While the stereotype of the pampered Hollywood actor is pervasive, that doesn’t mean starring in a film doesn’t come with various costs and dangers. Some actors are so committed to giving a good performance that they forego a stunt person, putting their lives on the line for the perfect take.
Why would Tom Cruise, one of the biggest movie stars in the world, insist on doing his own stunt work? Why would Sylvester Stallone want the Herculean Dolph Lundgren to punch him really hard during their boxing match in Rocky IV? Why would Burt Reynolds refuse a stunt double for the dangerous rafting waterfall scene in Deliverance?
Those questions are difficult to answer. Perhaps those actors were being macho. Perhaps they just wanted the movie to look as realistic as possible. Regardless of the reasons why, all three of those billion-dollar movie stars suffered significant injuries.
1. Jackie Chan Nearly Perished When He Tried To Jump Through Trees And Couldn’t Grab On To Any Branches
Over the course of 150+ movies, martial arts expert and filmmaker Jackie Chan has broken almost too many bones to keep track of. Chan does almost all of his own stunts and has paid the price with fractures in his hands, hip, femur, nose, tailbone, and neck…
In the 1986 Hong Kong action-comedy The Armour of God – which Chan also wrote and directed – he experienced one of the worst injuries of his prolific career. He broke his nose, jaw, and skull. The international star also had a brain hemorrhage and lost several teeth in a stunt that on paper did not even have a high degree of difficulty.
Chan sustained all those injuries plus a concussion after attempting to jump from a wall to a tree. The action hero could not safely grab onto a tree limb and wound up falling about 40 feet.
To aid in the movie’s realism, Chan decided to drink actual beer in the scene because he wanted the audience to see the fizzy carbonation. Chan performed one take of the jump, but he wasn’t happy. Then, he consumed even more beer. The next take nearly ended the actor. He said:
“I try to grab every tree – they just keep breaking. Breaking, breaking, breaking, breaking. Then, boom, I just hit on the rock. I get up, I thought, “It’s nothing.” I just feel my back’s hurt. Then I get up, but everybody pushes me down because my whole body was numb. By the time the numb passed, then I feel my air, and I see the blood. We go to the hospital… I almost died.”
Surgeons repaired the stunt actor’s cracked skull and controlled the bleeding. Chan continued to perform his own movie stunts.
2. Sylvester Stallone Told Dolph Lundgren Not To Hold Back In ‘Rocky IV’ And Ended Up In Intensive Care
Rocky IV features the Reagan-era Cold War boxing battle between the United States and Russia. Rocky Balboa is not only carrying his American burden, but also trying to avenge the demise of his best friend, Apollo Creed.
Dolph Lundgren’s juiced-up Ivan Drago tells his much smaller boxing opponent, “I must break.” That sentiment carried over to real life with something Stallone calls “dead man walking.”
Stallone told Jimmy Fallon during a 2016 interview that he was on the receiving end of a Lundgren blow to the chest that he thought would result in a trip to see St. Peter:
When you do a Rocky film, for some reason we’ve decided to have this kind of initiation that you have to get clobbered – usually by a man infinitely stronger and larger, such as Carl Weathers. Dolph Lundgren put me in the hospital for four and a half days. It was unbelievable. He hit me so hard in the chest that the next thing I know, I was on a low-altitude flight to intensive care to St. John’s Hospital, surrounded by four nuns.
3. When Blake Lively Shattered Her Hand For A Fight Scene In ‘The Rhythm Section,’ Production Shut Down For Six Months
Blake Lively starred in the 2020 revenge thriller, The Rhythm Section. The Gossip Girl star played against type in the R-rated violent action movie that centers around horrific tragedy.
The actress revealed during an interview with Good Morning America that production had to completely stop for six months after she severely injured her hand.
“We were doing all of our own stunts, by and large, and there’s, like, one-shot fight sequences, which is how I shattered my hand,” said Lively. “We shut down for six months.”
“My hand, basically, turned to, like, feta cheese… I was lunging towards (co-star) Jude Law with my fake rubber knife, and my hand collided with his elbow, and I broke some things and dislocated some things and severed a ligament. It was intense.”
4. Joseph Gordon-Levitt Flew Off A Bike Into A Windshield, But His Adrenaline Was So High, He Felt No Pain
If anyone has ever been to New York City, they know about the daredevil bike messengers that zip in and out of traffic. These riders speed through crowded city streets and often come within inches of catastrophe.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt played one of those seemingly insane bike messengers in the 2012 high-octane action thriller, Premium Rush. The actor did not survive the shoot without his fair share of injuries. “This is 11 of the stitches. The other 21 of them are scattered around. What’s cool though is that you [director David Koepp] actually put it at the end of the movie after the credits,” said Gordon-Levitt.
Gordon-Levitt was riding down Sixth Avenue when an SUV drove into the designated lanes that were shut down for production. In order to avoid crashing head-on into the SUV, the actor had to make a quick swerve.
“He crashes through the back windshield of the cab and cut himself to ribbons. It was awful, because there was about 30 seconds between his crash and the moment I hear it, so I have to go check if he’s dead or not,” said Koepp. “That was the worst part for me.”
