12 Directors Everyone Hates Working With (But Get Awesome Results)

6. Lars Von Trier

His Reputation: Lars von Trier has a famously frosty relationship with actors as a whole, once declaring, "they are the only thing that stands between you and a good film", and this seems to only intensify when he's working with females. While making Dancer in the Dark with Bjork, the two clashed frequently, with Bjork branding him a cruel sexist, while von Trier said that working with the singer was "like dealing with terrorists". On filming Dogville, Paul Bettany expressed disapproval of the director's methods, stating, "You're not allowed to talk about the film and there is no rehearsal", and John C. Reilly quit the film Manderlay after von Trier demanded to kill a real donkey in one scene rather than use a fake. In von Trier's defense, this was more a budgetary concern than him being a pure maniac, and the donkey was reportedly fed to the crew after its death, but Reilly had enough and flew home. Why He's Worth Working With: Though he's never going to court much Oscar attention, von Trier is one of the most singular cinematic auteurs working today, evidenced no more than by his recent movie Nymphomaniac, which featured a distinguished Hollywood cast including Uma Thurman, Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, Christian Slater, Willem Dafoe and so on. His previous film, Melancholia, meanwhile roped in Kirsten Dunst, John Hurt and Kiefer Sutherland, so it very much seems that his distinctly European weirdness is attractive to some actors, especially those who perhaps need a break from the insanity of Hollywood excess.