Top 20 Actors Who Almost Died On Set.
Here’s a revised version of your list focusing on actors who nearly lost their lives due to their roles or on-set incidents:
1. **Jackie Chan** - Known for performing his own stunts, Chan has had numerous close calls throughout his career, including falls, burns, and near-drownings. One of the most notable incidents was during the filming of "Armor of God" (1986), where he fell from a tree and cracked his skull, requiring emergency surgery.
2. **Kate Winslet** - While filming "Titanic" (1997), Winslet had a frightening experience when she almost drowned during a water tank scene. Her coat got caught on a gate, dragging her underwater. Fortunately, she was rescued in time.
3. **Michael J. Fox** - During the filming of "Back to the Future Part III" (1990), Fox suffered a serious injury when a stunt involving a horse-drawn carriage went wrong. He was dragged along the ground and briefly lost consciousness.
4. **Jason Statham** - Statham's background as a competitive diver helped him perform many of his own stunts, but he has had several close calls. One notable incident occurred during the filming of "The Expendables 3" (2014), where he nearly drowned after the brakes on a truck he was driving failed, sending it into the Black Sea.
5. **Tom Cruise** - Cruise is known for doing his own stunts and has had several close calls. During the filming of "Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation" (2015), he narrowly avoided serious injury when he hit the side of a building while performing a stunt jump between buildings in London.
6. **Harrison Ford** - Ford has had several near-misses during his career. One of the most famous incidents was during the filming of "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens" (2015), when a hydraulic door on the Millennium Falcon set malfunctioned and crushed him, fracturing his leg.
These actors have all faced significant risks while filming, whether due to demanding stunts, mechanical failures, or other unexpected incidents on set. Their experiences underscore the intense dedication and danger involved in bringing action-packed scenes to life on screen.
1. **Jackie Chan** - Known for performing his own stunts, Chan has had numerous close calls throughout his career, including falls, burns, and near-drownings. One of the most notable incidents was during the filming of "Armor of God" (1986), where he fell from a tree and cracked his skull, requiring emergency surgery.
2. **Kate Winslet** - While filming "Titanic" (1997), Winslet had a frightening experience when she almost drowned during a water tank scene. Her coat got caught on a gate, dragging her underwater. Fortunately, she was rescued in time.
3. **Michael J. Fox** - During the filming of "Back to the Future Part III" (1990), Fox suffered a serious injury when a stunt involving a horse-drawn carriage went wrong. He was dragged along the ground and briefly lost consciousness.
4. **Jason Statham** - Statham's background as a competitive diver helped him perform many of his own stunts, but he has had several close calls. One notable incident occurred during the filming of "The Expendables 3" (2014), where he nearly drowned after the brakes on a truck he was driving failed, sending it into the Black Sea.
5. **Tom Cruise** - Cruise is known for doing his own stunts and has had several close calls. During the filming of "Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation" (2015), he narrowly avoided serious injury when he hit the side of a building while performing a stunt jump between buildings in London.
6. **Harrison Ford** - Ford has had several near-misses during his career. One of the most famous incidents was during the filming of "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens" (2015), when a hydraulic door on the Millennium Falcon set malfunctioned and crushed him, fracturing his leg.
These actors have all faced significant risks while filming, whether due to demanding stunts, mechanical failures, or other unexpected incidents on set. Their experiences underscore the intense dedication and danger involved in bringing action-packed scenes to life on screen.
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PeopleTranscript
00:00You don't have any air supply of your own. They're going to drag you 200 feet across the bottom of this tank while you're acting.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the top 20 actors who almost died on set.
00:18I just knew that if I wanted to live, it was my choice. If I wanted to die, that was my choice, too.
00:23For this list, we're looking at the actors that nearly lost their lives to their roles, and the stunts, mistakes, and mishaps that nearly paved the way.
00:37We've excluded brave stunt doubles, as they've gone into the profession knowing what they signed up for.
00:42What on-set near-death story did you find most shocking? Let us know in the comments.
00:54You can't save everyone, Thomas.
00:59I can try.
01:00A post-apocalyptic world doesn't make for a safe work environment, apparently.
01:04In March of 2016, it was reported that actor Dylan O'Brien had been struck by a car while on set working on the death cure, resulting in multiple injuries.
