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It might be tempting to believe that everywhere an actor or a celebrity goes, they bring with them their entourage, fit with security and heavies, but that's only true for some of them. Many actors choose to go out with real friends or even by themselves. Sometimes, when these actors go out, they go to bars. Alcohol is magical. We know that. But one of the side-effects of alcohol is it makes one feel invincible. Add in an inflated ego here or there and you've got a recipe for fistfights. Now, actors might be wealthier and more recognizable than the average person, but they aren't always tougher. Besides that, even the toughest person in the world can lose a fight. So, we've gone out and looked for all the times actors have gotten into a fight at a bar. This is what we found.
Many reported actor/celebrity bar fights include a mere pushing and shoving match, or things like drunken yelling, brawls that ended with the actor being ushered away, and nothing too serious. We filtered this down to the bar fights in which celebrities got hurt or noticeably lost the fight. For whatever reason, that's way more interesting. Some of the fights on this list even have video or photographic evidence, which makes them even more hilarious. Some were actually quite serious, so we can't laugh at them all, but, for the most part, the losers were left looking silly and nothing more. Either way, here are 15 actors who were beaten up in real-life bar fights.
15. Shia LaBeouf
Shia LaBeouf has been in a few bar fights or scuffles or whatever you want to call them. We have plenty of pictures and videos, and none of them paint the star in a very flattering light, but we've all done things we regret when we're drunk. Shia's no different. One of his regrets is probably picking a fight with a man much larger than him at a Vancouver bar. The two got into a pushing match inside a bar and that spilled out onto the streets. At that point, the stranger took off his shirt, as apish men tend to do in fights. Then the two began to fight. Well, Shia kind of got taken to the ground where he turtled while the fat man beat on him. The fight looked a little like a gorilla beating on a smaller, submissive animal, which makes us feel a little bad for Shia. Luckily neither person was hurt in the encounter.
14. Paris Hilton
It hurts to call Paris Hilton a celebrity, but we will nevertheless. Reports tell of a bar fight between Hilton and Shanna Moakler that ended with Hilton being punched in the face and Moakler having a drink spilled on her. Hilton recounted what had happened to one of her representatives, claiming, “she was having a conversation with Stavros [Niarchos] and [Moakler] came out of nowhere shouting obscenities and struck her on the side of her face by her jaw and then continued to shout at her.” After the punch, Stavros dumped his entire drink over Moakler's head, which caused her to leave and call the police. Apparently, this entire fight stemmed from Hilton making out with drummer Travis Barker, who also happens to be Moakler's estranged husband.
13. Sean Bean
In the movies, Sean Bean might be someone who is killed often, but apparently it takes quite a bit to take down the actor in real life. A few years back, Bean was at a bar in London with model April Summers. The two had gone outside for a smoke when a random passerby made some comments to Summers, comments that Bean did not take too kindly. He ran the man off and went on with his night. Later on, the man came back and spotted Bean outside again. He attacked Boromir, sucker-punching him and then stabbing him in the arm with a broken bottle. Despite his bloody arm, Bean would be quite alright. One of the staff members of the bar said, "Sean is a regular here and we've never had any problems before. He was with a very attractive woman and an incident occurred outside the bar," the staff member said. "He came in with a cut on his arm and a bruise on his eyebrow. We saw to his injuries with the first aid kit. He seemed OK and wanted to have another drink."
12. Tommy Flanagan
Long before Tommy Flanagan played Chibs on Sons of Anarchy, even before he made his first appearance in Braveheart, he was a DJ at a bar in Glasgow. One on terrible night, he packed up his gear and left the bar but was attacked by a group of drunken brawlers. They beat Flanagan down and then, in a horrific move, cut his face from the corners of his mouth out, giving him what is called "a Glasgow smile." In the hospital, Flanagan's friend, actor Robert Carlyle, suggested he get into acting. Even though he wasn't an actor at the time of the event, this attack is too crazy not to mention. When talking about the scars these days, Flanagan doesn't much care about them. "I don't see the scars anymore," he said. Adding, "They're just ancient history now. It was a horrible thing that happened 20 years ago. I don't give it a second thought. It's just like a big wrinkle on my face."
11. Jason London
You would know Jason London best for playing the role of Randall "Pink" Floyd in Dazed and Confused, but he made headlines a few years ago when pictures him bruised and beaten showed up online. The stories about what happened differed between the parties involved, as always, but the police report had this to say: "an unidentified person complained London had sneezed on him and the person asked him to apologize. Instead of apologizing, London punched the person. He was escorted out by bouncers and during that time he hit them, leading the security guards to 'defend themselves' against London." The night wasn't over for London. Apparently, once he was in the police car, the actor decided to "lean to the left and defecate in his pants." Classic.
