10 Movies That Forced Actors To Face Their Fears

9. Salma Hayek's Fear Of Snakes (From Dusk Till Dawn)

Salma Hayek From Dusk Till Dawn
Miramax Films

Though you'd expect the filmmakers and actors to be on the same page before agreeing to shoot a movie together, that isn't always the case.

Just ask Salma Hayek, who agreed to star in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's horror-thriller From Dusk Till Dawn, only to be thrown one hell of a curveball when the time came to shoot her famous dance scene.

That curveball? An enormous snake.

"I have a phobia," Hayek recalled in a chat with E! News. "It was not [in] the script. I agreed to the movie, and then, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino decided that the dance is with the snake on me."

Basically, Hayek knew that she was set to do a dance scene - she just had no idea that this scene would also involve a bloody python wrapped around her neck.

Understandably, she then refused to do the scene, but when Rodriguez and Tarantino indicated they'd be willing to replace her, Hayek opted to conquer her fear rather than walk away. "Frankly, I really needed to pay the rent," she added.

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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!