The world’s worst hotel guests

6. Russell Crowe
The Oscar winner is not exactly known for his patience or sweet demeanor, but in the summer of 2005 his notorious temper took center stage. At the Mercer Hotel in New York City, Crowe became enraged when he could not successfully complete a call to his wife back home in Australia, prompting him to unplug the phone in his room, bring it downstairs to the lobby, and throw it into the face of 28-year-old concierge Nestor Estrada, who required stitches from the incident. Crowe, who has said he uses yoga and other relaxation techniques to calm his rage, claims he meant to hit the wall with the phone; regardless, he pled guilty to assault charges and eventually settled a civil suit brought by Estrada for $11 million. And you thought Eliot Spitzer's frolic at D.C.'s Mayflower Hotel was costly.

7. Naomi Campbell
When Russell Crowe threw his phone, perhaps he was merely channeling the world's angriest supermodel. Naomi Campbell has been charged multiple times with assault, and both telephones and hotel rooms have featured prominently in her police reports. In 1998, she used a telephone to assault her assistant, Georgina Galanis, in a Toronto hotel room. (She paid a fine and her record was expunged.) Then, in 2005, she allegedly beat up the Italian actress Yvonne Scio in Rome's Eden Hotel, bruising Scio's face and splitting her lip. The supposed cause? They were on their way to a party together, but when Campbell showed up at the hotel to pick up the actress, she was unhappy to find they were both wearing the same frock. Campbell's bad guest behavior isn't just limited to violence toward others, though — London's Daily Mail reports that just this summer she was accused by staff at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow of burning holes in the hotel sheets and refusing to pay the $300 the hotel assessed in damages. Campbell's rep has denied it.

8. George Schultz
He was a Cabinet member for years — serving as Nixon's Secretary of Treasury and Secretary of Labor, and Reagan's Secretary of State — but that didn't stop George Shultz from committing a major hotel faux pas late in his career. When he visited Paris's Hôtel de Crillon in his capacity as Secretary of State, he and his staff allegedly robbed the hotel of a significant portion of its luxurious monogrammed towels. The theft only came to light when, after Shultz's visit, then–Vice President George H.W Bush and his staff visited the hotel. As reported in Forbes years later by Christopher Buckley, who was traveling with the VP on that trip, Bush's staffers noticed their rooms conspicuously devoid of bath linens, and were met with icy resistance when they called down to get some. Ultimately, the hotel staff begrudgingly handed over a few towels, but only after some members of the entourage were forced to dry off with toilet paper.

9. Mikhail Prokhorov
The general thinking in France is that the Courchevel ski resort has been overrun by gaudy Russian billionaire playboys. It's a view perpetuated in large part by the frequent visits of Mikhail Prokhorov, an industrialist notorious for the lavish parties he likes to throw, including an annual two-week-long Christmas celebration for his comrades. But the notion that the world's 24th richest man (Forbes values Prokhorov's worth at nearly $20 billion) tarnished the resort's reputation came into much sharper relief in January 2007, when he was arrested for allegedly running a prostitution ring out of several of the resort's hotels to, uh, service his friends, who wisely paid the women in luxury goods from boutiques in the area (making a criminal case tougher to prove). The New York Times reported that the charges against Prokhorov and his influential Russian pals disappeared after several days; the damage to Courchevel's reputation among its more traditional guests was hardly so fleeting.

10. Brandon Davis
The unctuous oil heir and taunter of Lindsay Lohan prompts eye rolls from proprietors of hotels, restaurants and nightclubs alike when he shows up at the door. This past March, Us Weekly reported that he was kicked out of the Sunset Marquis in Los Angeles after acting belligerent in the hotel's bar. And last summer, the New York Post wrote that Davis was ejected from his own brother's wedding reception at Montage Resort and Spa in Laguna Beach after fighting with his father and knocking over chairs, tables, and flower arrangements. Then there was the 2001 incident in which he took out a $150,000 line of credit at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and promptly lost it at the tables. Turns out Davis didn't quite have the cash to reimburse the house, and remained in debt until he ultimately sold off some of his possessions to pay it back. Worse, the hotel is owned by Peter Morton, whose son Harry was Davis's best friend until this incident. Lessons are learned hard, however: In 2007, the Atlantis Paradise Resort and Casino in the Bahamas sued Davis for a bounced $75,000 check.

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