Actors Seriously Injured On Movie Sets!

Martin Sheen had a heart attack on the set of Apocalypse Now, necessitating further delays that nearly gave Francis Ford Coppola a coronary as well.

 

Jackie Chan - skull fracture during "Armour of God" when he fell 40 feet. I looked it up and found this list - it's incredible he is still alive:

 

It's a minor miracle that he and Buster Keaton didn't die half a dozen times in each of their films.

 

Jim Caviezel on The Passion of the Christ; struck by lightning, dislocated shoulder, hypothermia, and severe migraines every day (wearing the crown of thorns)...

 

...


also Cameron

James Cameron nearly drowned during production while he was weighed down at the bottom of the giant water tank during filming. His assistant director had failed to warn him to refill his oxygen, and realizing that he was running out of air, Cameron asked for help from underwater DP Al Giddings. However, Giddings couldn't hear him (he was near-deaf from an old diving-bell accident), and with no one else nearby, Cameron quickly released his helmet, harness and weights, and started to swim with great speed to the surface, exhaling all the way in order to prevent lung damage from decompression. One of the safety divers held him down and gave him a regulator, which was broken and only produced water. Cameron tried to release himself, but the diver, thinking that Cameron was simply having a panic attack, held him even tighter. Cameron only survived because he punched the diver in the face, and reached the surface before he passed out. The AD and the diver were fired the same day.

 

Elizabeth Taylor got very ill while they were trying to make Cleopatra In England, she had to have an emergency tracheotomy! The production moved to a warmer clime and none of the footage from England was used I don't think.

 

Keep smoking, Jer.

 

That's one of the most awful deaths an actor has gone through. His daughter is the beautiful Jennifer Jason Leigh. My Grandpa, when he was in Burma during WWII, saw a guy walk into the propeller of an airplane and the guy lost a good portion of his upper body. He was basically chopped in half from the chest up. Gotta be careful around these dangerous machines.

 

Chevy Chase injured his back during his flying scene in the movie Modern Problems. He was quite depressed for a while after this happened.

 

That's a very sad story. I have seen the footage and he and one child were actually cut in half, not beheaded. The other child was badly mangled and died after about half an hour on set. It was a series of very bad decisions. Nowadays, children should never, ever be allowed on sets with explosions and/or shooting late at night. But of course, nowadays they could shoot it all with green screen and not subject anybody to any danger at all, and still have a spectacular shot.

There's an important saying in production: no shot is worth a life. It is appalling how close people come all the time to serious injury or even death. I've hung off scaffolding while running TV cameras, hid inside trunks recording sound, run up and down narrow ladders while walking around bare asbestos insulation in studios, gotten electrocuted by 2000-watt lighting gear, all kinds of awful stuff. It's a miracle I'm still alive, but I could also say that for hundreds of people I've worked with.

 

Yes, that is true. I think this is one of the ones I worked on with @Bob Furmanek. IMDB says:

"Jerry Lewis' musical entrance down the grand staircase was done in one take, a Lewis trademark. But his seven-second rush up the same sixty-three steps put too much of a strain on his heart and landed him in the hospital. In a 2011 interview, Lewis said he suffered his first heart attack while making this movie."

Sheen's heart attack happened because he was doing cocaine at the time. He completely quit drugs and alcohol soon afterwards and recovered well.

 

yes I saw him in an interview speaking of these events...pretty heavy considering the role...I like him and his movies.

 

Dylan O'Brien on the third Maze Runner movie. He (obviously) doesn't like to discuss the details of the accident itself and it sounds pretty traumatic.

Dylan O’Brien Is Ready to Talk About That Accident

 

Maria Schneider during the filming of Last Tango in Paris.

 

brad pitt injured his arm on Seven performing a stunt....hence the cast the remainder of the movie

 

Howard Hughes' 1956 production, The Conqueror, is infamous for the theory that many involved in the shoot were later diagnosed with cancer, often attributed to the fact that scenes were shot near St. George, Utah, 130 miles downwind of the United States government's Nevada National Security Site. 11 above-ground nuclear weapons tests occurred at the site a few years before filming. The production also shipped sixty tons of dirt back to Hollywood in order to match the Utah terrain and to add realism to studio re-shoots. The filmmakers knew about the nuclear tests, but were assured that they caused no hazard to public health.

Director Dick Powell died of cancer in January 1963, seven years after the film's release. Actor Pedro Armendáriz was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1960, and killed himself in June 1963 after he learned his condition had become terminal. Susan Hayward, John Wayne and Agnes Moorehead all died of cancer in the 1970s. John Hoyt died of lung cancer in 1991. However, Wayne himself believed his lung cancer to have been a result of his six-pack-a-day cigarette habit.

The cast and crew totalled 220 people. By the end of 1980, 91 of them had developed some form of cancer and 46 had died of the disease. Several of Wayne and Hayward's relatives who visited the set also had cancer scares. Wayne's son Michael developed skin cancer, and another son, Patrick, had a benign tumour removed from his breast. Susan Hayward's son had a benign tumour removed from his mouth.
One expert claimed the statistics seemed to suggest an epidemic, that would likely hold up in court.

 

ive seen it too, wish I hadn't....haunting

 

If heart attacks count, Tommy Cooper had a fatal heart attack on live TV, Redd Foxx had a fatal heart attack on the set of his last TV show, John Ritter collapsed on the set of his last TV show and died later.

 

This was less of an accident than sheer stupidity. He was shooting publicity photos and instead of a prop bomb, someone handed him actual explosives.

 

Rising star Jon-Erik Hexum died after horsing around with a prop gun on the set of a TV show.
Jon-Erik Hexum - Wikipedia

When I was a kid I loved a show he starred in called "Voyagers!" on NBC. It was unfortunately cancelled after just one season, but I remember it being a really fun buddy action show with good comic relief. Hexum was really handsome but also very likable, seemed like he could really hit the big time.
Voyager - Wikipedia !

I was haunted as a kid when he died after accidentally shooting himself in the head on set. It was a big news item at the time. I thought the accident happened on "Voyagers!" but it was actually another series called "Cover Up" on CBS.

Do they even use blanks or working handguns on sets anymore? I recall reading that most of that is done in post and you can't even tell the difference now.

dan c

 

Didn't he also have a close call filming Top Gun? Something about a near drowning after getting tangled up in the parachute when his plane goes down and Goose dies?

https://nypost.com/2011/08/28/tom-cruises-danger-zone/

Looks like he's had several close calls filming.

 

I’d say Charlie Hunan’s recent performance in “The Gentlemen” should be considered near fatal.

 

I think Audrey Hepburn fell off a horse will filming The Unforgiven and suffered a back injuring I could be wrong though.

 

I'd heard that his back problems originated from the falls he took on Saturday Night Live.

Likewise with Jerry Lewis, the falls he took in his early movies came back to haunt him in the form of back pain.

Honorable Mention: Jessica Cavello, the voice actress for Excel in English dub of Excel Saga, damaged her voice (she usually spoke extremely loud and fast) and she had to be replaced half-way through the series.

 

This reminds me of the famous stunt where he's standing in front of a house. The house's wall falls towards him and Keaton is standing where an open window passes around him. In a book about silent movie comedians by Leonard Maltin, they mentioned that Keaton said that the wall was real (otherwise it would have twisted in the wind) and weighted about 2 tons.