On Set Injury / Live-Action Films

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• While filming a fight scene for The 355, Jessica Chastain slipped and cracked her head on a marble floor. Her stunt double gave her some impromptu medical care on-set and Chastain insisted on a doing a few more takes before being persuaded to go to hospital.
• Denise Crosby accidentally hit Eddie Murphy with a baseball bat for real on 48 Hrs..
• 2018's Action Point is a film with the dubious honor of giving the most injuries to Johnny Knoxville on a single project (considering his repertoire, that says a lot), where the stunt work resulted in him suffering four concussions, whiplash, breaking his hand and meniscus, losing two teeth, requiring stitches over his right eye, and others. Perhaps his nastiest was from filming the Alpine slide scene, where he crashed face-first into the ground — after getting rushed to the emergency room and checking out later that night, he blew his nose, accidentally popping his left eyeball of its socket. After receiving further treatment, Knoxville had to be shot for the last few days of filming on just the right side of his face.
• The Adventures of Robin Hood: While filming Robin Hood's escape from the castle, Basil Rathbone was knocked down and trampled by extras, causing a spear wound in his right foot that required eight stitches to close.
• Production on Æon Flux was delayed for over a month while Charlize Theron recuperated from a neck injury she sustained while slipping during stunt training.
• Michelle Yeoh, who usually performs her own stunts, was seriously injured during shooting of Ah Kam when she misjudged an 18-foot jump off a bridge onto a truck. She fractured a vertebra and was in traction for a month. The sequence can be seen at the end of the film.
• Laurence Harvey was injured making The Alamo (1960) when a cannon recoiled while firing, with one of the wheels rolling over his foot, fracturing it. He did not reveal his injury until filming of the scene was completed.
• Martin Sheen really cut his hand after punching the mirror in Apocalypse Now. And that was before he had a heart attack.
• Charlize Theron cracked two teeth while filming Atomic Blonde.
• Back to the Future:
  • Back to the Future Part II: During a "hoverboard" stunt scene, stuntwoman Cheryl Wheeler-Dixon was accidentally bounced off a pillar before falling thirty feet onto concrete, sustaining serious facial and wrist injuries.
  • Back to the Future Part III: The scene of Michael J. Fox being hanged wasn't acting. He actually was near hung to death there. He was quickly cut down when Robert Zemeckis noticed the "acting" was getting a little too real.
• Barbara Stanwyck accidentally hit Kathleen Howard for real in Ball of Fire, fracturing her jaw. Stanwyck was mortified by the incident.
• Cristina Stanovici, an extra on the cancelled Batgirl movie, sued Warner Bros. in 2023 after receiving life-threatening injuries on-set in 2022. During a nighttime scene filmed in Glasgow, a camera-carrying motorcycle crashed into Stanovici, resulting in multiple serious injuries; this included a broken femur, broken tibia plateau, broken thumb, fractured pelvis and head lacerations. Stanovici had to undergo multiple surgeries; during the initial operation she needed five blood transfusions and nearly died. Stanovici's leg was permanently damaged; a metal rod had to be inserted into her femur and she was left with chronic pain and mental trauma from the incident; she told an interviewer that the initial recovery was so physically and mentally stressful there were times she felt it would be "easier" if she'd died.
• Charlton Heston's stunt double on Ben Hur sustained a gash on his chin after being flipped out of his chariot during a chariot race scene.
• A Better Tomorrow II had numerous stunt mishaps.
  • Chow Yun-fat was almost blown up when the explosion outside the mansion door was more powerful than expected. Some of his hair was singed, and he was blasted forward. The shot in the film is his real reaction.
  • Director Ronny Yu was the stunt double in the warehouse scene. He wrenched his back after slipping on a water puddle while carrying Dean Shek.
  • The stuntman for Leslie Cheung who performed the speedboat jump landed incorrectly and broke his foot.
• While filming The Big Boss, Bruce Lee sprained his ankle badly while landing awkwardly from a jump. He couldn't move properly and was also racked with aches and fever and was having difficulty keeping food down. Even so, filming continued. His twisted ankle meant that he had to drag his injured leg, so in several scenes he had to be filmed in closeup. He also broke a glass in his hand very early on in production, resulting in a gash that required ten stitches and a large plaster, which is very noticeable throughout the movie, especially the scenes filmed at the ice factory, which was the first location filmed. While at the hospital in Bangkok, he caught flu and rapidly lost ten pounds.