01:15The exact nature of the injuries were not initially revealed to the public, but he was rushed to the hospital.
01:21Oh, he got his bell rung. He got his bell rung. I would imagine many who witnessed it thought that was it.
01:28The production was initially put on hold for a little under two months before being extended indefinitely.
01:34It was close to a full calendar year before shooting resumed.
01:37It turns out that Dylan had suffered a facial fracture, concussion, and brain trauma, as well as other injuries.
01:44You know, it was a really personal and scary thing to go through.
01:50Jackie Chan is well-known for performing his own stunts.
01:53In this particular one, the stunt resulted in him falling over 16 feet from a tree.
02:06For Armor of God, while attempting to jump from a wall toward a branch, Chan landed hard, and in the process, his skull collided with a rock.
02:14This pushed bone into his brain, which required surgery to remove.
02:19Everyone's favorite martial artist still has a hole in his head, though it's been filled with a plastic plug.
02:24Luckily, Chan seemingly escaped the incident without lasting brain damage.
02:28More on his stunt work later.
02:30Remember when escapologist and magician Henley Reeves pretends to be stuck in a tank of water as piranhas pour in?
02:48A tank full of flesh-eating piranhas will fall from above.
02:52A lady has to have handcuffs, right girls?
02:55Well, it turns out pretending to be stuck and being stuck look very similar.
02:59During the filming of this Now You See Me scene, actress Isla Fisher banged on the glass to tell the cast and crew she was stuck.
03:06But since that's what her character was supposed to do, no one thought much of it.
03:16Thankfully, she managed to free herself in time.
03:18Practical effects shouldn't need to be this real.
03:21What happened to movie magic?
03:3017. Viggo Mortensen
03:32The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers
03:34Depending on who you ask, Mortensen came close to dying in Middle Earth twice.
03:39Viggo almost drowned doing one of his own stunts, which is well established.
03:43Aragorn was supposed to be doing a dead man's float down the river, but the speed of the current coupled with the weight of his costume made for real danger.
03:51So in any case, I didn't float to exactly the same spot they had, and I hit this spot where the current hit this rock and went straight down.
03:59Mortensen was pulled underwater and nearly stayed there.
04:02But it's also been reported that a scene where Aragorn deflects the Uruk-hai's throwing knife was actually a mistake, and the deflection was actually self-preservation.
04:11Planned or accidental, Viggo's clearly got some survival skills.
04:15I guess I must have eventually kicked against the wall or the rock and got just out of where this current was pushing down, came out of it, and it was really scary.
04:2416. Kate Winslet, Titanic
04:27Few things are scarier than a near-drowning incident.
04:30Can you imagine having to run from a giant wave?
04:33During the Titanic scene in question, Kate Winslet caught her coat on a gate and got pulled underwater.
04:46James Cameron continues to dismiss the idea that she was in any real danger, claiming they only let her think she was going to drown.
04:53He also claims to know what he's talking about because he's almost drowned on many occasions.
05:04Let's put this incident aside for a second and ask ourselves, why does James Cameron keep nearly drowning?
05:1015. Ed Harris, The Abyss
05:19Your depth is 3,200 feet. You're doing fine.
05:22James Cameron consistently pushes the boundaries of visual effects, but when it comes to water scenes, he prefers the old-fashioned way.
05:29Titanic wasn't the first time Cameron reportedly almost led a cast member to a watery grave. Just ask Ed Harris.
05:36For one particularly elaborate scene in The Abyss, Harris was dragged, without oxygen, many feet underwater.
05:43When he ran out of air, Harris called to cut, but due to complications, he wasn't given oxygen until he was on the edge of passing out.
05:50According to the actor, the traumatic episode caused him to weep that night. Rumor has it, he also punched Cameron in the face.
05:57You don't have any air supply of your own. They're going to drag you 200 feet across the bottom of this tank while you're acting.
06:0414. Jamie Alexander, Thor The Dark World and Blindspot
06:09This thief actress got defeated by the most humble of foes in the second Thor flick, A Flight of Stairs.
06:15You might want to take the stairs to the left.
06:18After tripping over in heels, Jamie Alexander chipped 11 vertebrae, knocked out her left shoulder, slipped a spinal disc, and tore a rhomboid.
