Being an actor can be extremely physically demanding at times, especially in roles that are more active.
While sometimes stunt doubles are used for more dangerous scenes, this doesn’t mean that the main actors can’t be injured on set. Many of them do as many of their own stunts as they can, and the truth is that accidents do happen.
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Here are 10+ actors who got badly injured on set.
Jennifer Lawrence
While filming The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Lawrence injured her ear.
She told Vanity Fair : “I went deaf in one ear for months… But that wasn’t actually physically challenging. It was just ear-challenging because I got all of these ear infections from the diving and the water and all of that stuff.”
Johnny Depp
During filming for the rather controversial film The Long Raner , Depp got thrown from a horse and was nearly trampled.
He told Entertainment Tonight that “It was a strange moment because it wasn’t like one of those adrenaline-filled moments where you’re flipping out and panicking and stuff like that … I was very lucky, because it could have been horrific.”
Nicole Kidman
During filming for Moulin Rouge , Kidman was rehearsing for a dancing scene when she fractured her rib. She then refractured it while trying to wear a corset before it healed!
A cracked rib like that sounds super painful to deal with!
Ruby Rose
While filming Batwoman , Rose ended up having to get emergency surgery because she herniated two discs while doing stunts.
She posted about what happened on her Instagram .
“I had herniated two discs doing stunts, and they were close to severing my spinal cord. I was in chronic pain and yet couldn’t feel my arms.”
Linda Hamilton
Linda Hamilton has a permanent hearing loss after an injury while shooting Terminator 2: Judgement Day .
Hamilton forgot to put her earbuds in between takes, and the sound of a shotgun blast going off in an elevator was so amplified it messed up her hearing.
Viggo Mortensen
While filming The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers , Viggo Mortensen broke his toe while kicking an Uruk-hai helmet prop.
He still stayed in character, and his reaction was so visceral that the filmmakers actually used this take in the film.
Orlando Bloom
Mortensen wasn’t the only The Lord of the Rings actor to be injured while filming.
Orlando Bloom broke one of his ribs after falling from a horse during an action-packed scene. The injury happened because the stunt double playing Gimli fell on top of Bloom.
Daniel Craig
James Bond movies require a lot of stunts and action scenes, so the risk of an injury is higher than for most films.
While filming Casino Royale , two of Craig’s teeth got knocked out and he needed eight stitches after getting kicked in the face too hard. And, these are just two of the multiple injuries he sustained!
Halle Berry
Poor Halle Berry has dealt with multiple injuries across different movie sets.
The Los Angeles Times detailed how she had been “knocked out during The Call , broken her foot on Cloud Atlas , broken her arm on Gothika , injured her eye on Die Another Day , and suffered a head injury on Catwoman.”
Bruce Willis
While filming Live Free or Die Hard , Willis was injured in a fight scene when he was kicked above his right eye by a stunt double wearing stilettos.
He ended up getting several stitches, and these stitches can be seen in other scenes.
Leonardo DiCaprio
When DiCaprio was filming Django Unchained in 2012, he cut his hand pretty badly.
He was improvising a scene when he slammed his hand onto the glass while delivering a heated monologue. He then kept in character instead of getting help right away.
Harrison Ford
While filming the recent Star Wars trilogy, Ford fell off of the Millenium Falcon set and landed on his leg.
While the injury luckily wasn’t too serious, it was still a scary moment, and we are glad it turned out all right!
Kate Winslet
While filming Titanic , Winslet almost drowned during a scene where her heavy coat gets stuck on a gat.
She told The Los Angeles Times : “I had no breath left. I thought I’d burst. And [director James Cameron] just said, ‘Okay, let’s go again.’ That was his attitude. I didn’t want to be a wimp so I didn’t complain.”
George Clooney
This is actually a really sad entry because the injury Clooney received while filming Syriana was so painful for him that he contemplated ending his own life.
While filming, he tore a part of his spine that contains spinal fluid, and it was very painful to recover from.
Clooney told Rolling Stone : “For a short three-week period, I started to think, ‘I may have to do something drastic about this.”
Charlize Theron
When making Æon Flux, Theron was doing a stunt with multiple backflips and landed on her neck. She ended up with a herniated disk on her spine.
This is a very serious injury, but it’s not the only one Theron would go through while filming her many action movie roles.
She was also recently injured while filming The Old Guard . The fight coordinator for the film, Danny Hernandez, said that she injured her elbow, thumb, and knee.
