5 Movies That Chewed Up Actors And Spit Them Out

4 Star Trek: Nemesis Made Tom Hardy Smoke Crack

Many people don't know Tom Hardy starred in a Star Trek film. Tom Hardy wishes he was in that group -- early on in his career, he appeared in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) as Captain Picard's younger, sulkier, telepathic rapist-ier clone. It was not a good movie, and the 25-year-old actor dealt with this fact by self-medicating with booze and crack cocaine.

That's the diametric opposite reaction we'd have upon finding out we'd turn into Patrick Stewart someday.

Not that Hardy wasn't prone to self-destructive behavior in the first place. In an interview, he recalled an incident when he was just 11 and a police officer visited his school to warn the kids about the hazards of sniffing glue. It, um, didn't have the intended effect. Long story short, he was arrested for joyriding while in possession of a firearm at age 17. It wasn't until he woke up in an alleyway, wallowing in a puddle of (presumably his own) puke and blood, that he decided to check himself into rehab.

Hardy stayed on the relative straight and narrow, and his choice to pursue acting paid off as he landed roles in Black Hawk Down and the acclaimed Band Of Brothers miniseries. And when got cast as the main villain in Nemesis, many believed he was on track to become Hollywood's next A-list leading man. Unfortunately, Nemesis was to the Star Trek franchise what George Lucas' prequels were to, uh, cinema in general. The movie flopped like a boardwalk halibut, sending Hardy to a place where he would've "sold mother for a rock of crack."

3 Groundhog Day Destroyed Bill Murray's Friendship With Harold Ramis

The friendship between comedy icons Bill Murray and the late Harold "Egon" Ramis produced some of the funniest moments this world has seen: the duo worked on, among many things, Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, and Groundhog Day.

Those are some of the funniest comedies ever made, and also Ghostbusters II.

Unfortunately, what might be their most transcendental film was also when it all went to shit.

Murray didn't have to dig very deep to find the crotchetiness in the character of cursed weatherman Phil Connors -- his marriage was falling apart and from all accounts he was a surly mess. His bad attitude may have worked out well for the role, but it also resulted in his behavior becoming that dreaded bogeyman of directors everywhere: "difficult." Disagreements became the rule of the day, with Ramis shooting for a nice little comedy while Murray wanted the film to be a deep exploration of the human condition. Their creative partnership eventually devolved to the point where Murray constantly showed up late to call times and was, as Ramis tells it, "irrationally mean and unavailable" when he did honor the set with his presence.

2 Napoleon Dynamite's Pedro Had Evil Twin Troubles

Despite having exhortations to vote for his character plastered on every tchotchke at the mall circa 2006, the actor behind Pedro in the quirky classic Napoleon Dynamite, Efren Ramirez, didn't exactly go onto huge things after becoming instantly recognizable worldwide. He's not a rail-riding troubadour or anything, but his fame was sufficient enough to cause his life to become a drama-filled mess.

You see, Efren has an identical twin named Carlos, and reports suggest the latter may lack the sweet-natured, well-intentioned soul of Pedro. Striking while Efren's fame was still blazingly, well, warm, Carlos began posing as his brother at public appearances. He claims that he only did so at the request of Efren, who was "too busy" to make it to every social engagement that his agent lined up for him. Carlos did admit, however, at least one breach of fraternal etiquette: "I did attend an event without his knowledge as I was being immature and wanted to get back at him for a personal matter which involved the girl I was dating at the time." He didn't elaborate on that, presumably hoping a studio buys the rights to the full story.

1 An Injury During Syriana Made George Clooney Contemplate Suicide

The political thriller Syriana was kind of a monkey's paw situation for George Clooney. Sure, his role of CIA operative Bob Barnes earned him an Oscar for best supporting actor, but it came at the cost of excruciating, months-long, potentially life-ending pain.

During the scene where Clooney's strapped to a chair and receiving a pummeling/ fingernail removal procedure in the course of his governmental duties, the chair tipped over and caused the actor to go bonk on the concrete. Here he is explaining what happened next: "I tore my dura, which is the wrap around my spine that holds in the spinal fluid. But it's not my back; it's my brain. I basically bruised my brain. It's bouncing around my head because it's not supported by the spinal fluid."