• Erich von Stroheim worked as an extra on The Birth of a Nation (1915). He fell off a roof and broke two ribs in one scene.
• Daryl Hannah chipped her elbow in eight places during the scene in Blade Runner where she accidentally slipped on the pavement and smashed the window of a parked car.
• While filming a stunt scene for Blues Brothers 2000, a car rolled onto two crew members, one of whom needed a leg amputation. Three months later, during filming for a car-crash sequence, stuntman Bob Minor suffered severe injuries to his head.
• Boris Karloff broke his hip filming his first scene in Bride of Frankenstein, which required a double.
• Stuntman Alf Joint was seriously injured while performing a stunt in which he jumped off a roof for A Bridge Too Far. He said of the experience that he felt he was being "pushed."
• Simon Yam suffered burns to his face while filming the POW sequence in Bullet in the Head.
• Vivien Leigh was pregnant during the production of Caesar and Cleopatra and unfortunately miscarried after tripping over while filming a scene. Leigh suffered a mental breakdown — exacerbated by her bipolar disorder — as a result and filming had to be paused for five weeks so she could recover.
• The Cannonball Run has a scene where Seymour is forced to drive his Aston Martin blindly and weave through traffic after his smokescreen springs a leak. A second take at higher speed resulted in the driver crashing into a van that was part of the traffic. Stuntwoman Heidi Von Beltz, who was in the passenger seat, was left paraplegic for the rest of her life.
• Gregory Peck accidentally hit Robert Mitchum for real during their fight scene in Cape Fear. Mitchum claimed to have felt the blow for days afterwards.
• P.J. Soles, who played Norma in the film, ended up with a ruptured eardrum after pressurized water from a hose sprayed her directly in the ear during the filming of the prom scene in Carrie. She made a full recovery and Brian De Palma decided to leave the shot in the movie.
• Carry On... Series:
  • Carry On Cruising: Dilys Laye was bruised and burnt after filming the scene on the gym rope.
  • Carry On Cleo:
    • Amanda Barrie had to be rescued from a scalding hot bath by a crew member. No one knew how hot it really was (the thermostat wasn't working) until she stepped inside. She claims that if she went under, she'd have been a goner.
    • Barrie's Stunt Double Nikki Van der Zyl broke her nose when she was rolled out of the carpet into the collapsing table.
  • Carry On Again Doctor:
    • While filming the trolley stunt, Jim Dale was taken to hospital after his arm repeatedly banged against a delivery trolley, causing him to have an emergency operation. The next day, he was back at work doing a stunt where a hammock falls through a wooden floor.
    • Alexandra Dane hurt her back when the spinning machine she was in came loose and left her in hospital for a day.
  • Carry On Up the Jungle: Terry Scott hurt his knee during one of his stunts, and he and Jacki Piper were left with cuts on their legs from the harnesses they had to wear when swinging on the vines.
  • Carry On Loving:
    • Gerald Thomas cut his hand demonstrating a stunt to Kenneth Williams.
    • Valerie Shute was made to do so many takes of the shot where her character takes a cream cake in the face, that she ended up with skin irritation and a permanent aversion to cream cakes.
  • Carry On Henry: Julian Holloway was thrown off a horse during filming and can be seen limping in several of his scenes.
  • Carry On Behind:
    • George Layton accidentally sliced Kenneth Williams' toe with a scalpel while filming the hospital scene.
    • Sherrie Hewson and Carol Hawkins nearly froze while filming their bikini scenes. The scenes were filmed in snowy weather, causing their skin to turn so blue that the makeup department had to paint their skin yellow to make it look normal!
• Tom Hanks cut his leg while filming Cast Away. Two weeks later, the swelling on his leg persisted, and Hanks was confined to a hospital for three days to treat a staph infection that could have killed him from blood poisoning.
• While filming Citizen Kane, Orson Welles tripped down a staircase and chipped his anklebone, forcing him to use a wheelchair for the next two weeks. He also gashed his own hand during a scene where he destroyed a room. He quickly improvised, grabbing a curtain and using it to cover his bleeding hand while he completed the scene, which appears in the film.
• Burt Reynolds had his jaw broken when he was hit in the face with a metal chair while filming a fight scene on City Heat. He was restricted to a liquid diet and lost over thirty pounds by the time this movie wrapped. This led to an addiction to painkillers and his gaunt appearance let to rumours that he had AIDS.
