1. It might seem to be just a story, but before the smashing success of Rocky, Sylvester Stallone was so poor that he had to sell his dog, Butkus, for just 50 dollars. Not only that he didn't have enough to feed the pet, he simply didn't have enough food for himself. After selling the script for Rocky he not only bought the dog back for 3000 dollars (after all he was almost a star), but made sure that Butkus was in the movies. And yes, the rog in Rocky is really Stallone's pet. 2. Preparing for his strange role in The Machinist, a movie that was released in 2004, Christian Bale went to extraordinary lengths to prepare for the part. As he had to have a skeletal appearance, he lived for a long time eating only one can of tuna fish or an apple a day, drinking water and black coffee, and smoking cigarettes. He lost an astounding 62 pounds - the doctors felt that he was literally gambling with his life - and in the end had the body that he wanted. Creepy but effective.
3. Before becoming famous Christopher Walken - one of the most original and instantly recognisable in cinema history - not only travelled with a circus, but he was a lion tamer. While still being a teenager.
4. For both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable the movies The Misfits (1961) was their last ever. A weird and tragic coincidence, even stranger when you think that the script for this drama was written by Arthur Miller. And unfortunatelly for them it would prove to be a box-office failure.
5. Gene Wilder chose to leave to movie business as it no longer was what he wanted, and most of the scripts were simply bad, as he often said. And on the whole the industry had changed so much that he preffered writing and painting to acting (and actually being rather good at that too). Still his last on-screen role was not in some huge blockbuster, but in an episode of Will and Grace, a sitcom from the 2000s. His performance from a 2003 episode also brought him the final Emmy award.
Photo: wikipedia.org
