A little story about Andre, related in my own words from the preface to the latest edition of "
The Princess Bride":
Goldman and Reiner knew from the outset that the role of Fezzik must belong to Andre, and what with one thing and another he never took a screen test. However, when they came to actually read a few scenes with him during preliminary rehearsals, it emerged that he spoke extraordinarily slowly - not at all at the pace of a comedy dialogue!
They tried and tried, giving him gentle hints and then trying to politely explain that he needed, well, to speak a bit faster... But nothing worked. Eventually, Mandy Patinkin (Inigo), who was reading the scene with him, got up on tiptoe and slapped the giant full in the face!
As you can imagine, shocked silence followed the echo of the blow while everyone in the room waited breathlessly to see how this mammoth of a wrestling machine will react to such liberties being taken with his person.
What happened was absolutely nothing. Andre looked at Mandy for a moment and then took it again from the top, this time reading at a much more acceptable speed. The message got through.