When it comes to acting, the script isn’t gospel. Many actors made bold choices in their performances, but some take it a step further and suggest significant changes to the story itself.
Here are 29 actors who demanded big changes to their characters and scripts…for better or worse:
1.
When Jon Bernthal reprised his role as the Punisher for Daredevil: Born Again, he brought his “brilliant” improvisation skills to set. Lead actor Charlie Cox told Games Radar, “There was a scene this season, and he cares so much, he gets so into it, like thinks about it, it’s almost like a pain-body. We had this scene, and he called me the night before, and he said, ‘Some of these lines don’t make sense for me for where I’m at. I need to mess with these a little bit. Here’s what I’m gonna say. I want to say this.’ He just changed some of his lines; he had kinda written his own thing.”
“So, I had to adapt and relearn my stuff, which I’m totally okay to do, as he’s brilliant. And then we get to set, and he didn’t say any of those. He just made up a whole new set of lines. And I was like, okay…!” he said.
2.
Stranger Things actor Maya Hawke told the Wall Street Journal, “Throughout filming, we started to feel like [her character Robin] and Steve shouldn’t get together, and that she’s gay. Even when I go back and watch earlier episodes, it just seems like the most obvious decision ever… The Duffer Brothers and I — and Shawn Levy — had a lot of conversations throughout shooting, and it wasn’t really until we were shooting Episode 4 and 5, I think, that we made the final decision. It was a collaborative conversation, and I’m really, really happy with the way that it went.”
3.
For Stranger Things Seasons 2 and 3, Dacre Montgomery wanted to humanize Billy more, so he pitched ideas for scenes, including about the character’s parents, in order to reveal more of his backstory. Speaking specifically about Season 3, he told Vulture, “The main element was Billy’s biological mother. That was something I was insistent of having included, to add to his backstory and to see the pain his mother caused him by leaving.”
4.
While filming Wednesday Season 1, Jenna Ortega changed or decided not to say lines that she felt didn’t fit with the character’s personality. At a Netflix Q&A, she said, “I remember there’s a line where I’m talking about a dress, and initially, she was supposed to say, ‘Oh my god, I’m freaking out over a dress, I literally hate myself.’ And I was blown away because that sounded like… It was just a bunch of little things like that, where I felt like we were able to avoid a lot of dialogue in an attempt to make her sound human.”
For Season 2, she was promoted to producer. Appearing on the Hollywood Reporter’s Comedy Actress Roundtable, she said, “I feel really lucky to be able to be in the [writers’] room early next season and be talking about scripts and giving notes.”
5.
Jim and Pam from The Office are every straight guy on a dating app’s idea of true love — but series creator Greg Daniels almost split them up. He wanted Jim to cheat on Pam with Cathy, the temporary receptionist, in Season 8. In the book Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of The Office, John Krasinski said, “Greg said, ‘We need to come up with a good Pam-Jim storyline.’ And I said, ‘I think we should get borderline separated, and I think we can do it and then come back.’ He was so on board with that. That’s the only time I remember putting my foot down. ‘Cause [Greg] was saying, ‘You’re going to actually make out with her in this scene.'”
“I remember saying things that I never thought I’d say before, like, ‘I’m not going to shoot it.’ I remember [co-showrunner] Paul Lieberstein was in the room, who I think was very much into it. He was like, ‘No, you’ll do it.’ Not in an aggressive way, but it was like, he saw the benefit of doing it. I remember saying to Greg, ‘My feeling is there is a threshold with which you can push our audience. They are so dedicated. We have shown such great respect to them. But there’s a moment where if you push them too far, they’ll never come back. And I think that if you show Jim cheating, they’ll never come back,'” he said.
6.
Tommy Lee Jones made a powerful choice to condense a portion of Agent K’s dialogue to a single moment. Screenwriter Ed Solomon tweeted, “I had a three-paragraph speech once in Men in Black that I spent like a week crafting. Tommy Lee Jones looked right at me with a pen and crossed it out as he glared. Then he conveyed the entire speech with a single glance. And it was better.”
7.
