The horror movie sued by its star for ruining their career: “I tried desperately to get out”
There’s no way of knowing for sure which projects are going to be hits and which ones will turn out to be misses, but one star was left so devastated by the physical, personal, and professional ramifications of a relatively low-budget horror movie they launched a $55million lawsuit claiming it had ruined their career.
The first major role of Paz de la Huerta’s filmography came when she played Mary Agnes in The Cider House Rules, Lasse Hallström’s acclaimed drama that ended up being nominated for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ at the Academy Awards, with Michael Caine winning his second ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar into the bargain.
She’d then lend support in rom-com box office hit A Walk to Remember and Gaspar Noé’s Into the Void, as well as landing a plum supporting part as Lucy Danziger in the first two seasons of HBO’s Martin Scorsese-produced crime saga Boardwalk Empire, so for all intents and purposes things were going swimmingly.
Unfortunately, co-writer and director Doug Aarniokoski’s erotically-charged horror Nurse 3D led to several significant setbacks, including an on-set injury and a legal challenge. Leading the cast as Abby Russell, de la Huerta was struck by a stunt ambulance during shooting, and the total sum of her compensation was a paltry $73,000, a drop in the ocean compared to the $55 million challenge that followed.
In post-production, huge swathes of the star’s performance had been overdubbed by another actor, and as part of the critical drubbing that accompanied Nurse 3D‘s eventual release, the flat line delivery was a recurring theme. As a result of being accused of monotonous monologuing, de la Huerta alleged that before signing on for the film she’d been making millions of dollars per year in annual income, only for her earning power to significantly diminish in the aftermath.
In an interview with Grey Magazine, de la Huerta intimated that she never wanted to make the movie in the first place, and by suffering an injury that required significant recuperation time, having her vocal delivery criticised when it wasn’t even coming from her mouth was rubbing more salt into the wound.
“I was told I could rewrite the script. I spent three months rewriting it. I’d been used to working with auteurs. The managers, the agents, they get greedy and I wanted out. But I was blackmailed into doing it,” she offered. “I literally said, ‘This movie is not worth my life’, two weeks before filming, and I tried desperately to get out but they wouldn’t let me.”
That was all she was allowed to disclose at the time due to the pending litigation, only for de la Huerta to come out on the losing side in the courtroom. Whereas her case was based on Nurse 3D ruining her career by way of the on-set accident and ADR replacement, the judge determined that upon signing her initial contract, the star had “expressly consented to the use of her name, voice and likeness in relation to the film,” so she effectively didn’t have a leg to stand on.
Since Nurse 3D earned a miserly $700,000 at the box office in 2013, de la Huerta has appeared in only a handful of features, so while the film may not have torpedoed her career entirely, her performative contributions to the industry have significantly dwindled in the decade and change to follow.