They say the closest emotion to love is hate and some of Hollywood’s finest romantic actors certainly proved that to be true with performances unaffected by alleged off-screen tensions. While we couldn’t tell from watching their movies and TV shows, some of our favorite on-screen couples reportedly hated each other in real life.
In some cases, intimate performances can lead co-stars to fall in love in real life. Some of Hollywood’s most famous relationships began with two actors getting cast opposite one another in a romantic movie or TV show. However, there are also cases where being forced together in a professional capacity only drives a wedge between these on-screen lovers.
These actors unknowingly gave us a crash course in keeping it professional by managing to deliver impressive performances and making us fall in love with their fictional love stories.
From Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio’s struggle to get along on the set of Romeo + Juliet to Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey totally sweeping us along in their Dirty Dancing love story while feuding in real life, plenty of our favorite on-screen couples had no love between them in real life.
Keep reading to see TV and movie couples who reportedly hated each other off-screen!
Leonardo DiCaprio & Claire Danes
While we definitely fell for their chemistry as Romeo + Juliet in the beloved 1996 Baz Luhrmann movie, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes reportedly butt heads off-screen.
It is rumored that Danes, who was 17 at the time of filming, found a 21-year-old DiCaprio “immature” and grew weary of his constant pranking. DiCaprio reportedly found Danes “uptight.”
Dustin Hoffman & Meryl Streep
After years of reports about Hoffman’s abuse on set of 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer, in which he and Streep play an estranged couple, the actress confirmed the allegations.
“This was my first movie, and it was my first take in my first movie, and he just slapped me,” Streep told The New York Times in 2018. “It was overstepping.”
In an excerpt shared by Vanity Fair from Michael Schulman’s 2016 biography about Streep, it was alleged that Hoffman continued to torment the actress on set by taunting her with details about her personal life, including by whispering the name of her recently deceased partner before takes.
Paul Wesley & Nina Dobrev
If it hadn’t come directly from Nina Dobrev’s mouth, we would have never believed the reports that she initially didn’t like Paul Wesley on set of The Vampire Diaries.
In 2019, Dobrev told the Directionally Challenged podcast that they “didn’t get along” and “despised each other” in the early days of the show.
“But, of everyone [from the Vampire Diaries cast], I think I probably see him the most and hang out with him the most … We are probably the closest. We hang out a lot. We’re really good friends,” she added of their relationship now.
Chad Michael Murray & Sophia Bush
Chad Michael Murray and Sophia Bush‘s love story as Brooke Davis and Lucas Scott became a real life whirlwind romance that ended terribly when the couple got married in 2005 and divorced just five months later. The pair continued to play on-screen on-off lovers until 2009.
While we don’t know exactly what went down on set after their split, Bush was asked about her ex in a 2014 appearance on Watch What Happens Live and responded: “My mother once said to me that if you don’t have anything nice to say, not to say anything at all.”
Tony Curtis & Marilyn Monroe
According to the Daily Mail, Tony Curtis once compared kissing Marilyn Monroe on set of Some Like it Hot to “kissing Hitler.”
In a 2008 interview he added that the kiss “was awful” and claimed: “She nearly choked me to death by deliberately sticking her tongue down my throat into my windpipe.”
Patrick Swayze & Jennifer Grey
Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey passionate love story in Dirty Dancing must have taken some pretty impecable acting skills given that these two later dissed each other in their memoirs.
In Swayze’s 2010 book The Time of My Life, Swayze claimed he and Grey had “a few moments of friction” during long shooting days.
“She seemed particularly emotional, sometimes bursting into tears if someone criticized her. Other times, she slipped into silly moods, forcing us to do scenes over and over again when she’d start laughing,” he added.
Grey revealed in her 2022 memoir, Out of The Corner, that she begged casting directors not to cast Swayze after clashing with him in 1984’s Red Dawn.
Jay Mohr & Jennifer Aniston
Jay Mohr claimed in a 2011 episode of his podcast that Jennifer Aniston was not one bit happy when he beat out her then-boyfriend, Tate Donovan, to land a role in 1997 rom-com, Picture Perfect.
“As she’s walking toward us to walk past us,” Mohr recalled of an interaction on set, “She’s pointing to [co-star] Illeana Douglas and she goes, ‘Six guys they screen tested. Six!’ … And then points at me and goes, ‘The one [expletive] guy I hate, that’s the guy they hire. Him!’”
Julia Roberts & Nick Nolte
Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte played rivalling reporters who end up falling for each other in I Love Trouble and that love-hate relationship seemed to exist in real life too.
In 1994, a report in the Los Angeles Times claimed that Roberts would “deride and insult her co-star” after he displayed machoism. “Some on the set claim that he became so annoyed with her attitude that he would do things to agitate her even more,” the report continued.
Roberts as good as confirmed these claims in 1996 when she told The New York Times that Nolte is “completely charming and very nice, he’s also completely disgusting” and claimed that “he seems go out of his way to repel people.”