Naya Rivera pushed for her Glee character, Santana Lopez, to have a serious relationship with her love interest, Brittany, so that there would be more mainstream queer representation onscreen. According to NME, Naya said, “It started off as this funny little thing, like, ‘Oh yeah, she just randomly hooks up with her friend Brittany.’ But I was kind of encouraging them to make it more serious and not play around with it ’cause there are people out there that it’s not a joke to. It’s their real lives.”
8.
Pitch Perfect 3 star Anna Kendrick refused a romantic storyline between her character, Beca, a recent college graduate, and Theo, a music exec with whom she had a professional connection. Anna told Harper’s Bazaar UK, “Originally the music executive was supposed [to be] my romantic interest, but I said no to that, because I thought that would be kind of fucking problematic. I was like, ‘Can no one else [see it]?’ Once I said it, everybody was like, ‘I guess so.’ And they still wanted to have a version at the end when we kissed, and I still said no.”
She also refused to succumb to pressure to wear “sexier” outfits for the film. She said, “It’s funny — whenever we do the wardrobe fittings, I feel like we get notes from the top saying they should be tighter and sexier and show more skin. And I’m like, that’s not why people are coming to see the movie. They definitely aren’t showing up because of our sex appeal. It’s nice that audiences are interested in seeing a movie of misfits and girls of different shapes and sizes.”
9.
When Emma Watson was cast in the live-action Beauty and the Beast, she wanted to take a more “feminist” approach to the princess’s wardrobe, such as boots and bloomers. Costume designer Jacqueline Durran told the Hollywood Reporter, “From day one, Emma [Watson] wanted to make Belle an active heroine… Belle would not be wearing a corset, and she had to be comfortable as she needed to be able to move and ride a horse. It was a conundrum incorporating these elements.”
10.
After Lachlan Watson was cast as Theo on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, they asked showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and the writers to slow down his onscreen transition. They told MTV News, “By existing and showing up and being a different person, a different identity that the writers may not have even known about before, I think in that way, I influenced Theo’s character. I showed that it was possible to just hold off a second, and to just live in the gray area… What was really, really important for me with this upcoming season was to show a powerful, strong, queer character who never has to be saved. They can, in fact, save other people.”
11.
When Alan Rickman read the original Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, he thought it was so terrible that he decided to have his friends, Ruby Wax and Peter Barnes, to help him write new lines for his character, the Sheriff of Nottingham. He met up with Peter at a Pizza Express. He told the Times, “I said, ‘Will you have a look at this script because it’s terrible, and I need some good lines.’ So he did, and, you know, with kind of pizza and bacon and egg going all over the script.”
After getting additional suggestions from Ruby, Alan worked with director Kevin Reynolds to implement the new lines on set. Alan said, “Nobody knew this was happening except him. And I knew it had worked because, as I cleared the camera, I saw about 80 members of the crew just [stifling laughter].”
12.
Following the less-than-stellar response to Thor: The Dark World, Chris Hemsworth advised Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige to change the tone of the next installment. He said, “It has to be funnier; it has to be unpredictable. Tonally, we’ve just got to wipe the table again.”
13.
For Thor: Ragnarok, Tessa Thompson pitched the idea of Valkyrie being bisexual (like she is in the Marvel comics) to director Taika Waititi. He fought to keep a scene where a woman walked out of Valkyrie’s bedroom in the movie as long as he could, but it ultimately had to be cut. Tessa told Rolling Stone, “There were things that we talked about that we allowed to exist in the characterization, but maybe not be explicit in the film. … There’s a great shot of me falling back from one of my sisters who’s just been slain. In my mind, that was my lover.”
14.
Bryce Dallas Howard insisted that, in Jurassic World, her character Claire keep her heels on. She told the Daily Beast, “For me, the heels were a metaphor. First of all, I just believe that she’s one of those women who say they walk so much better in heels. I’m absolutely not one of those women. Beyoncé, for example! But I thought she’s definitely that person… The thing that would have been considered the biggest handicap for her ultimately ends up being her strength. And that’s those heels. I really liked that.”
15.
