(Credits: Far Out / New Line Cinema)
Fri 7 November 2025 21:30, UK
Actors are a potent combination of vulnerability, ego, and expensive shoes, and there have been way, way too many stories of on-set fallings out to list here in this humble article.
Be it Marlon Brando’s antics while making Apocalypse Now or Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski nearly killing each other, directors have often borne the brunt of their stars’ idiosyncrasies. Just ask Duncan Roy, the British filmmaker who once fell foul of Elizabeth Hurley.
Anyone with their finger on the pop culture pulse will remember Hurley from her 1990s pomp. The star of Bedazzled, EDtv, and the Austin Powers franchise was perhaps most well-known for her actions away from the camera.
She was a constant source of revenue for the tabloid press thanks to her personal life, with the reveal of her safety pin dress at the premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral still one of the greatest moments in fashion history. She also has one of the strangest dating profiles of all time, having enjoyed public relationships with Hugh Grant, Shayne Warne, and Billy Ray Cyrus, in that order, and yes, she dated him after his ‘unique’ performance at Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Roy had the pleasure of working alongside Hurley on the 2004 film Method, where she plays an actor starring in a fictionalised film about a serial killer who ends up getting lost in the character. Maybe this is why she was such a nightmare to work with, according to Roy’s testimony in The Standard, where he revealed that, while they were on location in Romania, Hurley didn’t exactly paint herself in a glorious light.
“Liz seems to have the impression that she is a great actress. She totally believes that she is someone special. She is not,” the director flatly said, adding of the on-set experience, “She had a tantrum about how her trailer was not the kind she wanted. I couldn’t believe it. The Romanians had provided their best one with air conditioning [SIC] and all the extras. They had gone out of their way to make her comfortable. She also made it clear that she wanted to be called Elizabeth and I would correct people when she was called Liz. However, she insisted on calling me Dunc, which was plain rude.”
‘Dunc’ isn’t the only person to have had on-set issues with the English star, as the film Serving Sara was fraught with delays and setbacks, although that was mainly due to Matthew Perry’s addiction issues; she also earned the ire of Sag-Aftra when she broke a strike to film an advert in 2000.
Then, 2004 marked something of a downturn in Hurley’s acting career, which would see her away from movies for six years, appearing afterwards in a vehicle weirdly set in Romania, and her public profile had already significantly diminished from its peak. Perhaps she was particularly irritable because she knew she wasn’t where she wanted to be, or maybe nursing a bad mood, but it’s worth noting that not everyone hated working with Hurley during this period, and her co-star Oliver Tobias spoke out against Roy’s claims, asserting that the actor was a joy to work with.
One thing we can say for certain is, given how utterly uninspired Method was, all this hassle absolutely wasn’t worth the effort.
Related Topics
