NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Entertainment

Cheating? Actors who were fed their lines through earpieces

news.com.au
4 May, 2017 04:00 AM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Johnny Depp, Rita Ora, Bruce Willis and Tom Cruise have all had their lines fed to them before.

Johnny Depp, Rita Ora, Bruce Willis and Tom Cruise have all had their lines fed to them before.

Johnny Depp's not the only actor who doesn't bother memorising his lines.

According to a recent lawsuit from his former business managers, the actor pays "hundreds of thousands of dollars to employ a fulltime sound engineer, who Depp has used for years to feed him lines during film production".

READ MORE:
• Why Lorde is back in Auckland
• Goss mag's 'vagna' typo shocker

It's a claim partly backed up by Kirsten Dunst who said in a 2008 interview that she'd heard Depp uses an earpiece on set, although she wasn't quite sure why.

"Johnny Depp has music playing in his ear when he acts," she told Vulture. "He has an earbud. That's why he's so great."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Depp's not alone though. Several high-profile stars from stage and screen have busted wearing earpieces in the past.

Here are some famous examples:

MARLON BRANDO

The legendary actor starred in the 1996 box office bomb, The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The whole production was reportedly a disaster and the script was often being rewritten just hours before those scenes were being filmed.

Rather than trying to memorise the new lines, Brando wore an earpiece and had an assistant feed him his lines.

But according to actor David Thewlis, Brando's earpiece would sometimes pick up the wrong signal midway through a scene.

"Suddenly he'd be getting police messages," Thewlis told Entertainment Weekly.
"Marlon would [repeat], 'There's a robbery at Woolworths'."

Discover more

World

Student finds 'ingenious' way to cheat

04 May 09:10 PM
Entertainment

Lorde is 'not a good famous person'

08 May 07:30 AM
Entertainment

Star's 1000 push-ups a day prep for role

11 May 04:48 AM
Entertainment

Depp's poor behaviour in Aus revealed

11 May 11:35 PM

RITA ORA

The British singer played Christian Grey's sister in the 2015 movie, Fifty Shades of Grey. But Ora told Access Hollywood that nerves got the better of her on set.

"I had to have someone in my ear on set telling me what to say before I said it because I was honestly, like, so nervous, I forgot everything that I had learnt," she said.

It should be noted that Ora has less than two minutes of screen time in the film and her only four lines are:

"She's here?" / "Oh my God, you exist." / "Uck, Seattle baseball." / And a sentence in French.

TOM CRUISE

Parts of the script for the 1990 movie, Days of Thunder, were being rewritten just minutes before they were due to be filmed.

At first, Cruise tried writing his new lines down on a piece and paper and sticking them to the dash of his race car as he zipped around the track. But as the actor told Rolling Stone, it wasn't a very successful technique.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"I was driving and looking around all over, trying to read these lines I had just gotten," he told the magazine.

"And all of a sudden the car snaps out from the weight of the camera. I go, 'Oh, s**t,' and go right up into the wall."

So instead of learning his lines just before the scene, Cruise and the script writer came up with a new tactic.

"Then what we started doing was having Bob Towne read me the dialogue through my radio earphone," Cruise revealed.

"He'd just read it over, I'd get a pace on it and read it back. It was fun. So in the movie, when it looks like my crew chief is talking to me and I'm listening intently, I was actually waiting for my next line."

BRUCE WILLIS

The actor had a crack at playing author Paul Sheldon in the Broadway adaptation of Stephen King's Misery in 2015 but wore an earpiece because he struggled to remember his lines.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

According to a source who spoke to the New York Post at the time, "the script is changing and he's nervous ... but he's working very hard".

Theatre columnist Michael Riedel was less than impressed though, and noted that Willis "sports an earpiece the size of a cellphone circa 1984".

"The excellent Laurie Metcalf says a line and then there ... is ... a ... pause before Willis responds," the columnist wrote.

THE CAST OF LES MISERABLES

The director of the 2012 movie, Tom Hooper, was "obsessed" with the idea of the actors singing each song live rather than lip syncing on film and recording the songs in post-production.

"I did some early tests with Hugh Jackman singing three of his numbers live here at Pinewood and it was a thrilling discovery when we screened it to test audiences and saw there was no barrier between the audience and the performances," Hooper told the Sydney Morning Herald.

To help the actors out a little bit, they were given earpieces to wear during their scenes according to Samantha Barks who played Éponine.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"We all have an earpiece in our ears, and we can hear the piano, but the piano is in a box just off set," she told Collider.

"So when we watch the film we can hear these big sweeping orchestrations, but actually what you can hear in your ear is a tiny piano. So you had to use your imagination for sure to create these epic orchestrations, that's what we could hear. But it was funny, because if you don't have the earpiece in then we all just look mad, like were just singing to nothing."

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Entertainment

Entertainment

Scrap it or show it? The nightmare of Gregg Wallace’s last MasterChef

Entertainment

Magic returns to screens: Harry Potter TV series filming kicks off

Entertainment

'Horrendous': Paul Henry sails to Fiji and compares voyage to childbirth


Sponsored

Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Entertainment

Scrap it or show it? The nightmare of Gregg Wallace’s last MasterChef
Entertainment

Scrap it or show it? The nightmare of Gregg Wallace’s last MasterChef

The BBC delayed airing the series due to complaints against the long-time star judge.

15 Jul 06:00 AM
Magic returns to screens: Harry Potter TV series filming kicks off
Entertainment

Magic returns to screens: Harry Potter TV series filming kicks off

15 Jul 12:18 AM
'Horrendous': Paul Henry sails to Fiji and compares voyage to childbirth
Entertainment

'Horrendous': Paul Henry sails to Fiji and compares voyage to childbirth

15 Jul 12:09 AM


Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper
Sponsored

Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper

01 Jul 04:58 PM
NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP