8 Actors Who Beat The S**t Out Of Their Director

4. Rip Torn And Dennis Hopper Had A Butter Knife And Salad Fork Fight Over Easy Rider

According to Dennis Hopper, Rip Torn was the man who would have played the part eventually taken by Jack Nicholson in Hopper's Easy Rider, had Torn not 'pulled a knife' on Hopper at a restaurant before filming even began. Torn tells a different story, though, telling The Guardian in a 1999 interview that Hopper "held a knife inches from his eyes" before Torn disarmed his would-be director, military-style, and offered to finish the fight in a parking lot. Whomever started the brawl, it's known from Peter Fonda that the two hilariously "went at it" with a butter knife and a salad fork, and that Torn eventually won damages - $900,000-worth, in fact - because courts backed Torn's claim that it was Hopper who pulled a knife on him. This one, then, is up for dispute; Torn himself has said longstanding rumours of this altercation did "cripple my career", thought in reality it may have been another incident that convinced directors to stay away...