12 Creepiest Stories About Famous Movie Directors

10. Stanley Kubrick Psychologically Abused Shelley Duvall While Filming The Shining

The Story: Legendary director Stanley Kubrick is well-known for his meticulous attention-to-detail, and this saw him come to blows with his leading lady Shelley Duvall on the set of horror masterpiece The Shining. Duvall would constantly nitpick about her line delivery, causing her so much stress she became physically ill for months, collapsing from exhaustion with her hair even starting to fall out. Kubrick even made her perform the scene where she swings the baseball bat at Jack Nicholson an insane 127 times. It's widely accepted that Kubrick tortured Duvall in order to evoke a more believably terrified performance out of her, and though the proof is certainly there in the movie itself, it's nothing if not psychopathic behaviour.

Creep-O-Meter: 7/10

It might not be as immediately f***ed up as some of the entries on this list, but there's something a lot more insidious about psychologically dismantling someone over the course of a movie shoot (one that ran for around a year, no less). It demonstrates a unique brand of creep, because really, is making a great movie worth all this abuse? Kubrick would say yes, of course. As for Duvall, she retired from acting and now lives a quiet life, known as a local "eccentric".