10 Actors Who Went Too Far On Set
7. Martin Sheen - Apocalypse Now
There's a reason why Martin Sheen's hotel room meltdown in Apocalypse Now is one of the most convincing freak-out scenes you'll ever see - most of it was real. The actor was having a tough time in his personal life while shooting the war classic, and was battling alcoholism, but those demons turned out to be weirdly beneficial to the film.
Sheen did not go full method for Apocalypse Now, he merely got wasted before filming this scene and had a moment of temporary madness in front of the camera. He thrashed around, shattering a mirror and cutting himself on a broken shard, freaking out the crew in the process. They wanted to abandon the shoot, but Sheen and director Francis Ford Coppola urged them to keep the cameras rolling.
It's lucky that they did, as the troubled actor's overzealous antics resulted in one of the most hard-hitting scenes in Apocalypse Now.