Now that's method acting! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the worst injuries that you can actually see on camera.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 "Then I see all my hand, the skin pale."
00:03 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the worst injuries that you can actually see on camera.
00:09 "I mean Viggo actually, feeling that pain, he actually turned that into performance."
00:13 Number 30. The famous head bonk. Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope.
00:19 "They're madmen! They're heading for the prison level! If you hurry, you might catch them!"
00:23 Alright, we're stretching the concept of injury a bit, but come on.
00:27 This is an iconic movie mistake that needs a spot on the list.
00:30 You all know the story. A group of stormtroopers is walking into a room when one of them bonks their head on the door.
00:35 This was a famous gaffe in the Star Wars fandom before it became more commonplace in the early 2000s.
00:40 The goof is referenced in Attack of the Clones when Jango Fett bumps his head on the door.
00:45 And in the 2004 re-release, a very noticeable bonking noise was added to the scene.
00:53 To this day, no one really knows who played that specific stormtrooper.
00:58 But whoever they are, they are an iconic piece of movie history.
01:01 Number 29. George Clooney - Siriana.
01:05 "And I fell over and I tore my spine and my dura in two places, you know, about an inch and a half in one and, you know, a half an inch in the other. And all the spinal fluid goes out."
01:16 We go from a head bonk to a head smack, and a funny goof to a horrifying injury.
01:21 George Clooney earned an Oscar for his performance in Siriana,
01:24 but it was a small consolation for months of physical and mental anguish.
01:28 Clooney's character, Bob Barnes, is being interrogated when he falls backwards and hits his head on the floor.
01:33 This bone-crunching smack was real, and according to Clooney, he quote "immediately knew how serious it was."
01:51 He began suffering from debilitating headaches and checked himself into a hospital,
01:55 where it was discovered that he had torn his dura and was leaking spinal fluid.
01:58 The pain was so unbearable that Clooney considered taking his own life,
02:02 but operations fixed the injury and the pain eventually subsided.
02:05 Number 28. Ben Affleck - Dazed and Confused.
02:09 "Nice try, freshman. Tell you what, for being such brave little kids, I'm only gonna give each of you five licks, okay?"
02:16 In 1993, a then-unknown Ben Affleck starred as bad guy Fred O'Banion in Dazed and Confused.
02:22 Fred takes incredible glee in tormenting the younger students,
02:26 but the kids get their revenge when they douse Fred in white paint.
02:29 Frustrated and embarrassed, Fred throws a tantrum before climbing into his car and driving off.
02:33 If you look closely, you can see Affleck roll his ankle just as he slams the bat into the ground.
02:43 Some sources claim that he merely twisted his ankle, while others say he broke it completely.
02:47 Whatever the case, it sure looks nasty, and we have to commend him for keeping the scene going.
02:52 Number 27. PJ Soles - Carrie.
02:55 "Wipe that smirk off your face, Norma."
02:57 Brian De Palma's Carrie has one of the most famous and terrifying climaxes in horror movie history.
03:05 Carrie White finally snaps after a continued string of abuse and torment,
03:09 causing her to go on a deadly rampage. During the infamous prom sequence,
03:14 Norma is blasted directly in the face by a fire hose.
03:17 A fire chief who was on set warned De Palma against the stunt,
03:21 telling him that it was incredibly dangerous.
03:23 They went through with it anyway, and it cost PJ Soles an eardrum.
03:27 The stream of water clearly hit Soles in the ear, and she reportedly blacked out from the pain.
03:36 After a visit to the emergency department, she was told that her eardrum had been ruptured.
03:41 Number 26. Gianni Russo - The Godfather.
03:44 James Caan's Sonny Corleone is arguably the most brash and violent character in The Godfather.
03:52 And when he learns that his brother-in-law has been abusive towards Connie,
03:56 he makes a rather chaotic visit to sort the problem out.
03:59 Gianni Russo claims that he and Caan did not get along while filming,
04:03 which may have led to Caan being a little more forceful than he would have liked.
04:07 While filming the fight sequence, Caan actually made contact on more than one occasion,
04:11 chipping Russo's elbow and breaking two of his ribs.
04:14 In Russo's own words, quote, "Jimmy got a little aggressive."
04:18 Number 25. Robert Mitchum - Cape Fear.
04:32 Both The Godfather and Cape Fear prove that faking fights is not so easy.
04:36 In this classic 60s thriller, Max Cady is released from prison,
04:40 and begins stalking the lawyer who helped put him away.
04:43 During the climax of the film, both men fight on a riverbank,
04:46 and this fight was actually performed by actors Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum.
04:50 While filming the fight, Peck accidentally hit Mitchum for real,
04:54 but the actor never let on and continued the scene without incident.
04:57 Luckily, Mitchum was not seriously hurt,
05:00 but he claimed that it was a very painful hit that left him sore for a few days.
05:04 Number 24. Harold Secatta - Goldfinger.
05:13 Oddjob is one of the most iconic villains in the James Bond franchise,
05:23 known mainly for his steel-rimmed hat that has the power to decapitate statues.
05:28 Bond faces Oddjob in hand-to-hand combat and gets his butt totally kicked.
05:32 However, Bond eventually uses the henchman's steel hat against him
05:36 and electrocutes Oddjob with a loose wire.
05:38 If Oddjob's scream of pain sounds a little too real, that's probably because it was.
05:49 Secatta seriously burned his hand while filming the scene,
05:52 but he refused to let go of the hat prop until the director called cut.
05:56 Now that is one tough dude. Then again, he was a professional wrestler.
06:00 Number 23. Skeet Ulrich - Scream.
06:03 Skeet Ulrich is one of the few people who can claim with certainty
06:14 that they have been stabbed by an umbrella.
06:16 During the movie's famous finale, Sidney dons the ghost face mask
06:19 and stabs Billy multiple times with the tip of an umbrella.
06:22 Ulrich was wearing a protective vest underneath his shirt,
06:28 but that little bit of health and safety did not amount to much.
06:31 The stuntwoman underneath the ghost face mask missed her mark
06:34 and stabbed Ulrich for real, resulting in a very genuine scream of pain.
06:38 Like Stu, he was probably feeling a little woozy after that one.
06:46 Number 22. Jim Carrey - Liar Liar.
06:49 Jim Carrey is at his manic best as Fletcher Reed,
07:00 a lawyer who is cursed with the inability to lie.
07:02 In a desperate attempt to prolong his case,
07:05 Fletcher heads to the bathroom and beats himself up,
07:08 hoping that the injuries will be cause for delay.
07:10 According to Carrey Ellis, most of this scene was improvised by Carrey,
07:14 and he performed all his own stunts.
07:17 Furthermore, no sound effects were used in the scene.
07:20 All of those bonks and slams were 100% genuine.
07:24 The marks and welts on his face are likely just makeup,
07:27 but that doesn't negate the fact that Carrey put his body
07:30 on the line for this hilarious sequence.
07:32 Number 21. Kicked by a Horse - The Last Samurai.
07:42 - We will show you no quarter.
07:44 You ride against us, and you are the same as they are.
07:47 I'll look for you on the field.
07:49 Give this guy the Extra of the Year award,
07:52 because he definitely deserves it.
07:54 Edward Zwick's epic takes place in the late 19th century,
07:57 with Tom Cruise playing a Civil War veteran
07:59 who becomes embroiled in a Japanese rebellion.
08:02 In one scene, Cruise rides up to a group of soldiers
08:05 and dismounts in front of a particularly unlucky extra.
08:08 The horse that Cruise was riding kicks out and hits the extra,
08:11 making contact with a particularly sensitive body part.
08:15 The guy keels over in pain, but amazingly remains standing.
08:19 Did they hire an actual samurai for this scene?
08:22 Because that is one tough and disciplined dude.
08:25 At this point, we're starting to think that Tom Cruise
08:35 has been replaced with a stunt-performing robot.
