Here's What Actors Are Actually Snorting, Smoking And Drinking In Films

While watching films such as "Scarface," "Blow," "Boogie Nights," "Traffic" or "Pineapple Express," do you ever wonder what the actors on-screen are actually snorting, smoking or drinking, take after take?

Most of the time, it's not the actual substances—unless your name is Nicolas Cage—who once told reporters he snorted doctor-approved cocaine to prepare for his role in "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans."

Instead, Hollywood prop masters have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Often, actors are simply snorting ingredients usually used to bake a cake and special stores have devoted their business to legal, herbal bud used on film sets.

On Showtime's "Weeds," the herbal tobacco makes the actors feel a little lightheaded, says the show's executive producer Roberto Benabib. 

"According to them, it gets them higher than regular marijuana. They end up smoking so much of it they get very lightheaded and they don't like it. Sometimes they do take after take and you will see them getting woozy because it has a strange effect on them. But it's totally legal and it is what we are supposed to use."

Cocaine: the fake stuff.

According to various movie industry reports, propmasters turn to these substances when coke is needed for films:

• Powdered milk

• Crushed up vitamin B
  

• Powdered sugar

• Baking powder

• Soy baby formula

• Baby powder
  
  
• Baby laxatives
  

• Camera angles: Directors can film from certain angles to make it look like actors are snorting coke when it's actually just a matter of editing.
  
  
• Hollywood prop master Jeff Butcher says he prefers "a vitamin called inositol. It is a B-vitamin of some kind and I believe that it is the most common cocaine cut [used on film]. With inositol, you get a little bit of energy lift, but it is very mild."
  

Watch this crazy cocaine scene starring Mark Wahlberg and John C. Reilly that was cut from "Boogie Nights" at the last second:

Q&A site Quora posed this very question and received some revealing answers.

Nicolas Cage snorts a "prop" in "Bad Lieutenant."

"There's a scene where Terence [Nicolas Cage's character] rips open a bag of coke and snorts it. Nic was so realistic I was frightened," "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" director Werner Herzog told Vulture. I thought he was no longer snorting the prop cocaine, the saccharine. So I asked Nic, 'What is it that you are snorting?' He just smiled and said, 'The prop, of course.' But he was just so realistic."

Perhaps Cage was "so realistic" because at points he was actually snorting cocaine.

"The strangest thing of all is that in Australia, they still use cocaine to clear your sinuses and it’s a true story—I had a massive sinus infection—and they sent me to the doctor who did this cocaine solution thing and put it in my nose," Cage explained to reporters during a press conference for the film.

“I came out and just started taking notes and I noticed my mouth was getting really dry and I was feeling very invincible and I started improvising the scenes and coming up with ideas and I was swallowing a lot so then I was graphing it in the script—this is coke so this is what he’s doing here, there’s going to be a lot of swallowing, a lot of lip smacking."

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