19 Famous Actors Who Had Falling Outs With Their Former Costars
Last month, reports emerged about the cast of Boy Meets World having publicly unearthed their falling out with former friend and costar, Ben Savage.
Unfortunately, this isn't the first or last time that former costars have seen friendships and professional respect devolve into bitter feuds.
With this in mind, I've assembled 19 occasions in which Hollywood's biggest names went from sharing scenes to butting heads in the worst way.
1.John Cusack and Jeremy Piven
For many years, real-life friends John Cusack and Jeremy Piven were thick as thieves, costarring in the likes of One Crazy Summer, The Grifters, Say Anything..., Bob Roberts, Grosse Pointe Blank, Serendipity, and Runaway Jury. However, Piven's meteoric success following his scene-stealing role on HBO's Entourage put a rift between the actors that remains to this day, with Cusack commenting, "It just says so much about a person if he has space for other people’s success."
2.Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Vin Diesel
Unless you've been living under a rock (no pun intended), you're probably familiar with the feud between Fast & Furious franchise costars Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson, which emerged after Johnson posted a pointed and feisty Instagram post from the set of The Fate of the Furious that alluded to tension with Diesel. The feud would eventually encompass Tyrese Gibson, who sided with Diesel after Johnson's Fast spinoff Hobbs & Shaw delayed the production of F9, though the pair would eventually squash their beef and set the path for Johnson to return to the franchise in the post-credits scene for Fast X.
3.Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron
One notable clash between costars became public in 2022, seven years after the release of Mad Max: Fury Road, as revealed in Kyle Buchanan's exceptional oral history Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road. While they may have been allies in George Miller's raucous and riveting action flick, Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy were anything but during the shooting of the film, with things getting so heated and intense between the two that a female producer was sent to the film's set to mediate, with Theron recollecting, "I didn't feel safe."
4.William Shatner and George Takei
Some grudges simply won't die, and the decades-spanning feud between Star Trek costars William Shatner and George Takei has been stoked as recently as late 2022. Though the two first clashed in the mid-1960s with Takei taking offense to Shatner's off-screen behavior, Shatner would later claim Takei was "bitter" and claims his public criticism was "for publicity," while Takei would respond by calling Shatner a "cantankerous old man" after claiming he was a "guinea pig" to assess what outer space could to to "unfit" men during his 2021 trip on Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin rocket.
5.Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker
By all accounts, it seemed that Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall had a civil personal and professional relationship throughout the production of Sex and the City and the subsequent cinematic sequels. But in 2017, heat began to rise between the two after Cattrall's alleged contractual demands derailed a potential third Sex and the City film before Cattrall participated in an explosive interview with Piers Morgan and claimed clique-like behavior developed between Cattrall and her three costars on the set of the HBO series. Parker later called Cattrall's comments "very painful" and was a major factor in Cattrall's excision from the sequel series, And Just Like That..., though Cattrall will eventually cameo on the show in a scene shot apart from her former costars in the second season finale.
6.Bette Davis and Joan Crawford
Two of the biggest Hollywood stars of their era, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford's simmering feud erupted into full-blown animosity during the filming of the camp classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, which escalated to an even higher degree after Crawford accepted the Best Actress Oscar for an absent Anne Bancroft, who beat Davis for the statue in 1963. The divide between the two actors was so notorious that it became the subject for the critically-acclaimed Ryan Murphy-produced miniseries Feud: Bette and Joan in 2017.
7.Dominic Monaghan and Matthew Fox
Some feuds arise from catty comments, some from a natural personality clashes, but in the case of Lost costars Dominic Monaghan and Matthew Fox, it's from scorched earth, as a Twitter interaction suggesting Monaghan bring Fox to the social media platform gained Monaghan's blunt response: "He beats women. No thanks." Referring to Fox's alleged assault against a bus driver as well as other "not isolated incidents," Fox would tell Men's Fitness that Monaghan's tweets were "a pile of bullshit" before going into self-imposed retirement, though he recently attempted to stage a comeback with the critically panned streaming series Last Light.
8.Stana Katic and Nathan Fillion
In one of the worst-kept behind-the-scenes secrets in contemporary television, Stana Katic and Nathan Fillion reportedly hated one another throughout the run of the hit crime procedural Castle. Escalating to the point where the studio mandated the two attend couples therapy, the rift between the costars was brought under a bigger spotlight when Katic announced they would not return for the show's ninth season, which made it no surprise when ABC canceled the series after Season 8.
9.Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny
While David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson have shown outright admiration for one another during the revival X-Files series in recent years as well as their press appearances, that hasn't always been the case, with there being an awkward and occasionally contentious off-screen relationship between "Mulder" and "Scully" during the initial series run. To their credit, the pair did as well as they could to fight off the persistent rumors of their hostile dynamic, but even then, the vague statements feel cutting in retrospect, with Duchovny once telling USA Weekend, "[Their relationship is] like the roots of a tree. It's very twisted, but it's growing."
