All The Fake Drugs In The Wolf Of Wall Street Caused Some Very Real Problems For Jonah Hill

Al Pacino claims his nose has been irreversibly affected since snorting ungodly amounts of fake cocaine in "Scarface." In a 2015 interview, the actor recounted his experience with fake drugs on the movie, commenting that, "There's just so much of the stuff you can take." That's a lesson Jonah Hill learned after Martin Scorsese gave him one of his first major dramatic roles in "The Wolf of Wall Street."

The 2013 dramatization of penny stock scammer Jordan Belfort's biography had many of the themes Scorsese was famous for exploring with his previous films: greed, crime, violence, and of course, drugs. Lots of drugs. More than any movie the director had made at that point, in fact. Belford's real-life stock fraud scheme had afforded him a life of extreme excess, with an endless supply of drugs to fuel his and his firm's debauchery. And Scorsese was keen to depict that debauchery in all its coke-fueled glory.

Unlike the fake cocaine on "Scarface," which was reportedly "powdered baby laxatives" of all things, the coke on Scorsese's movie sounded like a much healthier alternative: vitamin D powder. Supposedly, the powder is perfectly safe for human ingestion, but when you're snorting copious amounts of it for months, even vitamin D can cause some significant issues. As Hill found out while shooting "The Wolf Of Wall Street."

Playing stockbroker Donnie Azoff, Hill features alongside Leonardo DiCaprio's Belfort throughout the film, indulging in all the ill-fated revelry that their pump-and-dump scheme brings. Snorting extreme amounts of the vitamin D powder was required to adequately portray the outlandish shenanigans at Stratton Oakmont, but it took a toll. The actor revealed in an interview with Bill Simmons that the powder actually gave him bronchitis, which he suffered with for three weeks, causing him to be hospitalized. Elaborating on the experience, Hill explained:

"It's vitamin powder. But it doesn't matter, because if you ingest any matter, that much matter, into your lungs, you will get very sick. And we were just literally doing fake coke for, like, seven months. Every day. I never had more vitamin D in my entire life. I think I could have lifted a car over my f****** head."

It's somewhat surprising that Hill and his co-stars were allowed to snort the powder for as long as seven months straight. Things have changed since 1983 when "Scarface" was filmed, and surely someone must have been aware that even vitamin D can cause issues when ingested over that long a period. That said, the actor didn't seem to suffer any long-term effects, like Pacino — at least none that he's spoken about since. So that's something. But even a Scorsese film isn't worth risking the ability to breathe.