Gordon-Levitt described what it felt like during and after the accident:
You get so flooded with adrenaline that I didn’t feel any pain at all. Not until later that night. I flew off the handlebars and went through the windshield, and I was immediately like, “Oh, s**t, sorry! I’m fine.” And then you look at it, and you’re like, “Oh, Jesus Christ, look at that!” Dave comes running up really scared, really nervous. I told him, “You have to record this!” I cajoled him, after lots of convincing, to take out his phone and shoot some video of me bleeding and the broken glass. To my delight, when I saw the movie, he actually put the footage in after the credits.
5. George Clooney Had To Go To Therapy To Learn How To Not Feel The Pain From A Head Injury
George Clooney revealed that he considered taking his own life following a brain injury he suffered while filming the 2005 political thriller, Syriana. “There was this scene where I was taped to a chair and getting beaten up. The chair was kicked over, and I hit my head,” said the ER star. “I knew immediately [how serious it was]. I thought I’d had a stroke. It was like a train horn going off in your head, and you can’t see and you can’t stand.”
The accident caused Clooney to experience unrelenting pain and headaches. He decided not to take painkillers because there is an addiction history in his family. Clooney chose a more holistic route by dealing with the pain through mental therapy.
Doctors initially could not diagnose Clooney’s dire condition, which included spinal fluid coming out of his nose. Eventually, a neurologist figured out the fluid was actually leaking from his spine. The doctor diagnosed the actor with a torn dura, which required surgery. Clooney said:
I had a two-and-a-half-inch tear in the middle of my back and a half-inch tear in my neck. The doctors did these blood patches, where they tie you down to a bed, and you’re awake because they have a long needle and need to know if they’re touching your spinal cord. And they take blood out and shoot it directly into your spinal column to try to get the blood to coagulate in those spots. I did about 15 of those over 15 days. It’s like getting a spinal tap every day, and you’re awake. But what we didn’t understand was how big the holes were.
“I thought I was going to die. Talk to any doctor about a CSF – a cerebral/spinal fluid leak – and they’ll tell you it’s way up there on the pain scale. There was this whole coming to terms with [mortality],” added Clooney.
Clooney won his sole acting Academy Award for his performance in Syriana as CIA Officer Bob Barnes.
6. Brad Pitt Hurt His Achilles Tendon While Fighting As Achilles In ‘Troy’
Brad Pitt took on the titular Greek mythology Trojan War hero Achilles in the 2004 epic historical war drama, Troy. Pitt figured if he was going to portray the greatest Greek warrior of all time, he had to go all in. That meant hitting the gym to bulk up and doing his own battle scenes.
In a tragic twist of irony, Pitt hurt his Achilles tendon while playing a character named Achilles. The injury occurred when Pitt was filming a fight scene in the sand.
“That injury was a bout of stupid irony,” Pitt says. “I tweaked my Achilles tendon, which is bizarre.”
Production shut down for six weeks.
Burt Reynolds Said He Regretted Going Over A Waterfall In ‘Deliverance’
Burt Reynolds didn’t just look like a tough guy; he was a tough guy. The throwback mustachioed sex symbol performed many of his own stunts during his 1970s and ’80s salad days, even though he had his trusted stuntman/BFF Hal Needham standing by.
In the 1972 backwoods thriller Deliverance, Reynolds insisted on doing the scene himself where his river-rafting canoe plunges down a 25-foot waterfall. Director John Boorman wanted to use a dummy or a stuntman for the action sequence, but Reynolds wasn’t having it.
The actor nearly drowned and wound up in the emergency room. Years later, Reynolds admitted that the stunt-gone-wrong changed his life forever:
8. Dylan O’Brien Said He Was ‘F**king Broken’ After Jumping From One Car To Another On The Set Of ‘Maze Runner: The Death Cure’
Dylan O’Brien’s horrific accident on the set of the third installment of the Maze Runner series was so severe, it nearly ended the young actor’s career. In 2016, the former Teen Wolf star and Maze Runner hero suffered a facial fracture, concussion, and brain trauma after being hit by a stunt car while filming an action sequence.
O’Brien’s injuries shut down production of the trilogy’s finale for one year. He needed reconstructive surgery and revealed he also suffered long-term psychological trauma.
The actor discussed how much the accident changed his entire life:
A lot of things in my life were changing and were difficult at that time. A lot of things in my career were changing, too. I was fighting it for a while, and freaking out that I felt so f**king broken. I had to accept that and sink into it. It’s hilarious to think back to the place I was in when I read this script and then the onslaught of information I screamed at Chris after I read it. But I think he took it as interesting, that I got it to the core. I was so in that moment.
9. Jennifer Lawrence Went Deaf In One Ear After Puncturing Her Eardrum And Enduring Multiple Ear Infections
Jennifer Lawrence as heroine Katniss Everdeen certainly had to prove her physical prowess over the course of four films in the Hunger Games dystopian science-fiction film series.
In the second movie, 2013’s The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Lawrence experienced serious trouble with her hearing. She said:
I went deaf in one ear for two and a half weeks. I had a double ear infection, because I had to keep diving into the water… and then I had to jump into this water that was supposed to be like hurricane water, so there were these really powerful jets, and the ear that was infected I had to turn (towards the jets) and the jets… punctured my ear drum.