06:28Don't worry though, she was largely healed and back to filming within a month.
06:31Good, let's go.
06:33However, we couldn't finish this entry without mentioning the injuries she sustained on the American crime drama Blindspot.
06:44During a Today appearance, the actress needed to consult her smartphone to remember the multitude of injuries she sustained on set.
06:51Herniated disc, T3, T4, T8, T9, broken nose, dislocated right shoulder, broken right index finger, broken left foot, left two toes three times.
06:58The only conclusion you can make is she's a real life Asgardian warrior.
07:0313. Sylvester Stallone – Rocky IV
07:14By the time Stallone was filming the first Expendables movie, he was already in his 60s, but he was still doing many of his own stunts and fight scenes.
07:22This resulted in an inadvertent neck fracture for the Italian stallion, courtesy of Stone Cold Steve Austin.
07:32It wasn't his first on-set injury, of course.
07:35While filming Rocky IV, Stallone once asked his Mountain of a Co-Star to punch him as hard as he could.
07:41His co-star, Dolph Lundgren, obliged, and sent Stallone to the hospital with a swollen heart.
07:47Without medical attention, it's very likely Stallone would have died from the punch.
07:5112. Michael J. Fox – Back to the Future Part III
08:02The Back to the Future series isn't known for its realism.
08:05The time-traveling car and flying skateboards made sure of that.
08:13Yet one scene of the trilogy was all too real for lead Michael J. Fox.
08:22In the series' final installment, Marty McFly is captured by bandits and hung with a noose until the doc rescues him.
08:34If McFly's squirming looks genuine, it's because the actor really was being hung.
08:39He even passed out for half a minute before he was saved.
08:42Luckily, director Robert Zemeckis caught on in time that, in the words of Michael J. Fox, he wasn't that good of an actor.
08:5211. Kevin Costner – Waterworld
09:02Waterworld is widely considered to be one of the greatest cinematic failures in the history of the industry.
09:08From production through to the box office, everything that could go wrong did.
09:12For one scene, Kevin Costner was strapped to the mast of his character's boat, 40 feet in the air.
09:17When a storm picked up, conditions proved too difficult to get Costner down safely, and he was left there to be assaulted by the storm for 30 minutes.
09:25The Hawaiian set was regularly hammered by brutal weather, but unable to shield himself from this particular storm, Costner claims it nearly cost him his life.
09:4110. Halle Berry – Various Films
09:47This Academy Award-winning actress has had more than her fair share of on-set accidents.
09:51While filming Die Another Day, a stunt involving a helicopter resulted in Berry getting shrapnel in her eye, which had to be medically removed.
09:59On the set of Gothika, Robert Downey Jr. accidentally broke her arm while shooting a confrontational scene.
10:06And on two occasions, Berry's actually suffered head trauma.
10:10While shooting Catwoman, lighting equipment hit her over the head, and in 2012, she hit her head on a concrete floor during a fight scene for The Call.
10:19Thankfully, neither proved serious.
10:219. Johnny Depp – The Lone Ranger
10:24The Lone Ranger already had to suffer being panned by audiences and critics.
10:28But imagine how much hate it would have received if it had been the cause of Johnny Depp's demise.
10:51During one horseback riding scene, Depp's saddle slipped.
10:54Johnny held onto the horse's mane before letting go and falling in front of the horse.
10:59Luckily, the horse's hooves just missed his head, meaning he received only minor wounds from the fall.
11:10Obviously, Depp survived, and the only thing the film did any permanent damage to was his career.
11:168. Eli Wallach – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
11:22Wallach has had his fair share of accidents, but they all happened during a single film.
11:27While shooting Sergio Leone's masterpiece, Eli nearly bit the dust a whopping three times.
11:33In one instance, he had to be rushed to the hospital after someone left a bottle of acid next to his prop bottle of soda, which he drank.
11:41Another time, a bound Wallach was put at risk when the horse he was mounted to was spooked and ran off for a mile.
11:47And then there was the incident where he was nearly decapitated by the heavy iron steps of a speeding train.
11:52Remarkably, he survived, dying at age 98 in 2014.
