2. Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog is the master of impossible shoots, and it's enough to make you think the guy has a death wish given how frequently he puts himself in abject danger. While filming his visionary epic Aguirre, the Wrath of God, he had the cast evading perilous rapids and life-threatening torrents of water for weeks, and when filming Fitzcarraldo, had hundreds of extras pull a 320-ton steamship across a mountain despite the possibility the cable could snap and easily kill them all. Oh, and he once filmed part of a documentary on the side of a volcano that was ready to erupt. He found a perfect partner, then, in Klaus Kinski, an equally mad German actor who, as you can see above, had a tempestuous on-off relationship with the director. Kinski's erratic temper became so much that the natives offered to kill him for Herzog, and frankly, we're surprised that the director didn't take him up on it. It seems that having someone just as nuts around on set only pushed Herzog to even zanier ends, but the result was pure cinema magic on every occasion. Other bizarre incidents include being shot at with an air rifle, declaring "It is not a significant bullet, I am not afraid", and anonymously rescuing Joaquin Phoenix from a car accident.