10 Actors Who Were Scared Of Other Actors

5. Jack Nicholson Terrified Leonardo DiCaprio With A Gun Prop (The Departed)

The Departed
Warner Bros.

For better or worse, Jack Nicholson seems like a pretty intense actor. There's just something unnerving and unpredictable about him, and Leonardo DiCaprio, his co-star in The Departed, will certainly attest to that.

One of the best scenes in the movie involves an exchange between Nicholson's mob boss Frank Costello, and DiCaprio's out-of-his-depth undercover cop, Billy Costigan. Costello smells a rat in his midst, and so, he confronts Costigan, looking for answers.

Midway through their conversation, Costello reaches under a table and pulls out a gun, brandishing it in Costigan's face. Naturally, Costigan - the rat - grows uneasy, afraid that his brains might end up being splattered all over the room.

It's a terrific scene and the tension is palpable, and that's probably because DiCaprio's look of fear is genuine. The actor was properly frightened of his co-star, because he had no idea that Nicholson was about to pull out a gun.

Nicholson was deliberately trying to make DiCaprio afraid in order to enhance the drama of the scene, and clearly, he was successful in that task.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!