Gregory Peck Truly Hated Him More Than Anyone – HT
It was a habit, I think, for the kids, the to run down to the corner and the boy grabbed his briefcase and they walked down the street together talking till they got to their house. And we were doing that little scene and uh while we were doing it, >> here’s what nobody ever tells you about Kevin Cosner.
He’s loyal, steady, and almost impossible to offend. Almost. For decades, he stayed silent. But nine actors in Hollywood pushed him further than anyone thought possible with ego, deception, and one mocking sentence that instantly ended a friendship. Costner kept these stories buried for years until even he couldn’t hold back anymore.
Once you hear what they did, you’ll understand why he now calls them the darkest people I ever worked with. Number one, Marlon Brando, the man who broke Gregory PC’s patience. At the very top of Gregory PC’s invisible blacklist, one name burned brighter than all the others. Marlon Brando. Their clash didn’t start with a scandal in the press.
It started quietly on location in Montana in the mid 1970s when PC agreed to work on a western project after producers swore Brando had calmed down and become more professional. Peek arrived on set at dawn with the script marked, lines memorized, and camera marks already in his head. Brando arrived hours later with a battered suitcase that, to Peek’s horror, contained not only bottles of liquor, but three pet snakes and a tiny toy piano he claimed helped him channel colors into performance.
On the first day, Brando sat in a corner of the barn set, hit a few discordant notes, and murmured, “Today I’m playing this scene in blue.” To the crew, it was just another Brando eccentricity. To Peek, it was the first crack in a nightmare. The real fracture came during a key dialogue scene.
Peek stood on his mark, ready to deliver a carefully built speech. Brando wandered into frame, wearing a wool cap, cradling a live pigeon. Without warning, he released the bird midtake, stared dreamily at the rafters, and ignored half his lines. PC froze while the crew stared at the chaos. When the director cut, PC walked away in silence and later muttered to an assistant, “This isn’t acting. This is vandalism.
” Over the next weeks, Brando whispered his dialogue so quietly the microphones could barely catch it, then exploded into improvisations no one else could follow. Peek felt humiliated and undermined. In one tense meeting, he reportedly snapped, “We’re here to make a movie, not witness an exorcism.” Brando only smirked and replied, “Maybe your soul’s the one that needs freeing.
” From that shoot onward, Brando became, in PC’s mind, the embodiment of everything he despised. Chaos, selfishness, and a total disregard for everyone else’s work. He never worked with him again. Number two, Frank Sinatra. When Hollywood royalty spat on the rules, second on PC’s list was the one who treated film like a casual hobby, Frank Sinatra.
Their tension peaked in the early 1960s on the set of a wartime drama shooting on a California backlot. PC had signed on believing he’d be working with a committed co-star. Instead, he discovered that Sinatra operated on his own time zone, and PC was expected to orbit around him. Pek arrived at 6:00 a.m.
in full costume, coffee in one hand, script in the other, ready to rehearse. Sinatra usually materialized close to midday, sometimes still smelling of the nightclub from the night before. The crew would pretend not to notice. Assistants made excuses. Peek watched the clock and felt something inside him harden. One morning, after yet another delay, he told the director quietly, “If he comes in drunk again, I’m walking off this picture.
” The real eruption came during an emotionally heavy infirmary scene. Peek was locked in, delivering a quiet, controlled performance when he suddenly heard a faint whistle. He looked down the ward set and saw Sinatra leaning against a prop bed, lazily whistling a tune between his teeth. When the camera rolled again, Sinatra upped the disrespect.
He spat on the floor between takes and joked to a grip, “Look at St. Gregory over there, saving souls for the academy.” Peek held his gaze, jaw tight. When the director urged Sinatra to focus, the singer snapped. I’ve sung at Caesar’s Palace. I know more about emotion than anyone here. Peek answered in a low, even voice. This isn’t a showroom, Frank.
We’re not doing an encore. We’re telling a story. The room went dead silent. From that day, Peek refused to engage with Sinatra off camera. He hid his marks, said his lines, and turned away. Years later, when asked if he’d ever share a set with Sinatra again, he reportedly quipped, “I’d rather act opposite an empty chair. At least it respects the call time.
” For Peek, Sinatra was the purest insult in the industry. Number three, Richard Burton. The man who mocked his soul at a Beverly Hills party in the mid 1960s. Richard Burton went for something far more personal, his moral identity. This was what happened later. Peek arrived in his usual understated way, nodding politely to producers and studio heads.
Burton entered later, laughing loudly with a crystal glass in hand, voice booming as if he were on stage at the old Vic. When a mutual acquaintance introduced Peek as the man who gave the world Adakus Finch, Burton’s expression shifted. He raised his glass and said loud enough for the room to hear, “Attakus Finch.” Gregory isn’t an actor.
