14 Movie Scenes That Traumatized Their Actors

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20-06-2025

Janet Leigh explained that after filming the notorious shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, she couldn't take showers for a long, long time.
In a 1996 interview with The New York Times, Leigh shared how she was so afraid of taking a shower after filming the stabbing scene in the 1960 classic Psycho, she resorted to quite extreme measures to avoid her terrifying experience and trauma from the set. She stated, "I make sure the doors and windows of the house are locked, and I leave the bathroom door open and the shower curtain open. I'm always facing the door, watching, no matter where the shower head is.'
Tippi Hedren, the lead of the 1960s classic The Birds, was actually attacked by real birds while filming, which left her terrified and utterly exhausted.
Tippi Hedren was originally told that there'd be mechanical birds "attacking" her on the set of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, but was told shortly thereafter that they didn't work and would have to resort to using real birds trained to attack. This left Hedren distraught as, for five straight days during filming, she was bitten, attacked, and had live birds thrown and strapped to her. After one of the birds nearly pecked her eye out, Hedren simply broke down out of pure exhaustion on set. She had to take a week to recover in the aftermath of everything. When recalling the traumatic event, Hedren shared "I was never frightened, I was just overwhelmed and in some form of shock, and I just kept saying to myself over and over again, 'I won't let him [Hitchcock], break me. I won't let him break me.'
Florence Pugh went through on and off-screen trauma while filming Ari Aster's Midsommar.
The main star of the film, Florence Pugh, came out to say during the Off Menu podcast how she'd end up putting herself in "really s*** situations that other actors maybe don't need to" in order to stem from her character's on-screen trauma. She went on to explain how "I was putting things in my head that were just getting worse and more bleak. I think by the end, I had probably – most definitely – abused my own self in order to get that performance."
Jack Reynor, who starred opposite Pugh, in Midsommar also suffered some trauma and mental health impacts from the filming, especially the famous bear scene.
Jack Reynor, who played opposite Pugh, shared how he struggled with his mental health all throughout the shoot, and well after. He was particularly traumatized from the final bear scene, in which he told Collider, "It's dark and it's unsettling to watch all these people around you basically making it look like they're going to kill you in a horrific way. There's nothing you can do and you're paralysed, you know? It was heavy."
And last but not least, supporting star of the film, Will Poulter, suffered psychological impacts and full-on nightmares from being in Midsommar.
Supporting star, Will Poulter, also confirmed the horrific psychological impacts the film had on him by sharing how he'd have "Terrible, terrible, full-on nightmares" in a interview with Empire. He further explained how the film Midsommar itself was just "utterly disturbing. And it's that kind of disturbing feeling that I think lingers longer than a fright. A fright has a very limited lifespan. This idea that humans are capable of what you see in Midsommar is kind of what's most disturbing about it ... Despite reading the script and despite being in it and shooting it, and presumably knowing what to expect, I was still caught massively off guard."
Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, explained the on and off-screen trauma himself and lead Marilyn Burns faced during the film, especially the dinner table scene.
In an interview with Esquire, Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface, came out to say how the dinner scene in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is permanently "burned" into his memory because of "...the misery of it. At that point, we were really just on the verge of mental collapse. And Marilyn told me about how awful it was for her because she was terrified... just being tied to a chair and then having these men looming over her constantly, she said it was really unnerving. I think that whole scene was certainly the most intense part of the movie, and I think all of us were slightly insane by then."
In addition, many cast members of the classic horror The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were traumatized from filming and from the horrific conditions of the set.
According to various cast members, the set of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was extremely gross and hostile, often smelling so bad it'd cause the actors to get sick due to the stench of dead animal parts. Some of the cast members weren't even allowed to change out of their dirty clothes or bathe for five weeks in order to maintain continuity, Marilyn Burns, who plays Sally, had spoken out about the conditions and explained how she was injured on set with her finger being cut and often scared she'd acquire a worse injury, especially from the chainsaws.
Isabelle Adjani, star of the horror fantasy Possession, tried to kill herself after seeing the intense final cut of the film.