In the fourth season of Grey’s Anatomy, Sara Ramírez told series creator Shonda Rhimes that they “wanted to pursue a storyline where Callie would discover that she was attracted to women as well as men.” Callie ended up becoming the longest-running LGBTQ+ character on TV. She got to have a romantic storyline with Jessica Capshaw’s character, Arizona Robbins, and they ended up getting married. Head writer Krista Vernoff told Variety, “I don’t think it can be overstated what the social impact of Callie’s bisexuality was on the culture at large. Bisexuality was almost invisible on TV at that point. I personally have two kids who have come out as bisexual, and I don’t think it’s disconnected from Callie and Sara publicly coming out.”
16.
While filming Star Trek, Leonard Nimoy invented the Vulcan nerve pinch as a nonviolent way for Spock to end fights because he thought the originally proposed method — having him hit someone on the back of the head with the butt of his phaser gun — was too “archaic” and “Western.” According to CBC, Leonard told the director, “We can say anything we want; we can make the audience believe anything we want about an alien. … The man could have a very special knowledge of the human anatomy that hasn’t been discovered yet, or he may have some special power that only Vulcans have.”
17.
When The Mummy (2017) was in production, Tom Cruise reportedly exercised nearly total creative oversight, with things like script approval promised in his contract. Unsatisfied with the original screenplay, he reportedly brought in two additional writers who helped rewrite it into the story he wanted to tell. The changes his new writers reportedly made included giving his character, Nick Morton, more screen time than the Mummy and adding a twist where he got possessed for the drama.
18.
When Asia Kate Dillon joined the John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum cast as the Adjudicator, they “just said to [director] Chad [Stahelski] and Keanu [Reeves], ‘You have a real opportunity here. I’m a nonbinary person. This character could be nonbinary.'”
They told Insider, “There’s nothing in the film to indicate that they have to be a cisgender person with a binary gender identity. … Adding gender diversity to the John Wick universe was something that Keanu and Chad and Lionsgate were totally on board for, because to them, it’s just a no-brainer. They want the John Wick world to be as diverse as possible. So it was a real thrill for me to get to bring that to the table and have it be warmly received.”
19.
Initially, Mike Myers recorded his dialogue for Shrek using a slightly more pronounced version of his natural Canadian accent, but after watching the rough cut, he decided to record his lines using a Scottish accent to contrast with Lord Farquaad’s English accent. He also thought that having a Canadian accent made Shrek sound less relatable because it was scarier and less vulnerable than he wanted the ogre to be.
20.
When Crispin Glover was offered the role of the Thin Man in Charlie’s Angels, he refused to do the “terrible” and “expositional” dialogue, but he offered a suggestion for rewrites — the character should have no dialogue and be completely silent. He told the Guardian, “Subsequent to River’s Edge, I was trying to find things that interested me. But, for the most part, the films did not reflect what my psychological interests were, and a certain persona was etched out that is essentially still with me, which is OK. But I recognized in 2000 and 2001 [during Charlie’s Angels] that I really needed to make as much money as I could in order to fund my own filmmaking. So I switched my psychological perspective on how I choose movies, and I now see acting as my craft, but my films are my art.”
21.
Reese Witherspoon spent a week rewriting Annette’s dialogue with Cruel Intentions writer/director Roger Kumble. She told Entertainment Weekly, “I remember finding Annette too demure and too much of a woman influenced by a guy’s manipulations. I was starting what I guess became my bigger mission in life — of questioning why women were written certain ways on film.”
22.
Mace Windu’s iconic purple lightsaber was actor Samuel L. Jackson’s idea. He asked director George Lucas to change the color of his weapon to help him stand out from the large crowd during the final battle in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. At first, the director wasn’t on board with the idea, but during reshoots, he broke the good news to Samuel.
23.
When Meryl Streep first read the novel Kramer vs. Kramer, which Avery Corman intentionally wrote to be anti-feminist, she thought Joanna came off as “an ogre, a princess, an ass.” She only agreed to accept the role in the film adaptation on the grounds that the script would be rewritten to make Joanna a more sympathetic, realistic, and fully developed character. She also wrote Joanna’s powerful courtroom speech herself. In Meryl’s version of events, she had actually been called in for a minor role, but writer/director Robert Benton, producer Stanley R. Jaffe, and lead actor Dustin Hoffman were so impressed by her understanding of Joanna that they decided she was the best fit for the role.