He’s a sermon in a tuxedo. Laughter rippled through the crowd. Peek managed a tight smile, but the jab cut deep. Over the next months, Burton kept sharpening the blade. In interviews, he tossed off lines like, “Greg acts as if every scene is a speech to the United Nations.” and privately referred to him as St.
Gregory, the patron saint of studio morality. It was a campaign. Actually, the breaking point came when a European financed production in 1965 tried to cast both men as leads. The script was couriered to Peek first at his home in Los Angeles. He reportedly read 20 pages, set it down, and told his agent, “I will work with anyone, but not with a man who spits on everything I stand for.
” Within days, the project collapsed. Burton was furious and ranted that PC’s halo had more power in Hollywood than any of his performances. For Peek, Burton wasn’t just another difficult colleague. He was a mirror held up by someone who hated what they saw. quiet discipline, controlled emotion, a belief that films could mean something.
Burton mocked all of that as hypocrisy, and Peek in return built a silence around him so absolute it felt like a verdict. Number four, John Wayne. When two Americas collided, fourth on the list wasn’t born on a sound stage, but in the brutal atmosphere of American politics. John Wayne and Gregory Pek represented two different versions of the United States, and neither one could stand what the other symbolized.
Their conflict simmered through the 1960s and finally boiled over in public. Wayne, Hollywood’s favorite cowboy, loudly supported the Vietnam War and hardline right-wing causes. Peek, who had played Adakus Finch in Toquilla Mockingbird in 1962, signed petitions against the war, spoke in favor of civil rights, and lent his name to causes Wayne dismissed as soft.
They didn’t have to speak to know they were on opposite sides. One notorious encounter took place at a Hollywood industry dinner in the early 1970s held at a hotel ballroom on Wilshire Boulevard. After a few drinks, Wayne stood to make an impromptu toast. Fixing his gaze across the room, he growled, “If this country were full of men like Gregory Peek, we’d have surrendered before the first bullet was fired.
” Some laughed, others shifted uncomfortably. Pek, seated at a table near the back, put down his glass and rose slowly. He didn’t shout. He simply said, “And if this country were full of men like you, we’d never know what peace feels like.” The room went quiet. It was no longer a joke. It was a line in the sand.
After that evening, their paths forked permanently. When a studio floated the idea of a western pairing Wayne and Peek as uneasy allies, the notion died as soon as Wayne saw Peck’s name on the memo. He reportedly barked, “I won’t ride alongside that America hater.” Peek, for his part, declined invitations to events where Wayne was listed as a guest.
There were no fists thrown, no screaming matches on set, just a cold hatred that never truly thawed. When Wayne was dying in 1979, Peek is said to have remarked privately, “I pray for his soul, but I still can’t look him in the eye.” Number five, Kirk Douglas. The rival who never stopped comparing. Last on this list, but no less toxic, was Kirk Douglas because he turned their entire careers into a long, slow competition.
Where PC was quiet, Douglas was loud. They were destined to clash, even if they rarely did it face to face. By the late 1950s, both men were major stars. Peek had Roman Holiday and the Guns of Navaron. Douglas had Spartacus and Paths of Glory. When journalists asked Douglas about his contemporaries, he rarely missed a chance to jab at Peek.
In one interview, he shrugged and said, “Gregory Pek is as stiff as a board. I’d rather break than stand that straight.” The quote raced through the industry. The tension deepened in 1963 when Pek won the Academy Award for To Kill a Mockingbird. As the crowd at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium rose to applaud, Douglas sat further back, drink in hand, reportedly muttering to those around him.
If he were really Attekus Finch, this town wouldn’t drown in hypocrisy. The comment got back to Peek within days. He didn’t respond publicly, but a wall went up. Years later, when Colombia Pictures floated the idea of casting both men in the same World War II resistance film shooting in Norway, Peek read the proposal and quietly told the director, “I don’t want to share the frame with a man who thinks volume is a substitute for truth.
” Douglas heard about it and exploded, calling Peek a hypocrite with a halo, insisting his rival was a product of studio polish and clever publicity. Their feud never became a shouting match at a party or a brawl on location. It was something colder. Two men watching each other’s careers, measuring, resenting, refusing to admit how much the comparison hurt.
Decades later, after suffering a stroke, Douglas reportedly softened and admitted, “Greg was the man I resented, envied, and in the end wished I could be.” Since then, their relationship was never better. Now that you’ve heard what really happened behind the cameras, which of these actors shocked you the most? Tell me in the comments.
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