Actors have been known to go to great lengths to play a given role (well, some of them , at least). But there’s a line between dedication to one’s craft and permanently messing up one’s body, and some actors have gone way over this line.
Let’s take a look at some of these demanding roles. It’ll forever change the way you look at certain classic movies.
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Bruce Willis
Bruce Willis has been in a ton of memorable movies, but his magnum opus remains Die Hard . It was while shooting Die Hard that he lost two-thirds of the hearing in his left ear after a machine gun was fired nearby during production.
Alfre Woodard
It was during the shooting of 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact that Woodard was knocked off her feet during a stunt gone wrong. The aftermath led to an injured arm, and Woodard still has scars on her arm to this day.
“My arms were bleeding and all the skin was gone,” she said. “That’s the memory I have of First Contact .
Ray Bolger
You might not recognize the name, but his face is immediately recognizable as the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz . Production on set was notoriously dangerous, and Bolger was left with permanent marks on his face from the mask he wore in the role.
Buddy Ebsen
Another actor affected by lax regulations on the Oz set was Buddy Ebsen, who originally played the Tin Man. He was forced to back out of the role after being hospitalized for breathing problems. The culprit? All of the aluminum dust in the makeup he wore for the role.
Daniel Craig
The most rough-and-tumble 007 is known for doing his own stunts, and this has led to problems in the past . Craig lost some teeth during a fight scene in Casino Royale and later lost the tip of one of his fingers while shooting Quantum of Solace .
Angelina Jolie
You might not remember Jolie’s 2010 film Salt , but she certainly does. That’s because she a permanent scar on her face from shooting a scene in the movie. She was supposed to dive through a door, but missed the mark and smashed her face into a piece of the set.
Michelle Yeoh
Yeoh tore her ACL — a nasty injury that takes a long time to heal — while shooting Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon . “I was doing a forward jump kick that I’ve done thousands of times, but I had a mishap landing,” she explained . “My knee just gave out.”
George Clooney
Clooney suffered an incredibly painful spinal injury while shooting Syriana . “I was in a place where I was trying to figure out how to survive,” he said . Surgery helped manage the immediate pain, but Clooney says he still feels the injury to this day.
Jared Leto
Like Tom Hanks, Leto has been known to gain and lose large amounts of weight to play certain roles. After gaining a bunch of weight for his role in Chapter 27 , he says he had gout so painful that he had to use a wheelchair to get around the set.
Jackie Chan
Chan is the king of doing his own stunts, and he has the injuries to prove it. While shooting Operation Condor , Chan suffered a serious injury that necessitated full-blown brain surgery. He has a metal plate in his head, one that he can still feel, to this day.
Zendaya
Zendaya became a victim of heat-styling while shooting Shake It Up . “I was only 14 years old, and I didn’t know how to protect my hair, so it took over two years to grow it back, which really sucked!” she explained .
Ariana Grande
Another actor whose hair suffered for her art, Grande was left with hair that looked “absolutely ratchet and absurd” after years of bleaching and dying her hair for certain roles. She posted on Facebook that she was forced to use wigs and weaves for a time.
Zazie Beetz
The dummy ammo used in movies isn’t lethal, but it’s still plenty hot. A stray shell hit Beetz while she was shooting Deadpool 2 , and it caused a nasty burn that left a scar on her chest.
Jessica Chastain
Chastain was almost unrecognizable in her role as televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. She said that the role, which required tons of makeup and prosthetics, may have permanently damaged her skin . “When you’re wearing it all day, every day, the weight of it on your body, it stretches your skin out,” she said. “I finally took it off and I was like, ‘I look 50 years old!'”
Christian Bale
We all remember how horrifically malnourished Bale looked in The Machinist . Bale said that roles like this, along with his turn as Batman — which required him to bulk up — left him feeling like “mortality is staring [him] in the face.”
Tom Hardy
Another actor who appeared in the Dark Knight films, Tom Hardy got very jacked to play Bane. He says the training gave him “joints that click that probably shouldn’t,” adding that he “probably damaged [his] body too much.”
Charlize Theron
Theron has done a few stunts over the course of her career, and at least one of them left her with a serious injury. During a scene for 2005’s Æon Flux , Theron did a backflip, landed on her neck, and suffered a herniated disk. “I was almost paralyzed,” she said.
Sylvester Stallone
Stallone is known for playing rough-and-tumble roles in which he often performs his own stunts. During the final fight scene in Rocky IV , Dolph Lundgren punched Stallone in the chest hard enough to make his pericardial sac swell up, nearly causing heart problems.
Ben Stiller
The only actor on this list who may have contracted rabies during production of a film, Stiller was bit by a ferret while shooting Along Came Polly . “Their teeth are sharp, like razors,” he explained . “I mean, they’re rat-like creatures.
Tom Hanks
Hanks famously lost a ton of weight for his role in Cast Away , and he believes that the constant pattern of losing and then gaining weight for certain roles may have something to do with the Type 2 diabetes diagnosis he later received.
