5 Famous Celeb Stories That Turned Out to Be B.S.

5 Laurence Olivier Mocking Dustin Hoffman’s Method Acting

Anytime you hear about actors pushing themselves to the limit to embody their character, you need to think to one famous story about Dustin Hoffman on the set of 1976’s Marathon Man. Hoffman’s character had to show off some stress, so the guy decided to genuinely strain himself by skipping three nights’ sleep. His costar was Laurence Olivier, who was three decades his senior and whom you should consider (for the sake of this story, if nothing else) one of the greatest actors of all-time. 

Quipped Olivier, on hearing about all Hoffman was putting himself through, “My dear boy. Why don’t you just try acting?”

Some versions of the story extend the quote a little to, “Why don’t you just try acting? It’s much easier.” Others add multiple additional lines, in which Olivier lectures further, redundantly. But while the two did have this exchange, you need to know that Hoffman wasn’t torturing himself each night method acting. He spent those night partying in Studio 54.

He was partying because his marriage was falling apart, and this was his way of dealing with the pain. Olivier understood this. Hoffman told the cast he’d been up three nights, but he didn’t mean that literally, and none of them thought he did. That was just a way of saying he’d been partying hard. 

So, when Olivier said, “Why don’t you just try acting,” that was a joke, sure. But it wasn’t a joke mocking method acting. It was a joke in that it referred to the partying as method acting. You might also go further and say Olivier was suggesting he ease back on the partying. The line offered some kind advice, and it wasn’t about the craft. 

Our source for this more accurate interpretation of the story is Dustin Hoffman. Which you might think is just one side of the story, except Hoffman was also the source of the original anecdote in the first place. So, either you believe this version of it or you say this story never happened at all. 

4 Jared Leto Giving ‘Suicide Squad’ Costars Terrifying Gifts

Speaking of method acting, you heard about how Jared Leto tried to outdo Heath Ledger when it came to becoming Joker, right? While filming Suicide Squad, he decided to act like a real-life psycho with his costars. He slipped a dead rat into Margot Robbie’s trailer. And he gifted everyone used condoms. 

If your reaction to this was, “That’s disgusting and insane,” then that was the exact reaction the hype machine was trying to get from you. And costars were happy to confirm the story, when asked informally on the red carpet. But the condoms part of the story, in particular, merited a few follow-up questions. Used condoms, really? Used with whom? Or did he “use” them single-handedly? Did he engage in 10 separate uses, to produce gifts for 10 costars?

Years later, Leto said that, no, he hadn’t really given used condoms. When Rolling Stone insisted for details, asking people from the production other than actors seeking publicity for a movie currently in theaters, it turned out that the condoms were just condoms, not used ones. That’s a fairly big difference — the difference between a gag gift and a sex crime. 

As for the rat, it was a live rat, not a dead one. It was a pet, which Robbie kept and named “Rat Rat.” Later, she regifted it to Guillermo del Toro’s kids, since they had other pet rats it could live with. They renamed him Venustiano.

3 Susanna Hoffs Recording ‘Eternal Flame’ Naked

When the Bangles recorded “Eternal Flame,” Susanna Hoffs was completely naked, according to this story. She was naked because producer Davitt Sigerson said his other client, Olivia Newton John, recorded her vocals naked, and this convinced Hoffs that nudity was the key to perfect singing. Sigerson was lying about John, as he later revealed. He was just pranking Hoffs. It was a harmless prank (a gag, not a sex crime) because she stood behind a screen in the booth, so no room of executives cheated their way into seeing her naked — she just was naked. 

Today, every time someone interviews Hoffs, they’ll ask her to confirm this story, which she does. This means the article gets to put “nude” or “naked” in the title, which is a lot more clickable than if they titled it “Susanna Hoffs Has a New Book” or “Did You Notice ‘Eternal Flame’ Doesn’t Have a Traditional Chorus-Verse Structure?”

Everyone likes this story. Not only does it give people an excuse to picture Susanna Hoffs naked, but it also reveals the unique way they managed to get those vocals sounding so vulnerable. Though, the second of those points gets a little shaky when you hear Hoffs succeeding at singing that song in just that same way various other times, whether naked or not. 

Also, you might run into the occasional interview where she gives a slightly different story. She still did record it naked, she says in the clip below, but Sigerson didn’t prank her with lies about Olivia Newton John. Instead, recording a song naked had been her idea, a fantasy she’d always had, and Sigerson had indulged her fantasy by letting her sing naked. The other members then chip in, with comments reflecting just how seriously we’re supposed to take all of this. “I took my bra off,” says Vicki Peterson. “I put my clothes on,” says Debbi Peterson because she’s otherwise always naked. Michael Steele says the recording session also had people licking butter pecan ice cream off Vicki. 

