23 Times Actors And Directors’ Actual Pets Appeared In Their Movies And TV Shows
In Hollywood, it's basically a given that actors and directors are going to cast their own kids in their projects. However, some of those "nepo babies" are actually fur babies.
Other times, actors bond with their animal costars so much that they end up adopting them. Then, the first time they met is forever immortalized on film.
Here are 23 celebs who worked alongside their real-life pets onscreen:
1.In Blonde, Ana de Armas plays Marilyn Monroe, and her dog, Elvis, plays Marilyn's dog, Mafia.
On Late Night with Seth Meyers, she said, "Andrew, as the great visionary that he is, he saw I look like Marilyn Monroe. Obviously, he saw that Elvis was perfect for Mafia, and...he had the idea [that] we need Elvis in the movie."
2.Chris Evans met his dog, Dodger, at an animal shelter where he filmed scenes for Gifted.
Sharing a video of the first moment they met on Instagram, Evans wrote, "I had no intention of rescuing a dog that day, but the minute I saw him, I knew he was coming home with me."
3.In The Princess Diaries, Fat Louis was played by four different cats, one of whom belonged to Anne Hathaway.
4.In Keanu, the titular tabby was portrayed by seven identical shelter kittens, who were trained for the role. Tiffany Haddish, who plays Hi-C, adopted one named Catatonic.
The rest of the cats were adopted as well.
5.While filming Texas Rising, Brendan Fraser worked with a horse named Pecas. After watching how the other horses bullied Pecas, Fraser decided to take him home. The horse now has a close bond with the actor's son, Griffin.
Fraser told GQ, "Without doing too much — what's the word? Anthropomorphic…anthropomorphizing… Without pretending that the animal is a human, he looked like he needed help. Like, 'Get me out of here, man.'"
6.While filming her music video for "ME!" Taylor Swift filmed a scene with a kitten named Benjamin Button. She ended up adopting him.
In the behind-the-scenes video for the music video, Taylor said, "Whenever I watch the video, I'll just be like, 'That's the first time I saw him!'"
7.Justin Theroux voices Tramp in the live-action Lady and the Tramp (2019), and his pitbull, Kuma, appears in the pound scene.
In an Instagram post about the movie, he said, "There are TONS of rescue dogs [in the film]. Woohoo! Including, yours truly...KUMA, who was given a really huge starring role (okay, it was teensy, but don't tell her 😬)."
8.Yvette Nicole Brown, who plays Aunt Sarah in Lady and the Tramp (2019), adopted one of the rescue dogs, Harley, from set.
She told People, "[The trainer] didn’t just let people grab a dog. She watched you the entire run of the show, and at the end, she goes, 'I think I have your dog.' I said, 'Oh! Who is it?' and she says, 'Harley is your dog.' She was 100% right. Harley is my dog. I love him."
9.On Game of Thrones, Sophie Turner plays Sansa Stark, and Zunni plays her direwolf, Lady. When the Northern Inuit dog was fired for being a bad actor, the Turner family adopted her.
Turner told Harper's Bazaar, "Zunni was a terrible actor, really bad on set. She wouldn’t respond to any of my calls, and everyone was ready to fire her, so we took her on when I was 14. She was about three feet tall and pretty big."
10.In A Star Is Born (2018), Bradley Cooper plays Jackson Maine. Since he also directed the movie, he cast his labradoodle, Charlie, as Jackson's dog, who's also named Charlie.
Cooper told Entertainment Tonight, "I never even thought about any other dog but him, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to do that. ... That's the best thing about being able to make a movie, is you get to cast the movie."
11.Director Kenny Ortega's dog, Manly, plays Sharpay's dog, Boi, in the High School Musical franchise.
12.Throughout the filming of National Velvet, Elizabeth Taylor, who plays Velvet Brown, kept asking if she could keep King Charles, the horse who plays Pie. On her 13th birthday, studio founder Louis B. Mayer made her wish come true.
13.Amanda Seyfried met Finn, her Australian Shepherd, on set while filming the HBO show Big Love. Now, she ensures that all of her movie contracts allow her to have him on set, unless it would require uncomfortable circumstances for him, like a long flight.
She told People, "As soon as he was mine, like 24 hours after I got him, I realized something about me needed him. He completely changed my life and helped me find my solitude and my independence. When you have a lifestyle like I did when I was in my early 20s, there were no constants."
14.On Heartland, Amber Marshall plays ranch owner Amy Fleming, and her horse, Talon, plays Monty.
15.Marshall's dog, Remi, plays Georgie's dog on Heartland.
16.And her cat, Mouzer, appeared on an episode where Amy brings home a kitten.
17.While filming The Suicide Squad in Panama, David Dastmalchian, who plays Abner Krill/Polka-Dot Man, adopted a stray cat who "kept coming up to the set, wanting to be petted and scratched." He named her Bubblegum.
He told Vulture, "She was really hungry and really beat up. And I fell in love, and now she's mine. Well, she's not mine, I'm hers. And when my mom died, the cat knew when to come sit in my lap and purr, and she knew when I needed to be left alone. My kids are so insanely rambunctious, and I love them to death, but my God, they had so much energy to expel during lockdown. And the cat was so patient with them, and would play chase with them. And she comes when you call her. It was amazing."
18.In Hidalgo, five horses play the titular character, but the main animal actor was T.J. He bonded so much with Viggo Mortensen, who plays Frank Hopkins, that the actor purchased him after filming wrapped. They even attended the premiere together.
Mortensen told IGN, "I had no intention of buying a horse off of this movie. But with T.J., he was...I don't know, I just got to really, really like him. He's got such a unique, strong personality."
19.Similarly, Mortensen also adopted Eurayus, a horse he rode in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
He told IGN, "Even though I wasn't with him all the time, I just developed a real good friendship with him. ... He kind of came into the movie similar to the way I did. You know, didn't have much preparation and was just thrown in and had to swim, basically. And it was rough on him, and it took a while for us to kind of get in sync and for him to be comfortable around the set. So, we got to be close, and I wanted to stay in touch with him. ... We got through it together and became friends."
20.He also adopted Kenny, a chestnut he worked with in The Two Towers.
He told IGN, "He was just pretty, and again, it was a situation where we were shooting, and they didn't have the right horse, and I said, 'Lemme just borrow that one,' and I pointed to one of the wranglers who was riding him. So, I just jumped on him, put a Rohan saddle on him, and I rode him that day, immediately on camera. But he was very easy and relaxed, and I just wanted Eurayus to have a buddy."
21.When Roy Rogers landed his first starring role in the 1938 film Under the Western Stars, he needed a horse, so he chose Trigger, who already had movie experience. The studio rented the horse until the actor bought him for $2,500 in 1943. Trigger appeared in all of Rogers's movies. The horse even got top billing at the actor's insistence.
The horse was originally named Golden Cloud, but he earned the name Trigger because of his quick reactions.
22.After filming wrapped on Rocky, Sylvester Stallone kept his character's turtles, Cuff and Link. All three of them reprised their roles in Creed II.
23.And finally, before Rocky, Stallone had to sell his beloved dog, Butkus, for $40 in order to afford food. However, after selling his iconic screenplay, he bought his best friend back for $15,000. He then cast Butkus as Rocky's dog of the same name.
In an Instagram tribute to Butkus, he wrote, "The new owner knew I was desperate, and charged me $15,000. ... He was worth every penny!"