08:38 He's inhuman.
08:39 [Grunts]
08:43 "Fallout," the sixth installment in the "Mission Impossible" franchise,
08:46 contains a shot in which Cruise's Ethan Hunt jumps between two buildings.
08:50 Hunt slams into the second building,
08:52 pulls himself up with a clear grimace of pain,
08:55 and slowly hobbles off-screen.
08:57 It's a great realistic detail,
08:58 and that's because Tom Cruise was actually in a lot of pain.
09:02 - So he jumps. That speed, that momentum.
09:04 Here we go.
09:05 And now watch that.
09:08 Watch this.
09:08 [Laughter]
09:12 Cruise performed the stunt himself
09:13 and broke his ankle upon impact with the building.
09:16 Rather than calling for a cut,
09:18 Cruise pulled himself up and finished the scene.
09:20 Seven weeks and $80 million later,
09:22 he was back at work, good as new.
09:24 - Here is why, here is why Tom Cruise gets paid the big bucks, okay?
09:30 Injuries and dancing go together like peanut butter and jelly.
09:38 - Don't be funny.
09:39 "Follow the Fleet" was the fifth collaboration
09:41 between iconic dancing duo Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,
09:44 and one of the movie's musical numbers required Rogers to wear a beaded gown.
09:48 During the very first take of the long shot,
09:58 Astaire was smacked across the face with a sleeve of heavy beads,
10:01 leaving him, quote, "somewhat maimed."
10:04 His words, not ours.
10:05 He continued the rest of the dance in a daze,
10:07 and asked for another take,
10:09 believing that his injury had affected his performance.
10:12 And while more takes were eventually performed,
10:14 it was the first that ended up in the movie.
10:16 Beaded sleeve slaps and all.
10:36 Jake Gyllenhaal committed to the role of Lou Bloom,
10:39 a criminal-turned-crime-scene videographer.
10:41 Bloom is not quite right mentally,
10:44 and it shows when his frustrations finally come to a head in this scene.
10:48 He's lost out on an important story to a competitor,
10:52 and he's clearly stressed and angry.
10:54 He takes that anger out on his bathroom mirror,
10:57 screaming at it, shaking it,
10:58 and eventually slamming it shut, breaking it.
11:02 (SCREAMING)
11:04 If the scene looks a bit too real,
11:14 that's because Gyllenhaal got really into it
11:16 and smashed the mirror by accident,
11:18 slicing through his thumb in the process.
11:29 He apparently needed upwards of 40 stitches,
11:31 but the shot of the mirror breaking
11:33 was left in the final version of Nightcrawler.
11:35 In one of the most famous scenes of The Exorcist,
11:42 a possessed Regan assaults her mother Chris
11:44 and slaps her across the room,
11:46 resulting in Chris screaming in distress.
11:48 (SCREAMING)
11:50 It wasn't acting.
11:53 That's the scream of a back injury that's caused lifelong pain.
11:56 To film the sequence,
11:58 a stuntman was needed to forcefully pull actress Ellen Burstyn
12:01 onto her back using a wire.
12:03 Billy said to him,
12:04 "Okay, don't pull her so hard."
12:06 But as I turned away, I felt them exchange a look.
12:12 Burstyn told director William Friedkin
12:14 that the stuntman was pulling too hard
12:15 and that she feared for her safety,
12:17 but Friedkin didn't listen.
12:19 On the next take, Burstyn injured her back
12:21 and screamed in pain,
12:23 which is the take you see in the movie.
12:25 The injury wasn't debilitating,
12:27 but it did leave Burstyn with a lifetime of back discomfort.
12:30 Because I couldn't stand that he was willing to
12:33 just get a quick shot of it
12:34 before they called the ambulance, you know?
12:37 In a tale of Nazi-killing bastards,
12:45 things are bound to get dangerous,
12:47 even for the actors involved.
