In the movie Demolition, actor Jake Gyllenhaal loses his wife in a traffic accident, pours his heart out to a vending machine company, and smashes up his home with a sledgehammer.
But perhaps the biggest challenge in the drama-comedy about grief was having to free-style dance through throngs of New York city commuters as his bereaved Wall Street banker character throws out society's expectations.
Gyllenhaal, 35, said the un-choreographed sequence, shot on a subway and on the streets of New York, was the scene that most terrified him."
(Director) Jean-Marc Vallee said you're going to just dance around and I thought, 'Oh God, what is this going to be like?.' You have all those feelings of fear and embarrassment," he said.
"And then I was also nervous (that) it was going to be recorded, you know, for film, for a long time," he added.