John Stamos made the mortifying mistake of yelling at the iconic Elizabeth Taylor while struggling with his lines on General Hospital. 

The Full House star recently recalled the humiliating moment while he was speaking on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show. Stamos explained that he filming a heartbreaking scene between his character, Blackie Perrish, and his onscreen mother, who was dying. Stamos couldn’t hone into the devastation Blackie was feeling, and he was growing more and more frustrated with himself. 

“It was one of those scenes where it was the first time when my mother was dying on the scene in the show,” he shared. “And I never really experienced that, and I was trying to say, ‘My mother’s dead. My mother’s dead,’ in my head, and my head was like, ‘No, she’s not. She’s teaching CCD down in Orange County.’”

John Stamos Accidentally Used a Hollywood Legend as a Scapegoat

Desperate to get the attention off of him so he could regroup, John Stamos remembered seeing a co-star halt filming because they were distracted by something in their line of vision. So, he decided to make a similar move. 

“I heard this rustling. And it was, I couldn’t get through the scene,” continued Stamos. “I was f—ing it up. I couldn’t get to that emotional place, and I heard rustling, and I heard a pop… and then I was like, ‘Get that old lady out of my eye line!’”

Unfortunately for John Stamos, that ‘old lady’ was none other than the two-time Oscar-winning actress Elizabeth Taylor. She had stopped by the studio with a bottle of champagne to visit her friend, Anthony Geary, who plays Luke Spencer on the series to this day. Taylor also guest starred in General Hospital as Helena Cassedine four times. 

The noise John Stamos heard was Elizabeth Taylor popping the bottle while sitting in the director’s chair. The worst part of the whole incident was that John Stamos was still struggling to make a name for himself at the time. The soap opera was the actor’s first credited role, so raising his voice to one of Hollywood’s most legendary stars was a serious overstep. 

Luckily, Stamos didn’t ruin his reputation that day, though. He went on to star as Blackie for 139 episodes before jumping to Full House to become a Primetime A-lister.