10 Actors Who Made Ridiculous Movie Demands So They Wouldn't Be Hired... But Were

It's no secret at all that Alec Guinness didn't have much regard for the Star Wars franchise, and only ended up signing up for the "fairy tale rubbish," as he himself described it, after hurling a frankly absurd list of demands George Lucas' way.

First and foremost, he asked Lucas to double his original base salary offer, and because he actually believed the film would be commercially successful, insisted upon a 2% slice of Lucas' own royalties. Guinness also declared he wouldn't do any publicity for the film whatsoever.

Hilariously, Lucas was desperate enough to have an actor of Guinness' caliber involved that he ended up saying yes.

Though Guinness continued to disparage the quality of the movie's script in subsequent years, he was nevertheless credited by Lucas with contributing massively to the film's success, resulting in the director raising the actor's cut of his own royalties up to 2.5% (which producer Gary Kurtz later revised back down to 2.25%).

Guinness' opinion of the Star Wars phenomenon seemed to warm in the later years of his life, though, and recently his estate was estimated to have made almost $100 million from that original agreement.

Rather than Guinness simply taking Lucas for a ride, this was ultimately an extremely prosperous outcome for two men working as both artists and businessmen.