One Scene Made Tom Cruise's Co-Star Leave Their Movie: 'You're F*cking Out of Your Mind!'

Tom Cruise has been around for decades, and few people remember him as anyone but the king of action films and Hollywood’s most notorious A-lister. But while it might seem to many that Cruise has only been doing wicked stunts throughout his career, it’s not true: back in the day, the actor tackled many other genres which didn’t require climbing the world’s tallest buildings or jumping off cliffs on the back of a motorcycle.

But even shooting drama thrillers can prove equally as stressful. Not for Cruise, of course — for other actors.

Eyes Wide Shut Wasn’t Easy to Film

Stanley Kubrick is among the most brilliant directors of the generation, and his 1999 Eyes Wide Shut is rightfully considered a cult classic. Led by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, the movie had a few other top-tier actors, but not all of them managed to pull through Kubrick’s… Increasingly demanding attitude and questionable methods.

Reservoir Dogs’ Harvey Keitel was part of the movie’s original cast, but he didn’t make it into the final cut. While many actors claimed that working with Stanley Kubrick wasn’t easy, Keitel was the one person who wasn’t about to tolerate such an attitude. He walked out of the movie halfway through and didn’t come back, and later, he would state it was his “sense of worth” that led him to disobey the director.

But what exactly happened on the set of Eyes Wide Shut?

Kubrick Was Almost Torturing His Actors

Stanley Kubrick’s demanding perfectionism took its toll on everyone he worked with. For Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, it was manageable. For Gary Oldman, too — but not for Harvey Keitel. Back in the day, it was Oldman who sat down with SiriusXM and shared the story of how and why Keitel quit the movie right on the spot.

“He was doing the scene, and they were just walking through a door, and after the 68th take of this, just walking through a door, Harvey Keitel just said [to Kubrick], ‘I’m out of here. You’re f*cking crazy.’ He just said, ‘You’re f*cking out of your mind,’ and left,” Oldman recalled.

Few people ever had the guts to say something like that to the celebrated director’s face, and even fewer would drop an opportunity to star in his movie. But for Harvey Keitel, it was a matter of his own dignity, and he preserved it… And let’s be real, if someone made you walk through the same door on camera a few dozen times in a row, you’d also freak out and storm off. We know we would.

Source: SiriusXM via YouTube