In a 2000s documentary following his career, the director of the film, Andrzej Żuławski, spoke out about how his lead, Isabelle Adjani, attempted to commit suicide upon seeing the final cut of the film. He shared that "I think I was responsible for that. I was the one to blame. If somebody plays in my film and then is going through something like that, that means I didn't notice something." In regards to her experience, Adjani said to Interview magazine, "I remember – if you'll allow me to offer a comparison from my own career and some situations with [the director] Andrzej Żuławski – there was something of great violence that I agreed to take on. But I've realised over the years that it's something I could never accept again, and it's part of everything that my subconscious has been swallowing and incubating."
Alex Wolff, one of the leads of the film, developed PTSD after filming Ari Aster's Hereditary.
After speaking to Vice, Alex Wolff claimed that he'd suffered a type of PTSD after being in the emotional, psychological horror film Hereditary, directed by Ari Aster. Aster is known for leaving his actors emotionally damaged and scared, with Wolff explaining how "It's hard to describe eloquently. It's just a feeling. I don't think you can go through something like this and not have some sort of PTSD afterwards. When I started talking about it, all these flashes with all this disturbing s*** I went through sorta came back in a flood. It kept me up at night to where I got into a habit of emotional masochism at that point of just trying to take in every negative feeling I could draw from."
The set of The Blair Witch Project was terrifying and horrified many of its actors in the duration of filming.
The Blair Witch Project follows a group of teenagers roaming around the dark, spooky woods in search of clues to a mysterious town's local murderer, but were some of the scary moments caught on camera real? It was discovered that some of the producers of the film would unsuspectedly follow the camera crew around stepping on twigs and throwing rocks in order to create real-life fear and tension from the actors. However, while filming the tent scene, the tent began to shake uncontrollably without being touched, leaving many of the actors and crew seriously spooked from the event.
James McAvoy claimed that he'd experience terrible nightmares of Pennywise the Clown after filming It Chapter Two.
At an event with PA in San Diego, James McAvoy recalled a chilling dream due to the horrifying nature of Bill Skarsgård' performance of Pennywise in the film, It Chapter Two. He shared how, "The only one I can really remember is, I'm lying on my side in the bed and he was in bed with me. And he's stroking my back gently and saying, 'Wake up, James, wake up.' And I was just terrified, pretending to be asleep. I just thought, I've got to pretend to be asleep, I've got to pretend to be asleep. I had lots of nightmares about Pennywise, but that's the one specific one I can remember."
Coincidentally, Bill Skarsgård, who played Pennywise the Clown, also suffered bad dreams from both It films.
Bill Skarsgård recalled the scary dreams on Pennywise he had as a result of filming both It and It Chapter Two, sharing that "Those dreams were so strange. Either I was confronting Pennywise and I was upset with him, yelling at him — or I was Pennywise, but I was walking around in the streets that I grew up on, and I'm like, 'No, no. I shouldn't be out here in public walking around like this. This is not how it's supposed to be done." He went on to explain how "It was this weird thing where I was trying to separate myself from this thing," comparing his performance to his most recent as Orlook in Robert Egger's Nosferatu and how he'd had more ease in that role.
JoBeth Williams was scared half to death while filming the infamous pool scene in The Poltergeist.
During filming the pool scene where Williams is surrounded by skeletons, she was utterly unaware of the fact that they were real at the time she was in the water with them. Upon finding out, Williams was completely freaked out, stating, "I think everybody got real creeped out by the idea of that." However, she explained that it wasn't so much that the skeletons were real, she was worried initially that the materials of the fake ones posed an electrical danger to herself while in the water. Yet, writer Steven Spielberg, to ease her worries, actually jumped into the pool with her, saying, "Now if a light falls in, we'll both fry."
And finally, Shelley Duvall was pushed to her breaking point while filming Stanley Kubrick's, The Shining, and suffered immense health issues following.
During filming, Kubrick created extremely rough, hostile conditions that left Duvall having to reshoot one particular scene 127 times, which caused her immense dehydration and for clumps of her hair to fall out for the amount of crying she was expected to do during the scene. In The Complete Kubrick, a 2000s book of the director himself, Duvall shared "From May until October, I was really in and out of ill health because the stress of the role was so great. Stanley pushed me and prodded me further than I've ever been pushed before. It's the most difficult role I've ever had to play."
Know any more crazy, horrifying scenes that left actors traumatized from filming, share them in the comments below!