In the film Hunt for Red October , Sean Connery played a Russian submarine commander.
For this role, he decided to wear a wig with a ponytail. He thought it would give an interesting dimension to the character.
But he didn’t want to talk to the film’s director, the famous John McTiernan. He feared that the latter would not like his idea and would try to prevent him from adopting this look.
On the first day of filming, Sean Connery arrived on set with his ponytail wig. McTiernan found out and was, by his own admission, “damn horrified.”
He tried to convince Sean Connery to change his wig, but the actor wouldn’t listen. The director tried to get the film’s producers to intervene, so that they put pressure on Sean Connery, but the latter had outpaced him: he had already pleaded with the producers to keep his ponytail…
Mc Tiernan seemed to have lost the battle when an unexpected twist changed the situation.
In the middle of the second day of filming, while Sean Connery was watching rushes (which had just been shot) with the director of photography, Jan De Bont, the latter suddenly started laughing and said to the Scottish star that his ponytail looked like a “big soft cock swinging behind his head” !
The joke immediately spread around the team and, before the end of this second day of filming, everyone was laughing as Sean Connery passed by and looked at his ponytail.
The actor was so offended by these mockeries that he immediately decided to have his wig altered and remove the ponytail.
Incidentally, a key scene that had been filmed the day before had to be shot a second time, which resulted in $20,000 in additional costs.