25 Actors And Actresses That Almost Died While Filming
actors do indeed put themselves in danger more than you might like to think
Published 9 years ago
1
James Cameron’s epic Titanic is an amazing retelling of the real tragedy. What you don’t know, however, is that another real-life disaster almost happened behind the scenes. Kate Winslet suffered major bouts of pneumonia and influenza due to vigorous filming conditions. The actress also described a number of occasions on which she nearly drowned, including the iconic scenes in which she and Leonardo DiCaprio are trapped on the ship’s lower level. Thankfully, the actress survived to see the blockbuster hit the big screen.
2
While working on the film Modern Problems (1981), Chevy Chase was nearly electrocuted when a stunt went awry during the sequence in which he is wearing landing lights and dreams that he is an airplane. The current in the lights short-circuited through his arm, back, and neck muscles, which caused him to lose consciousness and have a near-death experience. After his experience, he went through a period of deep depression as many people do when they don’t want to return from their NDE.
3
Martin Sheen had a heart attack while filming Apocalypse Now and had to drag himself a quarter mile before anyone discovered him and got him the needed medical attention. The film’s director, Francis Ford Coppola, was so worried about the whole thing that he kept it quiet, even to the extent of explaining Sheen’s hospitalization as being due to “heat exhaustion” in the official shoot schedule.
5
Ed Harris is a superb actor, but that wasn’t good enough for James Cameron on the set of The Abyss. For a scene where Ed’s character runs out of oxygen, the director gave him an empty SCUBA tank to cause actual asphyxiation. According to rumors, Ed knocked Cameron out once he found out what happened and for that reason they haven’t worked together since.
6
George Clooney almost died when he injured his back pretty bad while filming Syriana. The pain of the injury even made Clooney consider suicide. He recalls, “I was lying in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm, unable to move, having these headaches where it feels like you’re having a stroke, and for a short three-week period, I started to think, ‘I may have to do something drastic about this’ . . . but I never thought I’d get there.”
8
Isla Fisher may have played a magician in Now You See Me, but clearly the magic wasn’t there when she almost drowned on the set. The actress revealed during an interview that she was stuck underwater for nearly three minutes while filming a magic-trick scene for the movie. Fortunately, Fisher managed to escape thanks to a quick-release switch and a stuntman standing nearby.
10
Gerard Butler came close to losing his life while filming the surfing drama Chasing Mavericks in 2011 and even shared footage of the incident on Good Morning America. The footage clearly showed him paddling on his board about to catch a wave before he “wiped out.” A huge wave could be seen crashing over Butler’s head, leaving him trapped beneath the water for almost a minute.
11
Terry O’Quinn stabbed Matthew Fox with a real knife rather than a retractable one while shooting a scene for an episode of Lost. In the prep session for the scene, it was decided the collapsible knife looked too fake, and that they would film the stabbing up to the penetration moment with an actual dull knife before swapping. Initially they couldn’t find a protective vest that looked real, and it took a stunt coordinator’s insistence to get them to let Fox wear one, as even collapsible knives hurt. Unfortunately, the knives ended up being swapped, and O’Quinn stabbed his costar with the real one, which was only stopped by the protective vest that he almost didn’t wear.
14
Aaron Paul dodged serious injury or even death during filming of the first season of Breaking Bad when a boulder that was positioned on top of the RV and holding down a tarp was blown off by a strong gust of wind along with the tarp onto the exact spot where Paul was standing moments earlier. The only reason he wasn’t severely injured or killed was because he had asked the director if he could try an alternative take from a different spot.
15
Not many know that there was a near-shocking tragedy on the set of The Hunger Games. To be more specific, during the shooting of the scene where Jennifer Lawrence is running through a tunnel, a fog machine malfunction occurred and filled the entire area with smoke to the point that the actress couldn’t breathe and narrowly escaped suffocation.
17
The world almost lost the greatest actress of our age during the shooting of 1994’s The River Wild. The decorated actress lost her balance during a scene and fell overboard into the icy water. Luckily Kevin Bacon was less than six degrees away because he pulled her to safety before things got worse.
19
During the filming of Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief someone from the crew forgot to put the parking brake on in a van that almost ran Uma Thurman down. Fortunately, former 007 Pierce Brosnan was on the scene and jumped into the moving vehicle and hit the brakes in time to save the actress from a possible deadly crash.
21
In 2012 Halle Berry was rushed to the hospital in Los Angeles after an accident she had on the set of The Hive. It is believed Halle hit her head very hard on some concrete after taking a nasty fall while shooting a scene for the movie. She was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in LA shortly after the accident, where she spent a couple of nights so that her doctors could make sure she was out of danger.
24
Leonardo DiCaprio got a little too aggressive during the filming of Django Unchained to the point where he almost killed himself. In the scene where he bangs on the table, he slammed it so hard that he put his hand through the glass. DiCaprio needed medical attention in order to stop the bleeding but before that he demanded they finish the scene.
25
In 2012, John Abraham, an Indian actor and model, escaped death while filming a gunfire scene. His costar Anil Kapoor, who played a cop in the film, shot a blank (minus the metallic lead) that was meant to be shot from a minimum distance of fifteen feet, from a distance of only 1.5 feet. The shot burst into flames as planned, but due to the close range, hit Abraham with a greater intensity (almost ten times) than it was supposed to. However, thanks to Kapoor’s bad aim, Abraham did not get hit in the middle of his neck; the bullet simply grazed the left side of it.
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