Oliver Stone has described James Woods as an "egomaniac" who drove his co-star Jim Belushi mad by "upstaging him" on the set of his 1986 movie Salvador.
Stone directed the war drama, which saw Woods as Richard Boyle, alongside Belushi as an American journalist, covering the Salvadoran Civil War, who becomes entangled with both the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and the right wing military while trying to rescue his girlfriend and her children.
In an interview with British newspaper Metro, Stone admitted his leading men regularly clashed on set, because Woods "was a bit of a prima donna" who lorded it over Belushi.
When asked if he and his co-star, Saturday Night Live! alum Belushi, got on the director replied: "Not much".
"Jimmy Woods was difficult and he knows it," he explained. "We joke about it now, we’re friends, but I wanted to kill him a few times.
"He was a star, he was the most experienced, he was lording it over us, a bit of a prima donna," he continued. "But it was not the kind of movie you could be a prima donna for very long because of the money. We were really scrounging."
By contrast, the Oscar-winning director loved working with Belushi, but the comic struggled to deal with "egomaniac" Woods, whose behaviour really wound him up.
"He was great, he was a Saturday Night Live guy," he said. "I saw him doing a white man’s rap back then: I thought it was very funny and that he’d be perfect for the character. But he was eaten up by Woods. Woods is a bit of an egomaniac.
"Whenever they were in a shot together, Woods would find a way to upstage him. It drove Belushi around the bend. There was always screaming and fighting," he sighed.
Stone recalled shooting the movie was "probably the most pressure I’ve been under as a director", due to the low budget and the volatile temperaments of his cast, and he admitted back then he self-medicated with sex and drugs. But the experience prepared him for work on his Oscar-winning war drama Platoon, which won him Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture in 1987.
Salvador is out on DVD/Blu Ray this week.
