10 Actors Who Threatened To Quit Famous Movies

4. Nicole Kidman (The Others)

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Pain & Gain
Warner Bros. Pictures

Actors often have to jump between movies with wildly different tones. One week, you could be doing some voiceover work for a family animation, and the next, you could be filming a bloodthirsty death scene in an R-rated slasher flick.

It was this tonal whiplash that gave Nicole Kidman second thoughts about appearing in her 2001 horror film The Others, with the actress finding it difficult to transition from the colourful and upbeat Moulin Rouge to the dark and disturbing psychological thriller, which takes place almost entirely in a creepy old house:

"When I got there and was just about to start rehearsals I really didn't want to do it. My whole being, my whole psyche, was rejecting it and I was desperate to try to get out of it - I begged them to let me out. All I wanted to do was make love stories and musicals and be happy."

Spoiler alert for a 20-year-old movie, but considering that The Others involves Kidman's character murdering her own children by suffocating them with a pillow, it's not hard to understand why she couldn't enter that headspace.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.