Transformers director Michael Bay appears to have taken aim at Hugo Weaving in a scathing blog post after the actor confessed his work as the voice of robot villain Megatron was "meaningless" to him - but promptly removed the online item.
The Matrix star revealed this week that he did no research for the role and simply showed up to read his lines, without ever meeting Bay in person or setting foot on set.
He told movie news website Collider.com, "It was one of the only things I've ever done where I had no knowledge of it, I didn't care about it, I didn't think about it... I don't regret doing it, but I very rarely do something if it's meaningless. It was meaningless to me, honestly. I don't mean that in any nasty way."
However, Weaving's candid comments seem to have caught Bay's attention and the filmmaker fired off an angry response, posting a scorn-filled note on his website on Wednesday - although he fails to mention the actor by name.
The message read: "Do you ever get sick of actors that make $15 million a picture, or even $200,000 for voiceover work that took a brisk one hour and 43 minutes to complete, and then complain about their jobs?
"With all the problems facing our world today, do these grumbling thespians really think people reading the news actually care about trivial complaints that their job wasn't 'artistic enough' or 'fulfilling enough'? What happened to people who had integrity, who did a job, got paid for their hard work, and just smiled afterward?"
Bay then warned: "Be happy you even have a job - let alone a job that pays you more than 98% of the people in America."
The blog post has since been removed.
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