As if getting paid millions to play make believe wasn’t enough, Hollywood stars can make big demands for certain concessions on movie sets.
Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise has been a movie star for more than 40 years, and he still insists on doing his own stunts in action-packed movies like The Mummy and those Mission Impossible films. Everything has to be so for those sequences, and so he requires special underwear. At the beginning of a shoot, he demands delivery of 50 pairs of custom-made “thong”-style undergarments made of a soft and pliable material.
Samuel L. Jackson
As a result of multiple films with Quentin Tarantino’s stable of actors and starring in Star Wars and Marvel movies, Samuel L. Jackson is officially the highest-grossing actor in movie history. That gives him some leverage in his contract — he can overrule directors and won’t do any extra takes of a scene if he doesn’t feel like doing them. And when he appeared in Star Wars – Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, he requested that his character, a Jedi named Mace Windu, got a purple lightsaber. (He got it.)
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Eddie Murphy
Eddie Murphy is another veteran star with an underwear-related demand. Before filming begins each day, he’s to receive a brand-new pair of underwear and a brand-new pair of socks, with the tags still on.
Barbara Streisand
Barbara Streisand is one of the most famous singers and actresses in the world, so she gets what she wants in her movie trailer. And for her that means a toilet prepared with rose petals in the bowl and complemented with peach-colored toilet tissue.
Garry Marshall & Hector Elizondo
Some directors like to work with the same actors over and over again — they develop an easy and shorthand when making movies. For the late Garry Marshall, his #1 performer was Hector Elizondo, who appeared in all 18 films Marshall directed between 1982 and his death in 2016. Elizondo was such a must for Marshall that he had the actor’s participation included as a clause in his directing contracts.
Ben Affleck
In 2014’s Gone Girl, Ben Affleck played Nick Dunne, a guy from New York who did some very bad things. What was the one thing in the script Nick had to do that Affleck flat out refused: wear a New York Yankees cap. Affleck is a Boston native and Red Sox diehard, and he just wouldn’t appear on-screen in the headwear of their hated rival Yankees. Affleck and director David Fincher argued about it for more than a day, actually delaying shooting, before they figured out a compromise: Affleck’s character wore a New York Mets cap instead.