‘Pee bottles’ and bagel-hurling – the worst celebrity behaviour on film sets

Dwayne Johnson in Red One
Dwayne Johnson in Red One - PA Media, All Rights Reserved

The Rock wasn’t beating around the bush. In a new interview with GQ magazine, wrestler-turned-movie megastar Dwayne Johnson confirmed the whisperings were true. “I pee in a bottle” while on film sets, he told the magazine. “Yeah. That happens.”

Johnson also confessed to being repeatedly late for his latest project, Red One. The action flick stars Johnson as a heavily armed elf on a mission to rescue Santa Claus, which sounds like the storyline for a fake movie that might feature in an episode of Black Mirror but sadly is not.

The piece did not delve into the details of pee-gate – but there is lots more. For instance, when he has to go, Johnson’s favourite receptacle by all accounts is a fancy bottle made by Voss – a supplier of “premium waters” (at a premium price: Voss costs four times more than less “premium” alternatives).

“On set, away from his trailer, if he needs to pee, he doesn’t go to the public bathroom,” an insider told The Wrap. He pees in a Voss water bottle and his team or a PA has to dispose of it.”

Reviews of Red One are so bad even Johnson might blush – “cold, grim, utterly charmless”, concluded the Telegraph – but, even so, the revelations about his toiletry habits do not seem to have damaged his reputation to any degree – though it reportedly contributed to the ballooning budget of Red One, which soared past $250 million. He’s all set to pivot into “serious” acting with his upcoming appearance in art-house director Benny Safdie’s Smashing Machine, a biopic of MMA fighter Mark Kerr. Controversies come and go and the Rock rolls ever onward.

The real surprise is that nobody in Hollywood is surprised. If anything, Johnson’s bad habits – routine tardiness and having a PA dispose of his wee – seem on the milder end of celebrity awfulness towards those less powerful than them. So hold on to your Voss bottles as we bring you the top ten of weird and not-at-all-wonderful on-set behaviour – many culled from hush-hush, off the record hints dropped on social media and sites such as Reddit.


Robert Pattinson not washing his hair

It’s not quite up there with Johnson’s penchant for whipping out a bottle and having at it, but future Batman Pattinson did set nostrils wrinkling after his casting as moody vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight films.

“He stinks. I mean, it’s awful. He never showers, and it drives people on the set crazy. He completely reeks,” an insider on set told E! news. Just like Dwayne Johnson, Pattinson didn’t deny the rumours. He just couldn’t see the point in washing his hair. “If you don’t care if your hair is clean or not, then why would you wash it?”

Still, the star seemed to have changed his attitude. A few years later, Pattinson was hawking man perfume for Dior and had seen the light.

“I can’t tell if it’s because of my association with Dior or because I’m older, but I’ve started moisturising,” he said. “It’s been a quite profound change in my life.”

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in The Twlight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in The Twlight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 - Andrew Cooper

Stairs are for Commoners

One well-known actor has reportedly taken to channelling his inner Dalek and “refused to use stairs” while making a recent superhero movie. The logic was that his character was wheelchair-bound – so he would be, too.

Admittedly, Daniel Day-Lewis adopted that very strategy making Jim Sheridan’s My Left Foot, for which he won an Oscar in 1990.

But he was telling the story of writer and painter Christy Brown, who was born with cerebral palsy. Whereas in the case of the second actor, the preparation was for a camp superhero romp. We’ll give you 30 seconds to guess who it might be.


Toilet Seat Warmer Required

Another one-time movie star has sabotaged his career with years of bizarre behaviour – on set and out in the real world.

The signs seem to have always been there: back when he was a hot young talent on the up, he is said to have thrown a tantrum attending a film festival because the toilet seat in his hotel “was too cold”. He made the hotel manager warm the seat for him every-time he needed to use it.

This poo story is also apparently a true story – and shows how even just a hint of success can turn everyday people into monsters.


Getting Hot and Bothered with Val Kilmer

Val Kilmer in The Doors
Val Kilmer in The Doors - Carolco/Getty Images

After Top Gun and The Doors, Kilmer was one of Hollywood’s hottest properties – as well as that rare young actor who regarded film-making as a craft rather than an opportunity to see his name in lights.

So you’d think he would relish the opportunity to star opposite an icon such as Marlon Brando in an adaptation of HG Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau.

But when it came to it, Kilmer one-upped the notorious Brando for weird and aggressive on-set behaviour. In one notorious incident, he is said to have poked a cameraman with a lit cigarette. There was apparently no provocation for the incident – he was simply in a bad mood.

“He burned that cameraman right on his face, and no, he wasn’t fooling around,” said an eyewitness. “It was intentional. He did apologise to the crew”. He may have said sorry – but Kilmer’s career would quickly peter out. He went from an A-lister to a cautionary tale.

