Which actors were genuinely scared of their co-stars?

There is a legendary Seinfeld episode called “The Jacket”, from 1991. In it, an older actor by the name of Lawrence Tierney plays Alton Benes, father of the character Elaine. Larry David had been inspired by an experience from his own life, when he himself dated the daughter of an incredibly intimidating father — in his case the famous writer Richard Yates.

The problem the actors soon faced was that Tierney didn’t just play an intimidating character on screen… he WAS incredibly intimidating off-screen, as well. Tierney was a hard man, who had lived a hard life. A lifelong alcoholic, he had been arrested multiple times for violent offenses going back as early as the 1940s. He served time, but kept getting in trouble. Got into fights with waiters, punched people, once ripped a telephone off a wall in a fit of anger, things like that. Big, scary dude who was a day-laborer before getting work as a character actor.

Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld had wanted a scary man for the part… and they got a little more than they had bargained for. Cast and crew members were very impressed with the actor’s performance. However, they were also frightened of him; during filming it was discovered that Tierney had stolen a butcher knife from the knife block in Jerry’s apartment set. Various cast members remember Seinfeld encountering Tierney and jokingly saying: “Hey Lawrence, what do you got there in your jacket?” Tierney, realizing he had been caught, tried to make a joke about how he thought taking the knife would be funny, by reenacting a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, holding the knife above his head and making threatening motions towards Seinfeld.

Seinfeld would later joke that Larry David threatened to “get Lawrence Tierney back if the cast did their work badly”. Needless to say, his role was the actor’s only appearance on the show. A young director by the name of Quentin Tarantino, however, saw the episode and was impressed by the eccentric old brawler and decided to hire him for Reservoir Dogs. This gave Tierney a welcome boost in the final years of his career.