12:49 German movie star Bridget von Hammersmark,
12:51 played by Diane Kruger,
12:53 is actually a spy for the good guys,
12:56 something that doesn't go over too well
12:57 with Christoph Waltz's Nazi colonel Hans Landa.
13:00 When the Jew hunter confirms his theory,
13:09 he lunges at Ms. von Hammersmark
13:12 and chokes the life right out of her.
13:14 It seems like Kruger's acting here is on point,
13:17 but the truth is she actually can't breathe.
13:20 Because of the scene's importance,
13:25 the danger involved,
13:26 and the fact that he had a very specific vision in mind,
13:30 Quentin Tarantino himself strangled Kruger,
13:33 with his hands used in the close-ups.
13:35 Harrison Ford is one of those actors
13:44 who doesn't let a mere limp hold him down.
13:46 And if that means his character walks with a limp throughout the movie,
13:52 then his character walks with a limp throughout the movie.
13:54 [Music]
13:59 While filming a scene in the woods,
14:01 Ford tore some of the ligaments in his leg.
14:04 While this should be cause for surgery,
14:05 recovery,
14:06 and significant filming delays,
14:07 Ford simply soldiered through and refused to treat his injury.
14:10 And owing to the fact that Ford was filming with torn ligaments,
14:17 his character, Dr. Richard Kimball,
14:19 can be seen limping throughout much of the movie.
14:21 He's clearly taking the phrase "walk it off" to heart.
14:23 Playing Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's biblical opus
14:31 sounds like the role of a lifetime,
14:33 and that role went to Jim Caviezel.
14:35 Unfortunately, Caviezel went through absolute torture
14:40 while filming the movie.
14:41 He suffered migraines from his swollen eye makeup,
14:44 incurred a lung infection and pneumonia,
14:46 dislocated his shoulder while carrying the 150-pound cross,
14:50 and was even struck by lightning
14:52 while filming the Sermon on the Mount sequence.
14:54 During the lashing scene,
14:56 Caviezel was accidentally whipped across the back
14:58 on two separate occasions,
15:00 a pain he described as, quote,
15:01 "so horrific that you can't get air."
15:04 Well, I suppose that's one way to get a great reaction shot.
15:06 She may be playing an android,
15:20 but Daryl Hannah is still very much a human,
15:22 a fact she proved on the set of Blade Runner.
15:25 Hannah plays basic pleasure model Pris,
15:29 and in one scene,
15:31 she encounters genetic designer J.F. Sebastian
15:33 in a rainy alleyway.
15:34 She's surprised and scared,
15:37 so she bolts.
15:38 But as she's running away,
15:40 she slips and breaks a car window.
15:42 This was in fact not scripted.
15:47 Hannah actually slipped on the wet pavement,
15:49 and her arm actually went through a real glass window.
15:53 But she managed to stay in character for the rest of the scene.
15:55 That's even more impressive when you find out
15:57 she chipped her elbow in eight places.
16:00 Michael J. Fox came a little too close
16:11 to feeling like a condemned outlaw.
16:13 When Marty McFly arrives in 1885,
16:17 he is pretty much immediately hanged by Mad Dog Tannin.
16:20 While most of the wide shots were performed by a stuntman,
16:26 we do get a brief shot of Fox clearly struggling for breath.
16:30 That's because he was.
16:31 Fox had offered to film the sequence without a box
16:34 to make it look more realistic.
16:35 Unfortunately, he mishandled the noose
16:37 and ended up actually hanging himself.
16:39 The crew believed he was giving the performance of his career,
16:44 when in actuality he was just dying in front of everyone.
16:47 Fox ended up passing out in the noose,
16:49 and that's when director Robert Zemeckis realized he wasn't acting.
16:53 To introduce us to Captain Benjamin Willard,
17:05 Martin Sheen shambles around his Saigon hotel room,
17:08 drunk as a skunk.
17:10 Sheen decided to go very method with this one,
17:13 which is a fancy way of saying he was actually drunk when they filmed this scene.
17:17 That's probably why he thought it'd be a good idea for him to punch a mirror.