The first time Hoffs ever told the naked story was on a Dutch show called Countdown in 1989. “It’s true,” said Hoffs, when host Adam Curry asked her about the rumor. “And it’s also true that we’re all nude under our clothes right now.” Some insight about how Countdown heard that rumor comes from a Dutch promoter at their label at the time, André van der Heiden. 

The Bangles had appeared on Countdown before, and performing there this time would ensure “Eternal Flame” would be a hit in the Netherlands, but van der Heiden was struggling to land them another booking. According to him, he was talking this out over a meal with someone else at Sony, and they concluded, “Everyone thought Susanna Hoffs was a very attractive lady. The cover was better than the content.” 

What if they said she’d recorded the song naked, suggested van der Heiden. The other guy thought the idea was too vulgar at first, but when he told the group, Hoffs thought it was funny, so he sent off a press release to a hundred outlets. “All those simple media men fell for it,” he says, “so Countdown immediately agrees to the performance.”

Now, if Hoffs reads this article and announces, “That Dutchman is a liar,” you don’t have to take his word over hers. But when you’re mulling this story over, know that the nude prank wasn’t some scandalous admission made years later. The group told this story when originally plugging the song, including to audiences who’d never heard the song before. Those sorts of promotional stories (the Jared Leto one was another example) are the ones you should always greet with skepticism. In terms of stories-that-deserve-skepticism, they rank right up there with stories where a celeb says his penis is really big. 

2 Burt Ward Taking Pills Because His Penis Was Really Big

Back during the 1960s Batman TV show, Adam West and Burt Ward wore costumes with noticeable crotch bulges. Robin’s bulge drew your eyes especially hard because his flesh-toned tights made it look like he wasn’t wearing any pants. Burt Ward tells of how the network gave him special reducing pills to shrink his penis during filming. He took them for a few days before abandoning them out of fear for what they could be doing to his fertility. 

We don’t have any special admission from Ward, years later, that he was joking about those pills. All we have is the knowledge that such pills don’t exist and never have. 

The penis can get a bit bigger, compared to its resting state, when more blood flows into it. This can be facilitated by drugs called vasodilators. The penis can get smaller when blood flow to it drops, and that could be facilitated by drugs called vasoconstrictors. But vasoconstrictors are always applied directly to a target organ rather than through pills that hit the whole circulatory system. We never want all your blood vessels to constrict because that would dangerously pinch off your coronary arteries. There are also hormones that divert blood away from the genitals while letting other vessels dilate, but those are short-acting and also cannot be eaten without digestion denaturing them. 

Listen, we’ve reached the point where there are popular network television shows about people trying to hide their penises when dressed up. If there were pills for that, the info would be out there by now. A TV studio wanting to make a bulge less visible, whether in the 1960s or today, has a much more obvious solution, and it’s not only safer than medical intervention — they already have a whole department dedicated to it. It’s called costuming. They just needed to adjust the padding in that crotch area. That’s what they did with Adam West, and it’s surely what they’d do with anyone else on the show facing a similar issue.

1 Steven Spielberg Faking It Till He Made It

Back when Steven Spielberg was younger and had more to prove, he used to tell a story about how he first became an inside guy at Universal Studios. He went up to the gate in a suit and tie and holding a briefcase and just walked right in, as though he already worked there. He found himself a vacant building (the studio was full of detached buildings) and set up an office for himself. 

In some versions of the story, he spent three months like this, while in others, it was two years. He got himself his own extension and took calls. In some versions of the story, the guard at the gate was in on it, while in others, he simply told lies so the guy would let him through.

He abandoned this anecdote as the years went by, and he didn’t include it in his autobiographical The Fabelmans. The truth was that his father landed him a special behind-the-scenes visit at Universal Studios, because his father was a big guy at GE and had connections. This was how Spielberg went on to make his own connections, but he didn’t get a job at Universal right away, fake or otherwise, because he was still 16. 

Then he went to college. For two summers, the man his father had originally introduced him to now gave him a shot as an unpaid assistant. Early on, he had just a day pass but managed to come to work anyway, and this was the seed behind the story of fooling the guards. From this point on, his talent got him ahead, not his dad, but the dad’s original push had been necessary. 

We wrote a bit about Steven and Arnold Spielberg in an article a few years back (if you were paying close attention, you might have noticed that we linked to it back in this article’s intro). A couple months after that article came out, Arnold Spielberg died. That wasn’t so surprising, since the article was about people so old that it was surprising they hadn’t died already, but when four of the six listed figures died within four months of the article, it began to feel a bit eerie. 

A month after the above post, Marge Champion died. 

All of them are dead now. So, to Steven Spielberg, we’d just like to apologize for murdering your dad.

If you feel like asking whether that was a joke — good, you should always feel free to ask that. Yes, it was.

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