10. Justin Bieber
Justin Bieber (seen on the left, in the background of this pic) has been known to start trouble, and this story is no exception. Sure, it wasn't like he got whooped, but the whole fight is just too funny to ignore. So, both Bieber and Orlando Bloom are in Ibiza with their posses. They both go to this restaurant/bar called Cipriani's. No one can say for sure what really went down, but most people agree that Bieber made a comment about Orlando Bloom's wife, Miranda Kerr, when he first walked in. Knowing the douchery of Bieber, this is probably true. Bieber walked away and Bloom let the comment stew for a minute. Shortly after, he took off running, leaping over a sofa and swinging at the effeminate Bieber. During all this, Leonardo DiCaprio and the rest of Bloom's table cheered and applauded Legolas as he attacked the singer.
A witness recalled the events: "When Orlando punched Bieber, everyone started clapping. People were shouting, 'What a show! Justin and Orlando fighting. What a show!' Lindsay [Lohan] was laughing. It was amazing. The whole table he and DiCaprio were on were clapping. Afterwards, I don't know if people were congratulating Orlando or trying to calm him down."
9. Ed Westwick
Ed Westwick, best known for playing the character of Chuck Bass on Gossip Girl, is no stranger to bar fights. The actor has allegedly been in a few dustups with strangers and even fellow actors. One night, Westwick and another actor Toby Hemingway (Black Swan) were said to have scuffled. No one really knows what it was about, but eyewitnesses claim that the two started arguing and then, suddenly, “Toby started choking Ed. Chace Crawford (Gossip Girl) had to pull them apart.” Now, we don't know all that much about Westwick, but he looks like a total knob, so we'll hope these accounts are more or less true.
8. Johnny Knoxville
Johnny Knoxville, the Jackass star, has a story that might have been unbelievable if we didn't know the man telling it and how insane he is. Knoxville remembers a bar fight from his earlier days in which he was stabbed, but, before the actor went to hospital to get treated for his wounds, he decided to wait until after he had another drink. "We'd been fighting a couple of minutes and my hand was slashed and my back was slashed..." he said. "I had to go upstairs and get my friends out of the bar; we had another drink and they drove me to the hospital." Knowing Knoxville, he probably asked the guy to stab him for… You know what, he probably just asked him to stab him for no reason whatsoever.
7. Josh Brolin
Maybe Josh Brolin wasn't beaten up physically in his bar fight with a bouncer that was caught on camera, but the actor's ego most certainly was bruised. The story starts with Brolin drinking heavily at a bar for some time. Late in the night, he was asked to leave, not because he was too drunk or belligerent but because the bar was closed. Well, Brolin was drinking away some marital issues that night, so he was upset that closing time had come so suddenly. It was then that he lashed out at security, swinging wildly at the man trying to escort him out. Video evidence of the night shows that Brolin's wild swings were about as harmless as a small child's, little fear in any of the punches connecting and even less fear that they would do any damage if they did. You know those horrible dreams where your punches or kicks feel slow and non-threatening? Well, Brolin was living that dream. His drunken haymakers were saddening. After the little fight, both men were seen hugging. All's well that ends well.
6. Charlie Sheen
The accounts vary as to why Charlie Sheen was dragged out of a California bar a few years ago, but the one that seems most true was an account by one of the waitresses at the bar. She said that, "[Sheen] got kicked out because he tried to fight the bass player of the band [after] he tried to take a pic of him.” This seems to combine two of the other stories. One was that Sheen had slapped a phone out of a guest's hand when they tried to take a video of the actor, damaging the phone in the fall. The other was that Sheen just picked a fight with the bassist in a band, leading to the bouncer putting him in a headlock and dragging him out. Either way, Sheen may not have been beaten up, but a solid headlock can be pretty defeating, especially when you have tiger's blood coursing through your veins.
5. Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles
Actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles play brothers on the TV show Supernatural and, in real-life, the two are like brothers as well. It wasn't always this way though. We learned that the two became really close during a night out on the town. It was actually a bar fight that brought them together as a unit, brothers in arms, you might say. "There had been this fight at a bar and these guys got kicked out. They were pretty tanked," Ackles recalls. "This one girl sees me walking by and says, 'That's the guy,' meaning she knew me from the show, but they thought I was some guy she had been fighting with. They started swinging at me and it was an all-out brawl… I got away first, then I turned around and saw three or four guys teaming up on Jared. I was like, "Oh, man!" I ran back in and I was fly-kicking at some kid, hit another guy, grabbed Jared's shirt — of course, I ripped his favorite shirt — and I was yelling 'C'mon, let's get out of here!' We were pretty tight after that."