17:21 Of course, as this list proves,
17:28 it's hard to break a mirror and not cut yourself,
17:30 and Sheen indeed did slice open his hand in the process.
17:34 But he kept going,
17:35 rolling over his bed and smearing his blood all over the sheets and his face,
17:40 and ultimately ending the scene bloody, drunk, naked and sobbing.
17:44 The climax of Patriot Games sees Harrison Ford's Jack and Sean Bean's Sean
17:57 fighting on a speedboat.
17:59 While filming the sequence,
18:00 Ford was instructed to mime pushing a boat hook up into Bean's face.
18:09 Either Ford pushed a little too hard or Bean was a little too close
18:12 because the boat hook actually slammed into Bean's face and knocked him backwards.
18:16 The accident left Bean with several stitches and a distinctive scar over his left eye.
18:20 At least he has a cool story to tell people when they ask.
18:23 Who else can say they've been hit with a boat hook by Harrison Ford?
18:26 It was...
18:27 rage.
18:29 Pure rage.
18:33 One of James Franco's most popular roles is that of Saul Silver
18:42 in the stoner comedy Pineapple Express.
18:44 In one of the movie's funnier sequences,
18:47 Saul thinks he sees something in the woods,
18:49 causing him and Dale to run away in abject terror.
18:52 While running,
18:54 Dale trips and falls onto a rock while Saul runs headlong into a tree.
18:58 Franco did the stunt himself and hit a safety pad that had been screwed onto the trunk.
19:02 Ironically,
19:02 the screw head was jutting out of the safety pad and Franco ran straight into it.
19:07 Fun fact,
19:11 the grey headband that Saul wears throughout the movie was used to hide Franco's stitches.
19:15 When he was playing Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz,
19:23 Channing Tatum tried to be as authentic as possible.
19:27 And in this case,
19:28 that meant destroying a mirror with his face.
19:30 By this point in the film,
19:32 Schultz is feeling the mental strain.
19:34 After losing an important match,
19:36 he paces around his hotel room,
19:38 hitting himself angrily and crying.
19:41 The most intense moment comes when he stands in front of a mirror
19:44 and proceeds to smash it with his head three times,
19:48 shattering it and cutting his forehead.
19:51 Though he was actually bleeding
19:54 and came within inches of hitting a stud in the wall,
19:56 Tatum finished the scene beautifully.
19:59 And he claims not to remember filming this at all.
20:02 See that whole Teen Wolf thing you got going right there?
20:13 You just need to wax that right out.
20:15 This chest waxing sequence is a classic in the movie.
20:18 And part of the magic stems from its realism.
20:21 Wanting the scene to look as true to life,
20:26 not to mention as funny as possible,
20:28 Steve Carell decided to bite the bullet
20:30 and actually get his chest waxed.
20:32 His clear hesitance and screams of pain are all real,
20:38 as is Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen's laughing.
20:41 By the end of the waxing,
20:43 Andy has tears in his eyes and blood spilling out of his eyes.
20:46 Andy has tears in his eyes and blood spots adorning his chest.
20:50 That is not makeup nor a great bit of acting from Carell.
20:53 Those are very real tears and very real blood spots.
21:00 We thank Carell for putting his body and comfort on the line
21:03 just for our comedic enjoyment.
21:13 This is widely considered to be the goofiest movie in the Rocky franchise,
21:17 but it has an amazing final fight between Rocky and Ivan Drago.
21:20 To make the fight appear more authentic and brutal,
21:26 Stallone asked Dolph Lundgren to punch him for real.
21:29 He took three straight takes of the powerful body shots
21:31 before he felt a burning sensation in his chest.
21:34 Stallone proceeded to ignore the discomfort
21:41 until his blood pressure shot up to 260 and he had trouble breathing.
21:45 He was subsequently flown to a hospital and spent time in the ICU,
21:49 where he learned that his heart had slammed against his breastbone and begun to swell.
21:53 The Princess Bride is a fantastical fairy tale
22:04 filled with swashbuckling pirates, six-fingered men and, of course, princesses.