Nolte responded, “It’s not nice to call someone ‘disgusting.’ But she’s not a nice person. Everyone knows that.”
Kim Basinger & Mickey Rourke
For Kim Basinger, portraying a twisted romance with Mickey Rourke in 1986 drama 9 1/2 Weeks was a horrific experience, primarily due to Rourke following instructions from director Adrian Lyne. Basinger bravely spoke out in a 1986 interview with The New York Times, and with her controversial director.
Per Lyne’s instruction, Basinger says Rourke barely spoke to on set and admitted that she “hated him” at times. In one instance, Lyne recalled a particularly graphic scene in which Rourke got physical with his co-star. “I told him that the scene wasn’t working, that Kim had to be broken down,” Lyne recalled before alleging that Rourke returned to set and held Basinger’s arm so tightly that she cried and hit him before he slapped her across the face.
“In order for her to be angry I would rage at her and she would rage back at me,” Lyne recalled. “Mickey also had to do it. He frightened her. And that was done purposely. She’s not an intellectual. She doesn’t read books. She doesn’t actually act, she reacts. And she had to plumb the depths in this movie.”
Ryan Gosling & Rachel McAdams
While making arguably one of the greatest romantic movies of our time, The Notebook, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams reportedly struggled to see eye to eye.
Ten years after the 2004 movie was released, director Nick Cassavetes told VH1 that the duo, who later dated in real life, initially clashed on set.
“Maybe I’m not supposed to tell this story, but they were really not getting along one day on set,” Cassavetes claimed. “Ryan came to me, and there’s 150 people standing in this big scene, and he says, ‘Nick come here.’ And he’s doing a scene with Rachel and he says, ‘Would you take her out of here and bring in another actress to read off camera with me?’ I said, ‘What?’ He says, ‘I can’t. I can’t do it with her. I’m just not getting anything from this.’”
He said the two eventually hashed it out with a yelling session. “I think Ryan respected her for standing up for her character and Rachel was happy to get that out in the open. The rest of the film wasn’t smooth sailing, but it was smoother sailing.”
A year after the movie was released, Gosling and McAdams began dating on and off before calling it quits for good in 2008.
Richard Gere & Debra Winger
In 1982, Richard Gere played a US Navy Aviation candidate who falls for a local woman, played by Debra Winger, near his base.
Their alleged on-set tensions were revealed by co-star Louis Gossett Jr. in his 2010 memoir An Actor and a Gentleman, in which he claimed that the pair “couldn’t have stayed farther apart from each other.” He also wrote, “The onscreen chemistry between the two of them was terrific, but it was a different story once the camera was turned off.”
Winger also reportedly called Gere “a brick wall.” In a 2002 interview with The Guardian, Winger made it clear that there was no bad blood with the actor. She explained: “I run in to Richard Gere quite a lot and he half jokes: ‘Are you still saying terrible things about me?’ We had a moment in our life which was not good, but everyone has to get it into perspective.”
Armie Hammer & Blake Lively
In a 2017 appearance on Watch What Happens Live, Armie Hammer implied that his brief stint on Gossip Girl was cut short due to tensions with his on-screen love interest Blake Lively.
“That was a tough show to film and I didn’t end up actually filming all of the episodes I was supposed to because it was such a tough filming,” Hammer said. When asked if he asked to leave, Hammer responded: “It was also like, ‘Get him out of here.’”
Fellow guest Cheslea Handler then implied that Lively might have been the issue which Hammer verbally denied while grin and raising his eyebrows suggestively.
Lauren Graham & Scott Patterson
Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson kept Gilmore Girls fans on the edge of their seats while waiting for soulmates Lorelai and Luke to finally fall in love but their friends-to-lovers relationship never got off the ground in real life.
“It’s fine,” Graham once told TV Guide of their real life relationship. “I think these characters have a great chemistry and that does mirror our chemistry as people. We’re not intimates. We talk kind of how we talk [on the show]. We work well together.” When asked if they are best friends, she replied: “No.”
Gillian Anderson & David Duchovny
Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny once played another of TV’s greatest “will they or won’t they” characters on the X-Files but both have admitted that tensions ran high off-screen.
“We used to argue about nothing. We couldn’t stand the sight of each other,” Duchovny told Metro in 2008.
“I mean, yes, there were definitely periods when we hated each other,” Anderson confirmed to The Guardian in 2015. “Hate is too strong a word. We didn’t talk for long periods of time.” She added that they have since reconciled.
Shirley MacLaine & Anthony Hopkins
It likely wasn’t too difficult for Shirley MacLaine and Anthony Hopkins to perfect their roles as a feuding married couple in 1980 movie A Change of Seasons. The movie flopped and was nominated for a Razzie, after which Hopkins called MacLaine “the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with.”
In 2014, MacLaine was asked about the comment by the New York Post and responded: “I didn’t like him either, but he was on the wagon at that time and it was hard on him.”