4. Andy Dick
There's something about Andy Dick that makes him easy to hate. It seems that everyone in the industry is bothered by this little weasel. Well, actor Jon Lovitz hates him the most. It is known. The background of the fight between these two goes back to when fellow comedian Phil Hartman was still alive. Hartman's wife, Brynn, was a recovering drug addict, when, apparently, Dick reintroduced her to cocaine. Not long after, Brynn shot and killed Phil and herself after a cocaine-fueled temper tantrum. Lovitz tells a story about his joining the show Newsradio and how he and Dick began their beef: "[Andy] was just complaining and really giving me a hard time for no reason. Phil [Hartman] told me that they had a Christmas party and Andy was doing cocaine and he gave it to Phil's wife Brynn, who had been sober for 10 years. So Andy said to me, 'Well, you shouldn't be here,' and I said, 'Well, I wouldn't be here if you hadn't given Brynn coke in the first place.'" Nothing happened the, but, years later, Dick and Lovitz had another encounter at a bar. "[Dick's] standing there with liqueur dripping down his chin and he says, 'I put the Phil Hartman hex on you, you're the next one to die,'" said Lovitz. "And he's smiling, and my blood just went to my head. I wanted to smash him, but if I hit him he would have gone flying into the table behind him. He was really drunk." Couple of days later, the two met at the Laugh Factory and Lovitz went looking for an apology but ended up assaulting the feeble Dick. "I just lost it," Lovitz said. "I grabbed him by the shirt and I pushed him against the wall. And he's just smiling at me, and then I realized 'oooh, here's my chance.' So I grabbed him by his shirt and pushed him really hard and I smashed his back and his head into the bar. And I did it again. I would have kept going, but the doorman broke it up."
3. Jean-Claude Van Damme
The story of Jean-Claude Van Damme's fight with celebrity bodyguard Chuck Zito, is a bit of he said/she said, but most people who've been asked tend to corroborate Zito's account of the events. The tale goes as follows: Van Damme and Mickey Rourke went to a strip bar one night. At the bar, they ran into Zito. Zito had been a bodyguard for both actors at some point. He also claimed that he and Van Damme did not get along all that well. Either way, Zito went and sat with them and had a drink. Later, one of the bouncers told Zito that he overheard Van Damme talking smack about the bodyguard. Zito then confronted him and Van Damme admitted that this was true. This is Zito's account of what happened next. "I hit him--twice. A straight right and a left hook. Bam-bam!" Zito said. "Jean-Claude's chair flipped over backward, and he landed in the lap of my friend Kevin Lubic… I started hitting him with everything I had. Jean-Claude barely even tried to fight back. He just tried to shield himself. When he covered his head, I hit him in the body. When he covered his body, I hit him in the face. It went on like that for about thirty seconds until the bouncers jumped in, Mickey jumped in, and all my buddies jumped in and pulled me off of Jean-Claude. He was tossed out of the club and I left on my own—quickly—before the police arrived."
2. Jeremy Renner
According to reports, actor Jeremy Renner was in Thailand drinking with some friends at a bar. One of these friends was Vorasit Issara, GM of a local resort. At some point in the wee hours of the morning, Issara and Renner began arguing with the staff at the bar. At the height of the tension, Issara apparently dropped a glass, or smashed it on purpose, and all hell broke loose. Six men that worked at the bar attacked Renner and friends and the fight spilled onto the streets. One of the assailants pulled a knife and stabbed Issara in the stomach. Another man pulled out an ax and reportedly hit Issara in the neck with it, which sounds nuts. Renner was left with some minor injuries from the fight, but it could have been a whole lot worse for Hawkeye.
1. Vince Vaughn and Steve Buscemi
When Vince Vaughn, Steve Buscemi and screenwriter Scott Rosenberg, were in North Carolina filming Domestic Disturbance, they went out for a few drinks at a local bar one night. After Vaughn struck up a conversation with a woman in the bar, two men began an argument with the actor (one of the men was dating the woman speaking to Vaughn). At that point, either the two groups were kicked out or they agreed to go outside, but both sides of men found themselves outside staring each other down when fisticuffs broke out. During the fight, one of the men, Timothy Fogerty, remembered that he didn't know how to fight with his hands, so he pulled out a knife and began attacking the actors. Buscemi took the brunt of the violence, getting stabbed above the eye, in the arm, the jaw and the friggin' throat. Fogerty was arrested, Vaughn was maced and Buscemi was hospitalized. All in a night's work.