22:10 At one point, Princess Buttercup and her true love Wesley
22:13 are confronted by the dastardly Prince Humperdinck and Count Rugen,
22:17 and Carey Elwes' Wesley is ultimately captured.
22:20 To make sure their new prisoner is compliant,
22:23 Christopher guests Rugen, also known as the Six-Fingered Man,
22:27 hits him in the head with the butt of a sword and knocks him out.
22:30 According to Elwes, there were no rubber swords on hand
22:39 and they couldn't get a good take by faking it.
22:42 So guests actually hit him and actually knocked him out.
22:46 Elwes woke up later in the hospital, wondering what the heck had happened.
22:50 Police Story contains one of the most insane Jackie Chan stunts,
23:03 and that is certainly saying something.
23:08 It involves Chan jumping onto a metal pole, sliding down through a series of lights
23:12 and crashing through a glass ceiling onto a display below.
23:15 Chan was actually very hesitant to perform the stunt
23:32 and was ecstatic following its successful completion.
23:35 But once the immediate adrenaline wore off,
23:37 Chan realized the skin on his palms had been peeled away.
23:41 The hot prop lights had significantly heated the metal pole,
23:59 resulting in second-degree burns to Chan's hands.
24:02 All things considered, we think he got off very lucky.
24:05 Number 3 - Sylvester Stallone - First Blood
24:08 In movie badass John Rambo's first outing,
24:15 our titular protagonist, played by Sylvester Stallone,
24:18 is being pursued by the abusive Hope Washington Police Department.
24:22 The chase eventually leads to a cliff,
24:24 where Rambo is hanging on for dear life,
24:27 about to be shot at by a cop in a helicopter.
24:30 With no other options, Rambo takes a blind leap,
24:33 tumbles through the trees and lands on a tree branch.
24:36 Being the professional action star he is, Stallone performed this stunt himself.
24:41 However, things didn't quite go as planned.
24:44 The painful scream you hear when he lands is not acting.
24:52 When all was said and done, Sly walked away with a cracked rib,
24:55 but an amazing stunt performance.
24:58 "Let's go, good boy!"
24:59 Number 2 - Leonardo DiCaprio - Django Unchained
25:07 Here's another Tarantino movie,
25:12 but this time the director didn't personally injure a star.
25:16 In Django Unchained, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a psychotic slave owner,
25:20 who's hosting a dinner for Django, played by Jamie Foxx,
25:24 and Dr. Schultz, played by Christoph Waltz.
25:27 During the meal, DiCaprio's character unnervingly reveals his knowledge of Django's plan to free his wife.
25:33 And as you can imagine, this makes him mighty angry.
25:36 So angry in fact, that DiCaprio slams his hand on the table,
25:46 breaking a glass and slicing his skin in the process.
25:49 Pretty soon, the audience can see that DiCaprio's hand is completely covered in blood.
25:54 But like a true thespian, he gives an amazing performance,
25:58 and uses his injury to his advantage.
26:01 Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel
26:14 and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
26:17 You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
26:21 If you're on your phone, make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
26:25 In the second Lord of the Rings film, Viggo Mortensen returns as Aragorn,
26:40 with a performance as powerful, emotional and raw as that in The Fellowship of the Ring.
26:45 A hobbit lay here.
26:46 And the other.
26:50 One of his most visceral scenes comes at the beginning of the film.
26:55 Angry at the thought that his hobbit friends might be dead,
26:58 a rage-filled Aragorn kicks a helmet on the ground.
27:02 After doing four takes of this shot, Viggo broke two toes on his fifth take,
27:07 meaning that scream heard in the finished film is very real.
27:11 Even so, Viggo kept working, and director Peter Jackson said he didn't even realize
27:16 his star was injured until much later.
27:19 He just thought Viggo had given it his all.
27:21 Could you tell these actors were actually hurt?
27:24 Let us know in the comments below.
27:25 (Music)
27:35 (Music)
27:45 (Music)