke on the night; it was overall a s**tty situation, and it must have been hard for her to say something. And I’m happy and impressed that she did. We agreed on her not being in the scene together.” So she DID storm off set—but apparently had a pretty good reason for doing so!^[10]