Sometimes, you remember that Hollywood stars are famous because they’re really, ridiculously good at acting—and that those skills might sometimes cover up the fact that they’re actually hee-haw jerks who walk the planet only to make misery. Here are a few seemingly nice celebrities who might actually be awful.
1. Katherine Heigl
There are a number of videos of Katherine Heigl denying allegations that she’s impossible to work with, like “Katherine Heigl On Being Labeled A Diva,” or “Katherine Heigl on Shonda Rhimes’ Negative Comments: ‘I’m Sorry That She Feels That Way.'”
But how could such a delightful personality have reportedly sandbagged Grey’s Anatomy by pulling herself from Emmy contention and saying, “I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization, I withdrew my name from contention”? Or caused “desperately difficult situations” that a source in the Hollywood Reporter recalled, including “wardrobe issues, not getting out of the trailer, [and] questioning the script every single day”?
How can you believe that this lovely actress “can cost you time every single day of shooting,” when she’s so awesome in Knocked Up? Easy—don’t! Just watch this clip of her on Ellen and look at how nice she seems!
2. Mike Myers
Myers apparently threatened to quit both Wayne’s World and Austin Powers over relatively minor notes from executives. Regarding the “Bohemian Rhapsody” scene from Wayne’s World, Myers said, “I fought really, really hard for it. At one point I said to everybody, ‘Well, I’m out, I don’t want to make this movie if it’s not ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.'” Then during the production of the first Austin Powers, he apparently said something along the lines of “he’d rather they not release the film than rewrite all the jokes to be less Bond-specific.”
Both of those things clearly matter a whole bunch—so you can ignore the fact that he was willing to jeopardize everyone else’s jobs for his commitment to certain jokes. If he hadn’t stood up for Austin Powers, would we have ever seen a movie villain with a gold penis? Thank you, Mike Myers. You did what you had to do, and that’s probably why you still have such a solid career.
Then there’s some gossip cited by the AV Club, in which Mike Myers tried to keep Dana Carvey from participating in the Wayne’s World movies because he was worried Carvey’s popularity might eclipse his own. It clearly didn’t, because can you name another Dana Carvey movie? Carvey also reportedly accused Myers of stealing his impression of Lorne Michaels to create Dr. Evil, the villain in the movie series that made Myers millions of dollars.
Whatever, Dana Carvey. You can’t stop a star machine.
But Mike Myers is and will always be a delightful performer. Just watch the clip below and forget everything else; he’s amazing!
3. Megan Fox
“Megan has the press fooled,” said Michael Bay’s Transformers crew in an open letter in 2009. “When we read those magazines we wish we worked with that woman. Megan knows how to work her smile for the press. Those writers should try being on set for two movies, sadly she never smiles…. We’ve traveled around the world together, so we have never understood why Megan was always such the grump of the set?”
The grump!? Such inflammatory accusations were hurled in response to Fox criticizing Bay for wanting to “be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he’s a nightmare to work with.” The crew was also pretty bummed that Fox never attended crew parties and went “through the motions that make her exude this sense of misery.”
Bay won’t make this list, because rumors about his nastiness should surprise no one.
Meanwhile, Megan Fox is so fun and nice and attractive and ohhh just forget about those allegations and watch her gab about how she’s only 29-freaking-years-old!
4. Mandy Patinkin
Some guy named Mandy Patinkin said the following in a 2013 interview with the New York Times Magazine, about Mandy Patinkin: “I struggled with letting in other people’s opinions. During Chicago Hope, I never let directors talk to me, because I was so spoiled.” This guy named Patinkin then spouts a list of directors beloved actor Mandy Patinkin worked with early on who were “unbelievably gifted people” and made it impossible for him to accept criticism from lesser talents.
“So there I was saying, ‘Don’t talk to me, I don’t want your opinion.’ I behaved abominably. I don’t care if my work was good or if I got an award for it. I’m not proud of how I was then, and it pained me.”
Come on, who’s gonna believe that guy? Mandy Patinkin seems like a class act. For instance, did you know that in addition to an uncanny ability to misread the intention of double agents and terrorists, Mandy Patinkin also has the voice of an absolute angel?
5. Ellen DeGeneres
According to someone who was on Ellen’s staff in 2001 and who decided to speak out during the 2007 writer’s strike, everyone’s talk show hero is not all dancing and ad-libs.
“I don’t know how Ellen treats her current writers, but I can tell you about how she treated the previous batch: Like sh*t.”
Oh yeah, right. Dory can hardly even remember people’s names, let alone berate them with a cruel sense of indifference. (Again, actors are the same as their characters, right?) Here are the rest of the writer’s comments:
People tend to be disappointed when I answer the “What was Ellen really like?” question by suggesting she must be a very talented actress to convince America she’s nice. We’d watch her in rehearsals, smiling and winning us over with her charm and comic timing. Then the director would yell cut, her face would fall, and she’d level a glare at the writers.
“Why do you keep writing these unfunny jokes?” she’d hiss. […]
We saw her through her first time hosting the Emmies, and many of our writers penned that material. They wrote jokes for three versions of the show after the telecast kept getting postponed because of 9/11. Finally, it aired (opposite Game 7 of the World Series, no less) and Ellen did a great job with great material. The next day, staff and crew greeted her with a hearty round of applause. Did she thank the writers for their jokes, or at least their hard work? Here’s what I remember her saying: “I felt like I really reasserted myself in the industry last night.”
Later I heard she blamed the show’s cancelation on 9/11 delaying the premiere.
The source got one thing right… Ellen DeGeneres, also known as Ellen, makes people on her stage look good. The following clip is so good that it basically erases the Iraq War, doesn’t it?
6. Nicki Minaj
According to Gawker, Nicki went on a rant and threatened to “knock out” fellow American Idol judge Mariah Carey, who must have deserved it. A TMZ transcript also has Nicki saying, “I told them I’m not f**kin’ putting up with her f**king highness over there. Figure it the f**k out. Figure it out.”
Then there’s the Paper Magazine guy who describes Nicki as “not fun” and working with her as “two weeks of hideous torture and [her] walking off shoots.” He describes some typical, no-big-deal diva behavior and then drops this bombshell revelation: “I had to sign up for AOL Instant Messenger so I could talk to her later, and she hung up on me on AIM. It was a super headache.”
Nicki uses AIM? The same woman on the cutting edge of rap, with lyrics like, “My anaconda don’t, my anaconda don’t, my anaconda don’t”? Surely, lies and slander. Did you know this lovely woman used to work at Red Lobster?
7. Will Smith
“What? What? What? Uh”—is how “Getting Jiggy With It” begins and is also the noise you involuntarily make when you hear the archangel Will Smith is actually some sort of shape-shifting demon. At least, according to former original Aunt Viv, Janet Hubert. In an interview in 2013, Hubert claimed Hitch did “some heinous, horrible things to me—they were like bad kids, Will and Alfonso [Ribiero].”
But that’s just Carlton. Regarding Smith, Hubert told TMZ in 2011, “There will never be a reunion… as I will never do anything with an a**hole like Will Smith.”
No reunion? Thanks a lot, Hubert. If only there was a replacement Aunt Viv they could bring in instead…
Anyway, anything Will Smith did to deserve that name calling is surely erased by the time he saved the Earth from aliens.
This article was first published by our friends at Someecards.