Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni feud tops Will Smith, Chevy Chase's infamous actor-director battles

Fox News

16-02-2025

Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively aren't the first Hollywood stars to find themselves at odds on a movie set.
The two, who have been locked in a legal battle after filming "It Ends With Us," join a long list of actors and directors whose work landed them in nasty feuds.
Lively and Baldoni have sued each other over their experience on the film set. The "Gossip Girl" star claimed Baldoni sexually harassed her and then set out on a mission to destroy her career with a smear campaign.
Baldoni insisted Lively "falsely" accused him in an attempt to repair her reputation after the fallout from the movie's press tour after the actress took control of the film.
Here's a look at other infamous on-set feuds between actors and directors.
While the Will Smith-led romantic comedy "Hitch" may seem easygoing, making it was anything but, the director revealed this week.
Andy Tennant, who had just directed the 2002 Reese Witherspoon classic rom-com "Sweet Home Alabama," told Business Insider he and Smith constantly butted heads while they were in preproduction for 2005's "Hitch."
"I didn't want cheap jokes, but he didn't trust me," Tennant told the outlet.
"We had our difficulties. The movie I wanted to make and the movie Will wanted to make – neither one of those movies is as good as the movie we made together. It was a battle."
He told the outlet that, three days before they were scheduled to start shooting the movie, Smith tried to shut it down so he could keep working on the script.
Fox News Digital reached out to reps for Smith for comment.
Filmmaker Chris Columbus reportedly walked away from one of the biggest Christmas movies of all time because of Chevy Chase.
Columbus, who went on to direct the 1990s movie "Home Alone," revealed Chase's behavior before filming turned him off from working on the 1989 holiday classic, "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation."
"I was signed on … and then I met Chevy Chase. Even given my situation at the time, where I desperately needed to make a film, I realized I couldn't work with the guy," the director told Vanity Fair.
Columbus recalled his first meeting with Chase and the "bizarre" thing the actor said to him.
"It was just the two of us," Columbus explained. "He had to know I was directing the movie. I talked about how I saw the movie, how I wanted to make the movie. He didn't say anything. I went through about a half hour of talking. He didn't say a word. And then he stops, and he says — and this makes no sense to any human being on the planet — but I'm telling you. I probably have never told this story.
"Forty minutes into the meeting, he says, 'Wait a second. You're the director?' And I said, 'Yeah … I'm directing the film.' And he said to me the most surreal, bizarre thing. I still haven't been able to make any sense out of it. He said, 'Oh, I thought you were a drummer.' I said, 'Uhh, OK. Let's start talking about the film again.' After about 30 seconds, he said, 'I got to go.'"
Burt Reynolds did not like working with director Paul Thomas Anderson. The two made "Boogie Nights" together, which won Reynolds a Golden Globe.
However, the two didn't fit "personality-wise," at least for Reynolds.
"I think mostly because he was young and full of himself," the actor told GQ in 2015. "Every shot we did, it was like the first time [that shot had ever been done]. I remember the first shot we did in 'Boogie Nights,' where I drive the car to Grauman's Theater. After, he said, 'Isn't that amazing?' And I named five pictures that had the same kind of shot. It wasn't original. But if you have to steal, steal from the best."
Joel Schumacher and Val Kilmer feuded on the set of "Batman Forever" to the point the two "had a physical pushing match."
"He was being irrational and ballistic with the first AD, the cameraman, the costume people. He was badly behaved. He was rude and inappropriate," Schumacher told Entertainment Weekly in 1996. "I was forced to tell him that this would not be tolerated for one more second. Then we had two weeks where he did not speak to me, but it was bliss."
Kilmer was replaced by George Clooney in the sequel, "Batman & Robin."
Stanley Kubrick had Shelley Duval film an emotionally taxing scene in "The Shining" 127 times.
The late actress told People that Kubrick had her "crying 12 hours a day for weeks on end" while filming in London.
"I will never give that much again," she said. "If you want to get into pain and call it art, go ahead, but not with me."
However, Duvall later said she "wouldn't trade the experience for anything."
"Why? Because of Stanley. And it was a fascinating learning experience," Duvall said in a 2001 interview. "It was such intense work that I think it makes you smarter. But I wouldn't want to go through it again."
Model and actress Megan Fox and director Michael Bay have openly spoken about their time making "Transformers."
"God, I really wish I could go loose on this one," Fox told Wonderland magazine in a 2009 interview when asked about working with Bay. "He's like Napoleon, and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is."
"So, he's a nightmare to work for, but when you get him away from set, and he's not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he's so awkward, so hopelessly awkward," she continued. "He has no social skills at all. And it's endearing to watch him. He's vulnerable and fragile in real life and then on set he's a tyrant. Shia and I almost die when we make a 'Transformers' movie. He has you do some really insane things that insurance would never let you do."
Fox was fired from the "Transformers" franchise, but Bay and the actress eventually made up and worked together on "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
While Bill Murray and Harold Ramis starred together in "Ghostbusters," they seemingly had a falling out while working on "Groundhog Day."
The two had creative disagreements over the 1993 film that led to physical altercations. At one point, Ramis grabbed Murray by his shirt collar and threw the actor up against a wall, Ramis' daughter wrote in her book, "Ghostbuster's Daughter: Life with My Dad, Harold Ramis."
The two didn't speak for 20 years after that but ended their feud before Ramis died in 2014.