16 Wild But True Events In Movie, TV, And Music History

1.

Long before either of them were famous, Carey Mulligan and Marcus Mumford (lead singer of Mumford & Sons) met at camp as children and decided to become pen pals.

2.

Guns N’ Roses lead singer Axl Rose can be heard having sex with Adriana Smith — the girlfriend of the band’s drummer Steven Adler — on 1987’s landmark album Appetite for Destruction.

3.

Saturday Night Live star Ellen Cleghorne was paid a shockingly low $245 an episode for the 1991/1992 season, her first on the show. That added up to just $4,900 for the entire season (or less than $11,000 in 2023 dollars).

4.

Gary Busey once refused to perform a scene set in heaven because he said the set design looked nothing like the real heaven he visited during a near-death experience.

5.

Jenna Ortega had COVID-19 while filming her now iconic dance at Nevermore’s Rave’N Dance in Wednesday.

6.

In the ’80s, there was a widespread urban legend about the comedy hit Three Men and a Baby — rumors were it was filmed at a home that was haunted by a boy who died there years before, and his specter can clearly be seen in the background of a scene.

7.

Another massively viral (pre-internet, spread by word of mouth) rumor back in the ’80s claimed that a mischievous extra on the set of 1985’s Teen Wolf, starring Michael J. Fox, pulled out his penis during the filming of the film’s final scene, and it made its way into the released film, unnoticed.

8.

In the mid-’90s, James Raymond was a professional musician (he backed the Spice Girls, for example, on some of their US tour appearances) when he decided — approaching his 30th birthday — to finally find out who his biological parents were. To his shock, upon looking at his adoption records, he learned his biological father was none other than Rock and Roll Hall of Famer David Crosby!

9.

Mathew Perry doesn’t remember filming multiple years of Friends because he was dealing with addiction issues at the time.

10.

Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford partied all night with the Rolling Stones and then showed up to film The Empire Strikes Back still drunk.

11.

Daniel Johns and Ben Gillies of Silverchair were just 14 years old in 1994 when they wrote “Tomorrow,” which they then entered into a nationwide band competition in their native Australia — and beat out over 800 other acts to win! The song became a phenomenon, reaching number one in Australia and then becoming the most played song on modern rock radio in the United States the following year.

12.

Another 14-year-old songwriting phenom was Taylor Swift, who was just a freshman in high school when she cowrote the song “Tim McGraw,” which reached No. 6 on the country charts and became her first-ever Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 (she’s, uh, had a few more since then).

13.

Channing Tatum recently announced he’s developing a remake of the 1990 classic Ghost with plans to play the role of Sam Wheat made famous by Patrick Swayze. Interestingly, Swayze almost didn’t play the role — it was first offered to Bruce Willis to star opposite his then-wife Demi Moore. Even weirder, the production originally didn’t want Whoopi Goldberg in her iconic role as Oda Mae Brown.

14.

Just 18 days before the release of 1995’s Nine Months — a big summer comedy that 20th Century Fox had a lot riding on — its star, Hugh Grant, was arrested in Hollywood for receiving oral sex in a public place from a sex worker named Divine Brown.

15.

Here’s something totally different but nevertheless absolutely wild: One of the signature sounds in Billie Eilish’s smash hit “Bury a Friend” was recorded by Eilish herself…while at the dentist getting her Invisalign attachments drilled off.

16.

And lastly, you probably know this one, but if not, you absolutely need to: Eric Stoltz played Marty McFly in Back to the Future for seven whole weeks before he was fired and replaced by Michael J. Fox.