15 Times Actors Allegedly Had "No Eye Contact" Rules Or Other Chaotic On-Set Demands
There are plenty of rumors about actors having strict or strange demands on set, but some are more substantial than others.
Here are 7 actors who allegedly had a "no eye contact" rule on set:
1.On a 2023 episode of the Pod Meets World podcast, Rider Strong said, "I did a movie [Benefit of the Doubt] with Donald Sutherland, and he [reportedly] has an eye contact rule. Nobody can make eye contact with him. If you're in the scene with him, you could make eye contact with him, but his whole thing was that every crew member has to look away."
His co-host Will Friedle responded, "That's ridiculous...A stupid, egotistical power trip."
2.In a 2010 interview with Kim Dickens, AV Club writer Steve Heisler said, "I was an extra in The Lake House when Sandra Bullock was in it, and we were told that we were not allowed to make eye contact with her unless she initiated the eye contact."
Kim replied, "Wow. Yeah, no, I didn’t have that experience [on The Blind Side]. She seems so approachable that probably everyone would approach her if given the chance."
3.When Jessica Alba appeared on Hot Ones in 2020, she said, "On the set of 90210, I couldn't even make eye contact with any of the cast members, which was really strange when you're, like, trying to do a scene with them. Yeah, it was like, 'You're not allowed to make eye contact with any one of the cast members, or you'll be thrown off the set.'"
Several Beverly Hills, 90210 cast members refuted Jessica's claim.
On the podcast 9021OMG, Tori Spelling said, "I'm not going to lie to you guys: I was a little horrified when I saw that clip that she said that she wasn't allowed to make eye contact and she had an awful experience because her baby wipes are my favorite."
Ian Ziering told Access, "How that was told to Jessica, it saddens me because it lessened the experience for her — certainly didn't slow her down in life — but it's hard to hear that there was any negativity on the set."
Jason Priestley told KiSS 92.5's The Roz & Mocha Show, "Don't look at the stars of the show' was never an edict that came down on our show. I don't know who told Jessica Alba not to look at us. I know that certainly I never would have made her feel that way. I always went out of my way to make sure that our guests always felt incredibly welcomed and I would always go and talk to them and make sure they knew this was a place where we wanted them to succeed."
On the podcast Beverly Hills 90210 Show, Joel Feigenbaum, who directed the two episodes Jessica guest starred in, said, "It's very possible someone could have said that to her, either seriously or not. I can't imagine who it would have been. It certainly wasn't one of the cast, and I can't even imagine. The only other people it might have been an AD or maybe somebody in the makeup and hair trailer. I don't doubt that she heard that somehow, but I certainly was never aware of it, and you certainly never saw that on the set anyway."
4.In 2023, radio host Jay Brody tweeted, "Mike Myers had me fired off the set of 'The Love Guru' because I made eye contact with him, and I was there as his body guard…"
On his radio show Carly and Jay, he said, "Years ago, I was working in film security, and I got a call from a company that hired out guards, and they said, 'Do you want a job on the film The Love Guru? I'm like, 'Sure. What will I be doing?' 'Well, you'll be basically guarding Mike Myers's trailer on the film sets, wherever they go.' I'm like, 'Sounds easy enough. I've done this before..' They're like, 'Here's the catch. Can't look at him.' And I'm like, 'I need to look at him to see him to be his bodyguard.' They're like, 'If you look at him, you're gonna get fired. And here's another thing you should know. We really don't know what he looks like right now. He's gonna be in a wig and prosthetics.'
...I'm sitting on the set, first day, first hour, we don't know what he looks like, I don't know what he looks like yet, and I see a man approaching in a long wig with a fake beard, and I'm like 'I think that's Mike Myers.'
And I looked down to not look at him, because I don't want to get fired. But I realize I can let just anyone into the trailer, so I look up, I catch his eye for a second, I give him a nod to let him know I'm cool, and I look away, and within an hour, I get a phone call letting me know that I'm fired, and I have to get off set because I broke this weird rule."
Mike Meyers's rep told Yahoo that the actor didn't have bodyguards on The Love Guru and that he didn't have any knowledge of the incident Jay described.
5.In 2019, a source from the Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood set alleged to The Hollywood Reporter that some crew were told not to make eye contact with Leonardo DiCaprio.
However, another alleged source reportedly told Metro that the "no eye contact" rule claim was false.
6.During a 2020 episode of his radio show 4BC Breakfast, Neil Breen, a former executive producer on Australia's Today, reportedly said that, when Ellen DeGeneres appeared on the morning show in 2013, the staff were given strict instructions. He alleged her team told him, "Neil, no one's to talk to Ellen. So you don't talk to her, you don't approach her, you don't look at her. She'll come in, she'll sit down, she'll talk to Richard [Wilkins], then Ellen will leave."
He said, "I found the whole thing bizarre...I'm not blaming Ellen, because I didn't get to talk to her, because I wasn't allowed to. So I don't know whether she's a nice person or not. I wouldn't have a clue. But I can tell you the people who worked with her walked on eggshells the whole time."
A few weeks later, an alleged source told Page Six that, in a Zoom meeting with her staff, Ellen denied the "insane" rumor she had a "no eye contact" rule. She reportedly said, "I don’t know where it started. Please talk to me. Look me in the eye.”
7.And in a 1999 lawsuit, a group of Sylvester Stallone's former household staff who were suing him for unfair dismissal alleged that, when he walked into a room, they were required to "back out and vanish immediately" and never meet his eyes or talk to his mom, let they be fired immediately.
