During production on Texas Rising, Fraser worked with a horse named Pecas, who turned out to be kind of the runt of the litter. He noticed the other horses picking on him — “Without pretending that the animal is a human, he looked like he needed help. Like, ‘Get me out of here, man’” — so he adopted Pecas for his son, Griffin.

Turner worked with a few different dogs who played her character’s wolf, Lady, on Game of Thrones. One of them wasn’t cutting it and had to be fired, so Turner convinced her parents to adopt it: “Zunni was a terrible actor, really bad on set. She wouldn’t respond to any of my calls, and everyone was ready to fire her, so we took her on when I was 14. She was about three feet tall and pretty big.”

In Keanu, Keanu was played by a litter of identical kittens, and Tiffany Haddish adopted one (named Catatonic) after production. 

In The Princess Diaries, Fat Louis was played by four different cats, one of which was Hathaway’s own pet.

She got her horse Talon, her dog Remi and her kitten mouser guest spots on Heartland.

He’s adopted a horse named T.J. from Hidalgo, one named Eurayus from The Lord of the Rings trilogy and one named Kenny from The Two Towers. 

De Armas says that Director Andrew Dominik had a brilliant eye for casting Blonde: “Andrew, as the great visionary that he is, he saw I look like Marilyn Monroe. Obviously, he saw that Elvis was perfect for Mafia, and had the idea we need Elvis in the movie.”

Cooper acted in and directed A Star Is Born, so he threw his weight around to get his own dog cast as his character’s dog: “I never even thought about any other dog but him, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to do that.”

Part of Gifted was filmed at a shelter, and the dog successfully auditioned for Evans (when Evans didn’t know he was looking for a dog) — “I had no intention of rescuing a dog that day, but the minute I saw him, I knew he was coming home with me.”

Swift’s video for her song “ME!” included a kitten named Benjamin Button, and Swift adopted Ben after the shoot.

Theroux, who voiced Tramp in the 2009 live-action Lady and the Tramp remake, managed to get his pitbull Kuma cast in one scene. Kuma was just one of many rescue dogs in the film. 

Brown adopted one of those rescue dogs after filming was over. She said the film’s dog trainer didn’t let you just grab one like it was a pet shop: “She watched you the entire run of the show, and at the end, she goes, ‘I think I have your dog.’ I said, ‘Oh! Who is it?’ and she says, ‘Harley is your dog.’ She was 100 percent right. Harley is my dog. I love him.”

She adopted a dog she met on set filming Big Love, and she now has all her contracts tweaked to allow Finn to hang out with her on set.

Before his career took off, Stallone was so destitute that he had to sell his dog. After selling the Rocky screenplay, he bought Butkus back and cast him as Rocky’s dog. He also kept the turtles, Cuff and Link, from the first film, and gave them an appearance in Creed II.