10 Planned Movie Scenes Actors Refused To Film
4. Jesus Rubs Mud Into A Blind Woman's Eyes - Mary Magdalene
Joaquin Phoenix is about as committed as actors get, but even he evidently has his limits.
While playing Jesus Christ in Garth Davis' largely forgotten 2018 film Mary Magdalene, Phoenix was to perform a scene early in the story where Jesus cures a woman of her blindness by rubbing mud into her eyes, referencing a passage from John's Gospel where Jesus did the very same to cure a blind man.
But Phoenix took issue with this moment, feeling that what on the written page didn't translate to a cinematic retelling. He said in an interview with CNN:
"I knew about that scene from the Bible, but I guess I had never really considered it... When I got there, I thought: 'I'm not going to rub dirt in her eyes. Who the f**k would do that? It doesn't make any sense. That is a horrible introduction to seeing.'"
Instead, Phoenix decided to lick his thumb and rub it on the woman's eyes - which if nothing else was a more practical approach from a filmmaking perspective.