10 Famous Actors Who Have Been Seriously Injured While Filming On-Set Stunts

Filming movies is no easy feat, as Tom Cruise learned once again during the making of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, opening in theaters July 27. During filming, Cruise broke his ankle, becoming the latest in a long line of superstars to put their lives on the line while making a movie.

While many may envy the lifestyle of the rich and famous in Hollywood, what’s not often talked about is how dangerous an acting gig can really be. Especially in films or TV shows that require dangerous and intense stunts, many precautions need to be taken to ensure the safety of both the cast and crew.

Unfortunately, sometimes even with said precautions, accidents happen and people are injured or even killed. Movie fans everywhere were saddened on Monday after news broke that a Deadpool 2 stuntwoman was fatally injured during a motorcycle stunt.

“We’re heartbroken, shocked and devastated, ” Ryan Reynolds said of the accident. “My heart pours out to [the victim’s friends and family] — along with each and every person she’s touched in this world.”

Take a look back at actors and actresses who have been seriously injured while filming stunts on set.

Tom Cruise

Earlier this year, news broke of Tom Cruise’s injury while filming Mission: Impossible 6. The 55-year-old actor, who has performed his own stunts for years, slammed into a building as part of a stunt on Sunday, but it did not go as planned.

TMZ reports that while Cruise tried to run and jump from one platform to another structure, he appeared to “leap too soon” and hit the building.

Cruise, who was wearing a safety wire, could be seen pulling himself up and limping to a crew member, who guided him off set. The extent of his injury is currently unknown.

Sylvester Stallone

As one might imagine, the famous Rocky actor has been injured on set numerous times, but his most serious injury came while filming Rocky IV in 1985.

Stallone and Dolph Lundgren (Ivan Drago) agreed to legitimately spar with each other to extract a sense of realism for their boxing scene, and Lundgren delivered a hard punch to Stallone’s chest, causing his heart to swell and blood pressure to soar. Stallone had to be airlifted from Canada to Santa Monica, where he spent eight days in the ICU at St. John’s Hospital.

Notably, Stallone also broke several ribs during a scene in 1982’s First Blood when his character, John Rambo, jumped off a cliff and used a tree to break his fall. He also required a metal plate in his neck after suffering a serious injury while filming The Expendables with Stone Cold Steve Austin.

 

Kate Winslet

If watching the Titanic still gives you literal chills, just know you don’t have it as bad as Kate Winslet. The actress, who played Rose, actually suffered pneumonia from filming the water scenes after she refused to wear a wetsuit under her dress.

In another scene where Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose are running through a narrow hallway trying to escape an ocean wave, the two get caught in the wave and swept up against a gate. While filming, Winslet’s coat snagged on a gate and stopped her from coming up for air, nearly drowning her.

Tom Hanks

Filming Cast Away was no easy feat for Tom Hanks. In what is one of his most well-known roles, Hanks cut his leg while filming. When the wound was left untreated, it became infected. After suffering two weeks of swelling, Hanks finally went to the hospital, where doctors told him he had a staph infection that almost killed him from blood poisoning.

The actor also gained and lost 50 pounds in order to accurately portray his character of a marooned delivery man. Fluctuating more than 10 pounds has been proven to increase your risk of heart attack, stroke or death.

Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman fractured two of her ribs and her knee while filming a dance scene for 2000’s Moulin Rouge. In fact, many of the scenes had to be filmed with Kidman sitting down in order to hide the cast on her leg.

Kidman has also recently opened up about the grief she experienced while filming abusive scenes in the HBO series Big Little Lies. She told Entertainment Tonight that she would rely on her country singer husband Keith Urban to help her through filming. 

“I was really upset at times. Really damaged and really upset and physically and emotionally drained and in pain,” Kidman said. “Luckily I have [an understanding partner] at home and I also have people I can talk to and get it out.”

Daniel Craig

As it turns out, even James Bond gets hurt sometimes. Whether it was the time he knocked out his two front teeth while filming Casino Royale (his dentist had to be flown into the Barbados) or the time he required eight stitches after being kicked in the face during Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig is no stranger to injury.

In other scenes of Quantum of Solace, he tore a muscle in his right shoulder, bruised several ribs and even lost the tip of the fourth finger of his right hand. 

Margaret Hamilton

During Hollywood’s Golden Age, injuries were not uncommon thanks to the practical effects used at the time. One production troubled by difficulties was MGM’s famous 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.

Character actress Margaret Hamilton had her most famous role in the film as The Wicked Witch of the West, with her iconic green skin, pointed noise and pointed hat. During the famous scene where she leaves Munchkinland in a cloud of smoke, the trapdoor under her did not work at one point, and her black costume caught on fire. Hamilton suffered burns on her face and a third-degree burn on her hand, and needed to spend time in the hospital.

Betty Danko, the stunt double seen in the film flying a broomstick in place of Hamilton, was also hurt during production. She was burned when filming the skywriting scene. Another stunt double was needed to film the rest of the scene.

Buddy Ebsen was also cast as the Tinman, but was hospitalized for two weeks thanks to the makeup. He was replaced by Jack Haley for the finished film.

Channing Tatum

Channing Tatum hurt himself during the filming of Foxcatcher in 2014. In the movie, Tatum played wrestler Mark Schultz. In one scene, he is frustrated and slams his head into a mirror until it breaks. It was covered with a plastic sheath that was supposed to protect the actor.

“But he punched that thing with his head three times and shattered it, and put his head through it and through the frame behind the mirror and through the drywall that the mirror was hanging on and left a divot two inches deep,” director Bennett Miller told The Hollywood Reporter. “When we took the mirror down, there was a hole in the wall. And he actually cut himself, and you see his blood in that scene. This was somebody uncorking something that you can’t make up. It’s inside you somewhere or it’s not.”

Leonardo DiCaprio

In Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, viewers find one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s best performances. In one scene, DiCaprio delivers an epic monologue, which comes to a crescendo when he slams his hand into a glass. The glass breaks and cuts DiCaprio’s hand. What we see in the film is real blood.

“My hand started really pouring blood all over the table,” DiCaprio told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. “Maybe they thought it was done with special effects. I wanted to keep going. It was more interesting to watch Quentin’s and [co-star Jamie Foxx’s] reaction off-camera than to look at my hand.”

Rather than get immediate medical attention, DiCaprio just wore a bandage for the rest of the film.

Michael J. Fox

Michael J. Fox almost died in the scene in Back to the Future Part III. When Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) saves Marty (Fox) from being hung by the Tannen gang, Fox really did have a noose around his neck! Fox later wrote in his autobiography that he mistimed moving his hand to save his own life during the seventh take. He passed out for 30 seconds.

“Thankfully [director] Bob Zemeckis, a fan of mine though he was, realized that I wasn’t that good of an actor,” Fox wrote.