7 Times Actors Actually Drank Alcohol in Movies

Drinking in the pictures? Sometimes it’s not just acting.

The alcoholic beverages you see actors imbibe onscreen isn’t usually the real stuff. After all, who really wants to take a shot 20 takes in a row? Many times, the props department even resorts to entirely fake brands like “Brockman” or “Heisler Beer.”

Of course, the world of movie-making is a strange place, and sometimes the norms go flying straight off set. That’s when things get interesting.

Now, we’re not talking about the numerous times (alleged, at least) actors have shown up to work after downing a few. We’re talking about the moments where the beverage was right there onset and may have made its way onscreen. Here are seven times actors actually drank alcohol in movies:

Ed Norton and Brad Pitt in Fight Club (1999)

Remember that scene where Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and the Narrator (Edward Norton) are drunk and hitting golf balls? That scene wasn’t planned. According to Cheat Sheet, Pitt and Norton were drinking some beers and hitting golf balls into the side of the catering truck during an break. Director David Fincher happened to see them and decided to capture it.

Anna Kendrick and Olivia Wilde in Drinking Buddies (2013)

Wow, a movie about a brewery involved actors actually drinking onset? Whaddaya know! Here’s what Anna Kendrick said in an interview with Vulture:

“During a scene at the bar, they gave me fake beer, but then during a scene where I’m playing cards with Jake, they gave me real beer, and I didn’t realize it! And so every time I lost, I was pounding beer, and I didn’t realize it was real until halfway through the take. I was like, I’m super drunk right now!”

Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like this caused any problems, and she was far from the only one drinking while filming. In a separate interview with The Daily Beast, co-star Olivia Wilde said that the decision to imbibe real beer was not to loosen up, but to immerse everyone wholly into Chicago’s craft brewing world.

Robert Shaw in Jaws (1975)

During an interview on the Jaws set in 1974, actor Robert Shaw gave an honest answer when asked how he prepared for his role as hardened sailor and shark hunter, Captain Quint: “Scotch, vodka, gin, whatever.”

Okay, so the only actual confirmed moment of Shaw being straight-up drunk onset was when he got permission from Steven Spielberg to down a few right before doing his ‘Indianapolis’ speech. Apparently, he got so drunk that Spielberg cut early and did a reshoot when Shaw was sober.

It’s also worth mentioning that the weather on Martha’s Vineyard got so cold sometimes that the extras drank brandy to keep warm on the beach. And that Narragansett Lager that Quint crushed while intimidating Hooper? The beer is real, and the brewery has since brought back the 1975 can in recent years to pay homage to the shark flick’s enduring legacy.

Johnny Depp in Arizona Dream (1993)

Arizona Dream is one bizarre movie. For the uninitiated, it’s a surrealist comedy-drama about a group of people drawn to Arizona from different places, involving strange dreams and flying machines. It’s the kind of thing you could probably watch several times and still not quite be able to summarize concisely. But in any case, there’s a scene where a young Johnny Depp downs some shots of whiskey. Whereas most movies use water dyed with food coloring, Depp didn’t want to fake it. According to IndieWire, he drank some 11 shots of Jack Daniel’s while filming the scene.

Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

As the story goes, Nicolas Cage recorded himself drunk off set in order to recreate his inebriated behavior later while filming. But when he appeared on Inside the Actors Studio in 2003, Cage had another story to tell.

“I never drink when I act, but I wanted to incorporate in some scenes actual drinking,” Cage told host James Lipton. “So that scene in the casino when I’m freaking out, I’m really drunk.”

Extras and Others in Swingers (1996)

Leaving Las Vegas wasn’t the only mid-90s movie with actual drinking onset. Jon Favreau’s breakout movie was so low budget, he and his team saved on production costs by filming several scenes in actual bars during business hours. Obviously it would have been impractical (and more costly) to have the bars stop selling real alcohol and swap in the fake stuff, so the hard stuff stayed. As the legend of Swingers goes, the crew posted signs at the bar entrances warning patrons that if they chose to enter, they risked being unpaid extras.

Broken Lizard in Beerfest (2006)

If there’s a single movie more hedonistically all about beer bingeing than Beerfest, it’s yet to make itself known. As the Broken Lizard comedy troupe members have stated many times, they did drink actual beer throughout. If you’re shocked by the sheer volume of suds that they guzzle throughout the beer games (can anyone actually drink those giant boots in one go?), don’t worry — the guys also insist the beer was just O’Douls, famously known for its extremely low ABV. Even so, that’s gotta add up at some point, right?