[custom_adv] Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange (1971) Stanley Kubrick's highly controversial A Clockwork Orange is disturbing enough to the viewer, let alone to the actor who starred in it. For the famous brainwashing scene in the film, lead actor Malcolm McDowell allowed his eyes to be pinned open for every take. Unfortunately, McDowell didn't leave unscathed: the physical torment caused him to suffer from temporary blindness and a scratched cornea. We imagine the psychological effects were even more painful than that. [custom_adv] Linda Blair in The Exorcist (1973) As the child star in one of the most iconic horror movies of all time, Linda Blair has experienced lasting effects from The Exorcist. Blair admits that when filming the movie at 13 years old, she didn't really know what was going on. To her, it was simply acting. The real trauma occurred after The Exorcist's release in 1973, when Blair found herself faced with a litany of questions about possession, faith, and Catholicism that she simply wasn't prepared to answer. "To me The Exorcist was a work of fiction," she later told Dread Central. [custom_adv] Jennifer Carpenter in The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) Jennifer Carpenter might've been fine with all the sinister surgical procedures going down on Dexter, but the actress got a case of the spooks during production on The Exorcism of Emily Rose. She told Dread Central that while she was filming the religious thriller, some strange things started happening to her after hours, like her radio randomly turning on in the middle of the night. "Two or three times when I was going to sleep my radio came on by itself," she said. "The only time it scared me was once because it was really loud, and it was Pearl Jam's 'Alive.'" [custom_adv] The cast of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) Tobe Hooper can be a cruel, cruel dude. Not only did The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's writer-director frighten people out of their seats when he unleashed his skin-mask-wearing maniac Leatherface (played by Gunnar Hansen in the original) into the cinematic world, but he also scared the daylights out of his own cast by concealing the character's revolting look from them until it was action time. [custom_adv] Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby (1968) Mia Farrow went through quite a few traumatizing experiences while working on Roman Polanski's American film debut, Rosemary's Baby. A strict vegetarian, Farrow was asked by Polanski if she wouldn't mind eating raw chicken liver for a scene. Little did she know she would be forced to consume it over and over again for different takes. On top of that, Farrow was served divorce papers from her then-husband, Frank Sinatra, on-set and in front the entire cast and crew. If that's not traumatizing, we're not sure what is. [custom_adv] Kyle Richards in Halloween (1978) You might know Kyle Richards now as a real housewife of Beverly Hills, but before she was a TV star, she was a child actress in John Carpenter's Halloween. After seeing the premiere of the movie, Richards was so terrified that she reportedly had to sleep with her mom until she was 15, always imagining someone hiding under her bed or behind the curtains, waiting to get her. Needless to say, Richards never acted in another horror film again. Unless you count her continued appearances on the actual horrorshow that is Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, that is. [custom_adv] Tippi Hedren in The Birds (1963) While filming The Birds, Hitchcock tormented his star actress, Tippi Hedren, both on- and off-set through manipulation, sexual slurs, and obsessive behaviors. The tipping point for Hedren was when Hitchcock lied about the use of real birds in a particular scene. Instead of the mechanical birds used in the rest of the film, Hedrin was duped into acting with live ones that were hurled at her over a week of filming. She left the set bruised, bloodied, and emotionally scarred. [custom_adv] JoBeth Williams in Poltergeist (1982) This creepy 1982 classic is widely regarded to be one of the most cursed film sets of all time. Among the many mysterious tragedies associated with the pic were when actor Oliver Robbins had a near-death experience with the clown puppet during production, young actress Heather O'Rourke died a few years after the movie's release from a misdiagnosed intestinal abnormality, and actress Dominique Dunne was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in her driveway. [custom_adv] Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960) Here's another incident from a classic Hitchcock horror film. Janet Leigh was never quite the same after starring as Marion Crane in Psycho. Traumatized after watching herself in the famous shower scene, Leigh became too afraid to take showers and from that point forward, and only took baths. Regarded by many as one of the darkest horror films in history, Psycho affected not only Leigh but others involved with the film as well, Hitchcock included. [custom_adv] Gregory Peck in The Omen (1976) Richard Donner's 1976 creepfest The Omen has a rich history of freaky incidents that cast the antichrist-centric flick as one of the most cursed sets of all time, and actor Gregory Peck bore the brunt of the tragedy. His son Jonathan Peck shot himself just two months prior to production on the pic, and then his plane was struck by lightning—a shock that would also happen to the film's executive producer Mace Neufeld. The eerie happenings had everyone so spooked that producer Harvey Bernhard carried a cross on set and said, "the devil was at work, and he didn't want that film made." [custom_adv] Shelley Duvall in The Shining (1980) Stanley Kubrick absolutely wrecked the psyche of actress Shelley Duvall during production of his adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining. Among the most harrowing tales from the storied set of the acclaimed pic was his consistent mistreatment of Duvall, including telling others on set not to sympathize with her when she was upset and dogging her work. The film was shot in chronological sequence, so as the viewer watches her character unravel onscreen, it's worth noting that it was also happening in her real life [custom_adv] Veronica Cartwright in Alien (1979) The chest-bursting scene from Alien ranks among the most iconic moments in all of sci-fi film history, and perhaps that's partly because the cast involved in the scene really didn't know what was about to happen to them on the set and were genuinely disturbed by it. Director Ridley Scott explained his reason for letting the creature's big reveal happen in real-time during the shoot, saying, "The reactions were going to be the most difficult thing. If an actor is just acting terrified, you can't get the genuine look of raw, animal fear." [custom_adv] Jeffrey Dean Morgan in The Possession (2012) Jeffrey Dean Morgan might be playing a savage, bat-slinging brute of the zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead, but he got pretty worked up over his work in The Possession. He told io9 that he and his co-stars were so freaked out by the real story of the dybbuk box that they made sure not to take it lightly during filming. "I'm a skeptic, look, I'm not going to lie," he explained. "That being said, there was some weird goings on on set. Lots of light bulbs exploding. Just overall kind of creepiness... 'Don't mock the box' was sort of the mantra that we lived by while we were filming this." [custom_adv] [custom_adv] Vera Farmiga in The Conjuring (2013) The real-life ghost-hunting history of Ed and Lorraine Warren is freaky enough to put anyone on edge, but Vera Farmiga knew very little of her character's counterpart before signing the dotted line on The Conjuring and receiving her first paranormal encounter as a welcome gift. The actress told Cinema Blend that during her first round of research into Warren's work she had a brush with the beyond after she hung up the phone with director James Wan and opened her laptop to find "three digital claw marks, from the upper right diagonal to the lower left." Add your description here. [custom_adv]