10.Lucy Liu and Bill Murray
As you'll see later on this list, Bill Murray has been a bit of a noted heat magnet in Hollywood over the years, engaging in rows and feuds with the likes of Chevy Chase, Geena Davis, and Richard Dreyfuss. But one of Murray's nastiest falling outs came on the set of Charlie's Angels, in which Murray and Lucy Liu had a furious altercation after Murray allegedly hurled insults at Liu directly, forcing Liu to take a stand against the actor, which she recounted in 2021. Sadly, Liu also recalled the press turning their coverage against her when the altercation leaked to the press, lamenting the fact that "they automatically thought the woman was the difficult one."
11.Bill Murray and Harold Ramis
Even though Bill Murray has had numerous onset scuffles over the years, none were as personal and embattled as his feud with longtime friend and Ghostbusters costar Harold Ramis. While the two had found much success with their onscreen pairings, Murray and Ramis's relationship blew up in the midst of shooting Groundhog Day, which the latter directed, with the two never speaking again and Murray ending their feud mere hours before Ramis passed away in 2014.
12.Drake Bell and Josh Peck
Drake Bell and Josh Peck may have only costarred with one another for three years, but their Nickelodeon sitcom, Drake & Josh, essentially tied them together culturally for a whole generation of fans. So, when Bell took to Twitter to blast Peck for not inviting him to his wedding, it surfaced that the two had essentially drifted apart over the years following the series' end, though a brief reunion at the VMAs (which included Bell apologizing to Peck's wife) in 2017 squashed their public beef, though Peck insists he hasn't communicated with Bell in the years since.
13.Kevin Smith and Bruce Willis
Few feuds have extended into dirt-dishing throughout multiple mediums, but such is the case with Kevin Smith and Bruce Willis, all of which began after the New Jersey-raised actor suggested collaborating with the New Jersey-raised filmmaker following the latter's small supporting turn in Live Free or Die Hard. The resulting film, Cop Out, was a nightmare for both Smith and Willis, with Smith sharing his torturous experience making the film on podcasts, panels, talk shows, and even in his one-man-show. However, Smith would eventually feel remorse for his comments upon Bruce Willis's aphasia diagnosis and retirement in 2022, tweeting, "I feel like an asshole for my petty complaints from 2010. So sorry to BW and his family."
14.Sylvester Stallone and Richard Gere
Sylvester Stallone was far from a made man prior to the release of Rocky in 1976, but the up-and-coming performer collided with Richard Gere while conducting rehearsals from the 1974 drama The Lords of Flatbush, during which time Gere's method acting and allegedly inconsiderate behavior was enough for Stallone to successfully advocate for his firing. The rift between the two continued to build over the years, ultimately culminating in a near fist-fight between the two actors during a party at Elton John's house in the mid-1990s. Both incidents were recently included in greater detail in Nick de Semlyen's book The Last Action Heroes, the audiobook of which comes with this writer's highest recommendation.
15.Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke
In 2020, Mickey Rourke took to Instagram to take shots at Robert De Niro for denying Rourke's claim that Martin Scorsese wanted to cast him in The Irishman, reigniting a feud that sparked more than 30 years prior on the set of the 1987 thriller Angel Heart, where De Niro's method acting caused Rourke to say, "I don’t look up to him no more; I look through him." While Rourke threatened to "embarrass" De Niro in his vitriolic Instagram post, the actors, both of whom are in their 70s now, have yet to escalate their feud into fisticuffs.
16.Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner
Much like Bill Murray, Burt Reynolds has had bad blood with multiple collaborators over the years, including Marlon Brando and Paul Thomas Anderson, but Reynolds's most notoriously public feud was with Kathleen Turner, which arose during their quarrelsome time together on the set of Switching Channels in 1988. In fact, Reynolds harbored ill will toward Turner mere months before his death in 2018, calling Turner "the most overrated actor" of her generation and wished he could remove the movie from his résumé while appearing on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.
17.James Franco and Seth Rogen
Prior to 2018, Seth Rogen and James Franco were nigh inseparable as evident by their work together in Pineapple Express, This Is the End, and The Interview, but after students of James Franco's acting studio came forward with sexual misconduct claims, Rogen effectively ended their professional relationship, telling the Sunday Times, "The truth is that I have not [worked with Franco], and I do not plan to right now." The professional dissolution even bled into their personal friendship, with Rogen carefully saying the accusations "changed many things in our relationship and our dynamic." Franco would later refer to the comments as "hurtful in context" in his first interview following the accusations in late 2021 even if he said he still "loves" the actor and their decades' worth of work together.
18.Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt
When The Devil's Own was ready to hit theaters in 1997, rumors swirled throughout the Hollywood press about the film's "troubled" production, the heart of which was a feud between Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt over mid-production rewrites that changed the story and dynamic of their characters. With water being essentially under the bridge between the two once shooting wrapped, Brad Pitt attempted to undersell the feud during the film's promotional campaign, but Harrison Ford would speak on the "complicated tension" between the two in 2023, even if Ford still speaks highly of the final cut of The Devil's Own.
19.Jon Bernthal and Kevin Spacey
Jon Bernthal has not been one to mince words over the years, refreshingly offering his honest take on his experiences in the entertainment business, including his experience working with Kevin Spacey in Edgar Wright's Baby Driver. While promoting Sweet Virginia on SiriusXM's The Jim and Sam Show, Bernthal offered his honest opinions on working with Spacey, describing him as a "bully" and saying he had "lost all respect" for the actor even prior to his sexual misconduct allegations in late 2017.
