John Hurt banned from South Africa

Actor John Hurt not allowed into South Africa due to name confusion
In 1979, actor John Hurt was getting ready to go to South Africa to film
a movie called Zulu Dawn. He had a role in the film which was about British colonialists having to fight with the local Zulu people, an
indigenous group on the African continent, specifically South Africa. However, his name was similar in sound to that of John Herd, who was an anti-apartheid activist which meant that he wanted white South African settlers to equally live among indigenous black South Africans. At this time, South African society was racially divided on colonial grounds by an all-white-European descended government not too different to the segregation in the American southern states. Fearing for the safety of South Africa, the department responsible for deciding who could enter the country barred the actor John Hurt from entering South Africa, putting an end to any work he would've acted out in Zulu Dawn.

It seemed like a role ending misdemeanor, even though John Hurt wasn't a political man unlike the man he had been confused with. That was until Ridley Scott ran into a similar missing actor issue that the Zulu Dawn director had faced. However it wasn't a border customs issue but rather a health issue. Actor John Finch was part a film Ridley was directing called Alien which is about a malicious alien like creature attacking the crew of a spaceship. Finch also had diabetes where a person's can't produce enough insulin (a solution that helps blood sugar enter the blood cells). This posed a problem on set as a lot of Coca Cola was being consumed for energy during production and as a result, John Finch got sick with hyperglycaemia where his blood sugar was too high. This was when Ridley Scott turned to the (almost out of work) John Hurt to take the role of Alien's first victim Gilbert Jane, which John Hurt accepted.
The result was John Hurt becoming part of one of cinema's most memorable scenes where the alien burst out of his chest like a demonic alien jack in the box!
Younger generations might recognise the late John Hurt (who died in January 2017) as the War Doctor in Doctor Who, Winston in the 1984 adaption of 1984 by George Orwell or as Mr. Ollivander in Harry Potter.