10 Movies That Forced Actors To Face Their Fears

6. Jennifer Aniston's Fear Of Going Underwater (Cake)

Jennifer Aniston Cake
Cinelou Releasing

Due to her career-defining role in '90s sitcom Friends, we don't tend to think of Jennifer Aniston as a dramatic actress.

However, in 2014, she was racking up awards noms all over the place for her work in indie flick Cake, where she plays a woman suffering from chronic pain after surviving a car accident that killed her son. It was a tough role to take on in general, but Aniston found one particular aspect of the shoot far more challenging than the rest.

In a chat with E! News, she described how a select few scenes in which her character undergoes water therapy were incredibly difficult for her to do, all because of a childhood incident that led to her developing a fear of being submerged:

"I was a kid and I was riding this tricycle around a swimming pool, and I drove my tricycle into the swimming pool and I didn't let go, and my brother tried to [help me]. So, I can't go underwater and no one will believe me. I honestly can't."

Aniston's fear was so tricky to overcome that it reportedly took around 30 takes to get a single pool shot done right. In the end though, she received a ton of critical acclaim for her performance - so her bravery paid off.

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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!