10 Movies That Forced Actors To Face Their Fears

A year before he battled his fear of flying in Green Lantern, Ryan Reynolds was conquering another, much more potent personal demon during the production of his 2010 thriller, Buried: claustrophobia.

In the movie, Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, a truck driver working in Iraq who wakes up to discover that he's been buried alive. As you'd expect, much of the film was shot with Reynolds lying in an actual coffin, and this led to the actor suffering from anxiety, insomnia, and complete and utter panic for the duration of filming.

"I'd go home and I'd pace until sun up, like a vampire, and then climb into a coffin to film", he said. "I was losing my mind, I hadn't slept in days, weeks."

Reynolds also suffered from frequent panic attacks due to being enclosed in such a tight space for hours on end. Even worse, director Rodrigo Cortés has mentioned that one of the coffins used during filming was "specially reinforced" so that Reynolds could feel the pressure of all that sand piling on top of him.

All things considered, it's really no surprise that he was freaking out on a regular basis.