Photography via Instagram/@WillSmith

13 Hilarious Photos That Prove Acting Is a VERY Hard Job

Behold, the awkwardness of movie magic.

At some point in your life, you may have dreamed of becoming a famous Hollywood actor. For millions of dollars and a lifetime of fame, surely you can memorize some lines and convincingly pretend to be something you’re not. We “act” nice to people we dislike all the time, how hard can it be to play make-believe in front of a camera?!

Well, it may not be *quite* as easy as you imagined. Will Smith—Oscar-nominated actor, Grammy-winning musician and VIIP (Very Important Instagram Person)—recently shared a short BTS video from his 2007 film, I Am Legend. As you may recall, the post-apocalyptic sci-fi flick features Smith as a survivor of a man-made plague that turned humans into flesh-hungry zombies. It turned dogs into crazed mutants too.

A post shared by Will Smith (@willsmith) on

Seriously, what other celebs are creating Instagram content that’s this compelling? Though, it’s important to note: Smith isn’t the only A-lister who’s faced off with a dude in a neon leotard. In a trending Twitter thread earlier this year, user @thisbemesara forced actor wannabes across the web to reconsider their dreams of silver screen stardom. If you think actors are overpaid divas with minimal talent, you’ll want to keep reading.

Remember Rocket Racoon? He’s the wisecracking, lovable rodent in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Rocket is voiced by A-List Hollywood hunk, Bradley Cooper — and you probably assumed the animation of the character was CGI. Apparently, however, Rocket is portrayed via motion capture by Sean Gunn, that quirky guy Kirk from Gilmore Girls.

Why isn’t Cooper in the green suit on set? “Sean is able to physically do something most actors aren’t able to do,” director James Gunn says of his brother “which is waddle around on all fours. He’s always been an incredibly limber guy that can to do a lot of strange physical things. And the fact that he’s able to waddle around on his legs all day long at the exact height of Rocket is quite a feat and quite quite difficult.”

Kristen Stewart — an actress who is known for her ability to play a wide range of emotions on screen — maintains an impressively straight face while petting Taylor Lautner in a morph suit. Difficult stuff, right?

A seven-foot hairy man was not available for the Beauty and the Beast live action re-make, so Disney had to stuff Dan Stevens and put him on stilts. Emma Watson convincingly falls in love with the large grey human, a feat that has some people suggesting that she is “the greatest actor of our time.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that putting a teenage boy and an adult Bengal tiger together in a 20-foot lifeboat was not a great idea. That said, Mike Tyson’s tigers in The Hangover are 100% real — and yes, he really does fight them.

This one seems to make the least sense. This isn’t Star Wars, they could have shot this Wolf of Wall Street scene at any pier! Why build an elaborate set in the studio, when you can shoot the real thing? But think about it: how many security guards do you need to protect Leonardo DiCaprio in a public space? It’s probably cheaper to just pay a computer guy to fake it.

See! It’s not all glitz and glamour. It’s challenging enough to get into character; maneuvering through blank spaces and interacting with absent after-effects makes the job something that should be celebrated with fancy award shows. Actors deserve to have the red carpet rolled out for them (and it should totally be rolled out for those computer geeks behind-the-scenes, too.)

More Celebrity