Robert pulled her to the side and asked her to rewrite Joanna’s upcoming courtroom speech because his version felt like “a man trying to write a woman’s speech.” He told Vanity Fair, “Part of the pleasure she must have taken is showing to Dustin she didn’t need to be slapped. She could have delivered anything to anybody at any time.”
24.
Jason Isaacs’s input is the reason his Harry Potter character, Lucius Malfoy, has long hair and a distinctly wizardy wardrobe. He told Entertainment Weekly, “I went to the set, and they had this idea of me wearing a pinstripe suit, short black-and-white hair. I was slightly horrified. He was a racist, a eugenicist. There’s no way he would cut his hair like a Muggle, or dress like a Muggle… In order to keep the hair straight, I had to tip my head back, so I was looking down my nose at everyone. There was 50 percent of the character. I asked for a walking stick, which [director] Chris Columbus first thought was because I had something wrong with my leg. I explained I wanted it as an affectation so I can pull my wand out [of the cane]. After a second’s thought, he said, ‘You know what, I think the toy guys are going to love you.’ He was completely right.”
25.
While reading the script for The Usual Suspects, Benicio del Toro realized that his character Fred Fenster’s only purpose was to be the first to die, so he convinced director Bryan Singer to let him deliver his lines in a made-up accent. On Inside the Actor’s Studio, Benicio said, “Every line that [Fred] said didn’t really affect the plot. So I sat down with Bryan Singer, and I said, ‘It really doesn’t matter what this guy says. And if you allow me to, I think that we should allow me to do something with it.’ And he said, ‘Go ahead.'”
26.
Initially, Michelle Rodriguez’s The Fast and the Furious character, Letty Ortiz, was supposed to cheat on Dominic Toretto, but the actor opposed the storyline. She told the Daily Beast, “It was more of a Point Break idea. They just followed the format without thinking about the reality of it. Is it realistic for a Latin girl who’s with the alpha-est of the alpha males to cheat on him with the cute boy? I had to put my foot down. I basically cried and said, ‘I’m going to quit’ and, ‘Don’t sue me, please — I’m sorry, but I can’t do this in front of millions of people.’ My whole point in being an actress is that I thought I got to live a dream. And I don’t dream about being a slut! Do you?!”
Costar Vin Diesel helped her advocate for the changes she wanted. She said, “Vin was the first one to pull me to the side while I was crying, and he just looked at me and said, ‘I got your back. Chill out and let me handle this, and you’re right — it makes me look bad anyway.’ And there you go. That was the beginning of the Letty fairytale.”
27.
When Jack Nicholson was first approached to play Frank Costello in The Departed, he declined. He told Variety, “I actually turned the movie down the first time it came to me because the character didn’t really exist. But Leo [DiCaprio] and Marty [Scorsese] talked me into it. I guess you can say I was attracted to the company… Marty is very free with his ideas and very receptive to yours. We built this character layer by layer, until we had something that fit inside a great genre film, but also pushed the envelope until the movie becomes almost operatic.”
28.
Rutherford Falls actor Jesse Leigh told Pulse Spikes, “There were trans roles when I started out, but they were one-note and very stereotypical. But when I read for the role of Bobbie, the role was originally male-identifying and gay. I kind of wanted to make the role myself. So, therefore, I wore what I wear every day — my bell-bottoms — and I put on a cute wing liner and some blush. I totally just walked it. I went in [for] my audition one week and then got the screen tests the next week. Within a span of two weeks, I had found out that I got the role of Bobbie… It wasn’t until I actually booked the role that I sat down with the writers and they had asked me about growing up and being non-binary and stories about being non-binary from my childhood. I felt super lucky that the character was kind of sculpted around my life.”
29.
And finally, when shooting Apocalypse Now, Marlon Brando completely threw director Francis Ford Coppola’s vision for his character, Colonel Walter Kurtz, out the window. He went the method acting route, refused to memorize most of his lines, and improvised the majority of the time. The director worked around him by recording his improvised ramblings for five days, typing up the parts he wanted to keep, putting them on tape, and giving him headphones.