That said, in his later years he has worked hard to restore his reputation – and generated sympathy after it was revealed that he had lost his voice due to throat cancer. He put in a vulnerable cameo in Top Gun: Maverick as Iceman, ageing former nemesis of Cruise’s character, and was the star of an introspective 2021 documentary, Val, in which his thoughts were narrated by his son Jack.


Anyone for a Coffee Enema?

This anecdote concerns the music industry rather than Hollywood but nonetheless speaks to how fame can warp the ego.

“I worked as a personal assistant for an A-list country artist who was super self-centred and unappreciative. When I first moved to Nashville, I guess coffee enemas were a big thing,” a former PA told Buzzfeed (to quote Medical News Today: “A coffee enema involves injecting room temperature coffee into the rectum).

“Before they started the summer tour, my boss and his wife wanted to stock up on this new ‘enema craze’. They proceeded to tell me to go to the local holistic grocery store and buy every coffee enema they had. I had to stand there, with about 20 people behind me in line, as the cashier slowly scanned in 25 coffee enema kits… Mortifying.”

Did the enemas go ahead? We do not know. But we can tell you that a coffee enema allegedly “boosts energy” and “removes toxins” – though medical experts advise against and warn they can be dangerous.


Don’t Steal My DNA

One well-known actor is apparently paranoid about someone “stealing their DNA”. To that end, when starring in a hit comedy filmed during the pandemic, they insisted the COVID coordinator call their home and conduct the mandatory coronavirus test under their supervision. They then forced the coordinator to dispose of the sample in front of them – just to be sure that their DNA wasn’t sold on the internet.


Don’t Wave A Cameraphone at Timothée Chalamet

Given his mega-stardom, the Dune and Wonka actor is understandably keen to protect his privacy. He wasn’t taking chances on the set of his forthcoming Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown.

“[Chalamet] was hyper-paranoid,” a crewmember on the New Jersey set told the Daily Mail. “We were not allowed to make eye contact with him or introduce ourselves.”

He is said to have “cursed out” an assistant who accidentally took a picture of Chalamet while snapping the solar eclipse in April. A security guard then supposedly “scoured her phone and made her delete all the photos”.


No Eye Contact with Buzz Lightyear

Actress Casey Wilson didn’t hold back when recalling to a podcaster her experience of appearing opposite Toy Story star Tim Allen on the Disney+ series The Santa Clauses.

Wilson revealed that “everybody was walking on eggshells” around the Toy Story actor. “People just looked frantic. When he was done, he was so f–king rude. Never made eye contact, never said anything. It was so uncomfortable.” When the cameras stopped rolling, she said Allen dropped his Santa coat to the floor and stomped off. Considering Variety wrote-off the show as a “bloated drag” his contempt may have been justified.


Throwing Shapes over the Fruit Selection

Another big-name Hollywood director was making a horror movie when he had a run-in with a lowly PA. He had required a fruit plate and was duly supplied with a heaving platter of succulent treats. He proceeded to lose his temper because the fruit “wasn’t cut into the right shapes”. The PA left the industry shortly afterwards.

In another incident, a big movie star publicly humiliated a new personal assistant, who had been hired that day, and was tasked with preparing a bagel for him. The snack for whatever reason fell short of his standards and, having waved the bagel around with his finger, he threw it in the face of the personal assistant.

“The bagel landed on her left shoulder, cream cheese side down, and then slid down, falling to the ground,” reported a witness to the scene. “She looked up in shock, tears filled her eyes, and she ran off as he closes the door.”

To add insult to baked goods, the A-lister saw to it that the PA was fired by the end of the day.


Tom Hardy is three hours late

Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road
Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road - Jasin Boland/Warner Bros. Pictures

The bad blood between Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) is already the stuff of cinema legend. Frustrated at Hardy’s consistent tardiness, the always-punctual Theron finally confronted the actor – after he arrived three hours later to a crucial scene. She accused him of a lack of professionalism in front of the entire crew – labelling him “a f–king c–t” who should be fined “a hundred thousand dollars for every minute that he’s held up this crew”.

“He was quite aggressive,” said an eyewitness. “She really felt threatened, and that was the turning point, because then she said, ‘I want someone as protection.’ She then had a producer that was assigned to be with her all the time.”

Hardy would later blame his lack of experience. “What she needed was a better, perhaps more experienced, partner in me. That’s something that can’t be faked. I’d like to think that now that I’m older and uglier, I could rise to that occasion.” Presumably he meant being a bigger man – and not squaring off against his female co-star with the entire crew watching.


Red One is in cinemas now