Willem Dafoe had his co-star Emma Stone slap him about 20 times for their new film, And, even though he was off camera.
In the scene, Stone was meant to do the slapping gesture without the actor present and have the camera just a focus on her.
But Dafoe insisted that she do it to him so it would look more genuine.
In a new profile on the 67-year-old star in The New York Times, it was revealed that he allowed this to happen 20 times to help the LaLa Land actress get into character by interacting with him out of frame.
Stone praised Dafoe’s willingness to prioritise the film over everything else — including his own personal safety.
In one scene, Stone’s character is seen slapping Dafoe’s.
"There’s this instinct to perform that many actors have - the ‘look at me, look at me!’ kind of performer," she said in the article.
"He’s the opposite of that. Maybe it’s changed through the years," she added. "A lot of actors I bond with have been doing this for a long time, and you know, they’ve gone from ‘I’ to ‘We’."
A release date for And has not yet been set and there’s not been any plot details shared. In the meantime, Dafoe and Stone are also starring in Victorian-era sci-fi romance Poor Things.
The film, based on Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel, follows Belle Baxter, a young woman who is brought back to life by an eccentric scientist.