The actor's lawyer denied the claims, calling them "purely fictional."
And here are 8 actors who reportedly had other wild on-set demands:
8.In his Gone Girl commentary, director David Fincher said, "There's a moment described at the end of this scene where Nick Dunne has to reach into his duffle bag or his backpack and get out a baseball cap that he's bought at the airport, and he puts it on and walks away and hopes that people don't recognize him from the television and put together that that's him, that he's in their presence. And I really wanted it to be a Yankees cap, but, being from Boston and not being very professional as an actor, Ben [Affleck] refused to wear a Yankees cap. It did not come to blows, but we had to shut down production for four days as we negotiated with Patrick Whitesell over what would be the best thing for the movie."
He continued, "What Patrick thought would be the best way to meet the requirements of the production and something that his client could live with, which I thought was entirely unprofessional. Four days."
9.According to the Washington Post in 1993, Kim Basinger reportedly requested "copious quantities of Evian water for washing her hair" while filming The Marrying Man.
She also allegedly wanted to pause production on the movie so she could visit a psychic in Brazil.
10.On a 2024 episode of the Dinner's On Me podcast, Kyle MacLachlan said that, while filming The Flinstones, Elizabeth Taylor "had to have a gift every day."
He said the gifts included "jewelry."
Kyle added, "This is secondhand now. Bruce [Cohen] probably told me and said, 'Don't ever tell anybody that.' Too late. It's too late."
11.According to Rotten Tomatoes, Jack Nicholson reportedly banned Celtics gear from the set of The Departed in Boston because he's a big LA Lakers fan.
A purported source said, "If he caught anyone wearing a Celtics T-shirt, he'd literally shut down the set. It was no joke."
In response, Jack's agent, Sandy Bresler, said, "I have no idea. I wasn't there."
12.In 2020, Annabelle Wallis told The Hollywood Reporter, "I got to run on-screen with [Tom Cruise in The Mummy], but he told me no at first. He said, 'Nobody runs on-screen [with me],' and I said, 'But I'm a really good runner.'"
She continued, "So, I would time my treadmill so that he'd walk in and see me run. And then he added all these running scenes. So, that was it. It was, like, better than an Oscar. I was so happy! I was so happy that I got to run on-screen with Tom Cruise."
13.Appearing on Conan in 2016, Zooey Deschanel said that, when Prince guest starred on New Girl, the Kardashians' cameo was removed from a party scene because he didn't think they'd be at one of his parties IRL.
She said, "I'm not sure exactly how the celebrities were chosen, but someone was friends with some of the Kardashians and had made a phone call, and they had kindly come on to shoot a little cameo part where they were at Prince's party, which I didn't really know about because it kept changing. I get there the day Prince is supposed to arrive, and I'm studying my lines and one of the P.A.s comes in, and she says, 'I need all of the [scripts].' She takes mine from me and takes everybody else's, and [she] takes everyone's call sheets... I'm like, 'What is going on?' I walk outside, and she has, like, a bonfire. She's burning all the scripts and the call sheets.
It turns out that someone from Prince's camp said like, 'Who are the celebrities? I hope it's not a Kardashian,' which is sad, because I think Khloé Kardashian and Kris Jenner had kindly come in and shot the scene....They didn't want anyone to get by each other. I felt so bad because everyone had gone out of their way to be there on that day, but Prince was running the show."
Likewise, on an episode of the podcast Doug Loves Movies, Lamorne Morris reportedly said, "We had these very famous celebrities — they're like a family of famous people that are in the world; I'm not going to say who they are, but there's a whole bunch of them — so they were on our show. Prince shows up early, so he's sitting in video village, and he's watching the screen, and he goes, 'What are the blank blanks doing here?' They said, 'Well, they're in the show. They've been invited to a Prince party.' He goes, 'They would never be invited to a Prince party.'"
14.In 1988, Gary Busey was in a motorcycle crash, and in brain surgery, he died on the table before coming back to life. In 2012, his Quigley costar Curtis Armstrong told the AV Club Toronto, "We were shooting this movie — which is a horrible movie — and he was supposed to come back from the dead. And he, of course, Gary Busey, supposedly had done this — he'd been in an accident and died and came back. He showed up on a set made to look like Heaven, and he looked around and said, 'I can't play this scene.' They were three days behind at this point."
Curtis continued, "But Busey said, 'It's nothing like this. I've been to Heaven, and it doesn't look like this. That sofa's all wrong. That mirror is ridiculous. They don't even have mirrors!'
It was ridiculous. He was completely nuts about the design of Heaven. But then, on top of it, one of the guys playing an angel had also died and come back. And this guy got into an argument with Busey about the way Heaven looked! The two of them wound up coming to blows, and they had to send everybody home. So there you go. That's what we were working with."
15.And finally, in 2016, Amy Hill told the AV Club that, on the The Cat in the Hat set, Mike Myers "had his handlers dress his trailer, and his area was all covered with tenting because he didn't want anybody seeing him." She also claimed that, though she'd get there at "the crack of dawn," everyone "would all be waiting for Mike Myers to come."
She said, "It was just a horrible, nightmarish experience. I don't think he got to know anybody. He'd just be with his people and walk away. People would come, and then he'd stand there. There was a guy who held his chocolates in a little Tupperware. Whenever he needed chocolate, he'd come running over and give him a chocolate. That's what divas are like, I guess. Or people who need therapy."
