10 Actors Who Didn't Know They Were Being Filmed For Movies

10. Michael Douglas - Traffic

Mid-way through Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning drama Traffic, the U.S. President's drug czar Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) heads to the U.S./Mexico border in California, where he speaks with a U.S. Customs Service official while observing inspections of cars crossing the border.

The scene has all the gritty authenticity of reality, and that's because it basically was.

Soderbergh took Douglas to the actual border and had him meet with real U.S. Customs Service executive Rudy M. Camacho.

This wasn't originally intended to be part of the film, but sensing worthwhile material on the horizon, the director quietly began filming the exchange with a small handheld camera without notifying Douglas.

This explains why the video quality looks markedly less-clear than the rest of the film - the garish, overexposed lighting suggests that Soderbergh basically just pointed his camera and shot without setting the scene up as usual.

Similarly, the audio quality is of much lower quality than in other scenes.

Soderbergh reportedly hoped that Camacho wouldn't render the material unusable by referring to Douglas by his real name which, thankfully, he didn't.