11:577. Jason Statham – The Expendables 3
12:01You'd feel pretty safe hanging out with the Terminator, Rambo, and Terry Crews, wouldn't you?
12:08In fact, when these guys are together, the biggest fear might be that the continent they're on could run out of protein.
12:18Yet Jason Statham did nearly die doing a stunt for The Expendables 3.
12:24While driving a truck, the brakes gave out and the actor drove off a cliff into the Black Sea.
12:29The transporter's driving may have let him down, but fortunately, his expert-level diving skills helped him escape the wreckage and swim to shore.
12:406. Aaron Paul – Breaking Bad
12:43Did you know that Jesse Pinkman was supposed to be killed off in the first season of Breaking Bad?
12:51The idea was ditched early on because, you know, Jesse's awesome.
12:56But the writers may never have had the chance to save Jesse if Aaron Paul wasn't a perfectionist.
13:02In episode 6 of the first season, Paul asked to change the position where he was standing.
13:07This was very lucky because a boulder fell down off the roof of an RV and landed exactly where Aaron had been standing during the filming of the scene.
13:255. Martin Sheen – Apocalypse Now
13:28An infamously troubled shoot, the cast and crew of the critically acclaimed film have said that, much like Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz, many involved in the production kind of lost their minds.
13:41Those involved partied very, very hard, getting lost in the jungle atmosphere and losing themselves in their roles.
13:48Martin Sheen, who was already hitting the bottle, began to lean even more heavily into alcohol throughout the high-stress shoot.
13:55Ultimately, his body responded in the form of a heart attack and nervous breakdown.
14:00He survived, but the entire experience would continue to haunt him for years.
14:084. Tom Hanks – Castaway
14:11Tragedy nearly struck when actor and generally nice bloke Tom Hanks cut himself on the set of this adventure drama.
14:17While only a minor cut, it quickly became infected.
14:25When he finally went to the hospital, a doctor told him the cut could poison his blood, so Hanks was kept in the hospital.
14:34This incident set filming back three weeks, but Hanks fully recovered and we're certainly glad he didn't die.
14:40Who would have broken the news to Wilson?
14:483. Jim Caviezel – The Passion of the Christ
14:56L'ere cum.
15:02Shooting in the countryside outside of Rome, the cast and crew of The Passion of the Christ continued to work through some less-than-favorable weather conditions.
15:10While recreating the Sermon on the Mount, Jim Caviezel was literally struck by lightning.
15:15He walked away unscathed, but he clearly got off lucky.
15:18Roughly 24,000 people die from lightning each year, although very few of them are actors.
15:24Assistant director Jan Michelini, who was standing beside Caviezel, also got struck, although for him it was the second time in production.
15:33Think somebody was trying to tell them something?
15:382. Tom Cruise – The Last Samurai
15:41The Last Samurai is about as close to two hours of pure sword porn as a film can get.
15:54Combine this with the fact that Tom Cruise likes to do his own stunts, and it seems like he was bound to get hurt on its set.
16:00In one scene, Cruise and his Japanese co-star were seated on mechanical horses.
16:05These two horses were hurtled towards each other, and his fellow actors' sword missed Cruise's neck by an inch, thanks to his martial arts skills.
16:16Still, that was relatively tame.
16:18Another fight scene featuring four attackers apparently had 70 instances in which Cruise could have been wounded.
16:27Before we unveil our number one pick, here are a few honorable mentions.
16:31Charlize Theron – Eon Flux
16:44Margaret Hamilton – The Wizard of Oz
16:48Joseph Gordon-Levitt – Premium Rush
17:04Brandon Fraser – The Mummy
17:11Matthew Fox – Lost
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17:351. Jackie Chan – Police Story
17:38This action legend has put life and limb on the line enough times to earn his stunt work top ten lists of its own.
17:50Of course, with that sort of commitment comes serious risk.
17:53One of Chan's scariest on-set moments came while filming Police Story, which he wrote and directed himself.
17:59The 1985 film included a scene where he had to slide down a 70-foot pole surrounded by string lights.
18:09For his trouble, he received second-degree burns, a dislocated pelvis, and two damaged vertebrae in his spine.
18:17Chan not only survived, but also went on to film countless other awe-inspiring feats.
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18:38Thanks for watching!