• Malcolm McDowell scratched one of his corneas and was temporarily blinded during the Ludovico Technique scene in A Clockwork Orange. He suffered cracked ribs during filming of the humiliation stage show.
• Conan the Barbarian (1982) had a few injuries onset; a stuntman crashed face-first into a camera while riding a horse, Sandahl Bergman (Valeria) had her finger badly sliced with a fiberglass sword during a fight scene, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Conan) was attacked by one of the dogs.
• While filming a fight scene with Puneet Issar for Coolie, Amitabh Bachchan was critically injured when he jumped over a table and the corner of the table struck his abdomen, resulting in a splenic rupture and blood loss. Filming was delayed for several months for Bachchan to recover from his injury.
• The Count of Monte Cristo: Jim Caviezel accidentally stabbed Guy Pearce during their fight scene. Caviezel was horrified but Pearce spent the rest of the shoot bragging about it to anyone who would listen.
• During a fight scene for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Michelle Yeoh tore an ACL on her knee after a bad landing and had to be flown from China to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for surgery.
• Brandon Lee somehow managed to cut his hand on a piece of sugarglass during the pawnshop scene in The Crow (1994).
• Jean-Claude Van Damme accidentally wounded Jackson "Rock" Pinckney's eye during a swordfight scene in Cyborg, permanently blinding him in that eye. He took Van Damme to court, and eventually won a settlement.
• Deliverance: Burt Reynolds broke his coccyx while going down the rapids when the canoe capsized. Originally, a cloth dummy was used, but it looked too fake, like a dummy going over a waterfall. While Reynolds recovered, he asked, "How did it look?" John Boorman replied, "Like a dummy going over a waterfall".
• Die Hard:
  • Bruce Willis lost two-thirds of his hearing after firing a gun loaded with extra-loud blanks from underneath a table for Die Hard.
  • Willis was injured during a fight scene for Live Free or Die Hard when he was kicked above his right eye by Maggie Q's stunt double, who was wearing stiletto heels. He was hospitalized and received seven stitches that ran through his right eyebrow and down into the corner of his eye. His stunt double Larry Rippenkroeger was knocked unconscious when he fell 25 feet from a fire escape to the pavement. Rippenkroeger suffered broken bones in his face, several broken ribs, a punctured lung, and fractures in both wrists. Owing to his injuries, production was temporarily shut down. Willis personally paid the hotel bills for Rippenkroeger's parents and visited him a number of times at the hospital.
• Leonardo DiCaprio played the role of Calvin Candie in Django Unchained. During one scene in a dining room, Candie gives a passionate speech, punctuated by slamming his hand on the table. However, one take had a shot glass under that hand, which shattered on impact, causing several glass shards to puncture his palm. Still in character, DiCaprio ignored the pain and blood, and continued his rant to the end of the take. His costars were horrified and amazed by DiCaprio's commitment to "the show must go on".
• In-Universe in Doctor in Clover; Rock Stewart is admitted to Hampden Cross Hospial after getting a splinter in his finger from a wooden grenade he was holding while making one of his films.
• The Doors (1991): Val Kilmer broke his arm badly when he performed a jump from the stage into the crowd. The stuntman failed to catch him, leaving Kilmer with an abnormal growth on his right elbow.
• Peter Sellers was originally cast as Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove, until he injured his ankle while filming a take in the cockpit set.
• Jürgen Prochnow suffered first- and second-degree burns to his face while filming his death scene in Dune (1984). To achieve this effect, a tube connected to a pump was attached to a prosthetic cheek over Prochnow's face. However, a malfunction caused heat to build up inside the fake cheek and spill near molten goo on Prochnow's face once it was torn open.
• When filming The Eagle (2011) in a freezing river, a crew member forgot to mix the hot water with the river water during filming; as a result, Channing Tatum was scalded with boiling water that burned the skin off the tip of his penis.
• Stuntman Bennie E. Dobbins suffered a concussion when knocked off his feet during the filming of a flood scene in Earthquake. This was used in the film. Also, multiple stunt people suffered minor injuries during filming of a crashing elevator.
• Jack Nicholson accidentally broke one of Peter Fonda's ribs while trying to balance himself on the motorcycle for Easy Rider.
• While filming the sai/sword fight in Elektra, Jennifer Garner accidentally got her knuckles sliced by Will Yun Lee. She got her knuckles patched up, and when she and Lee resumed, he subsequently sliced her again in the exact same spot.
• While filming their fight scene in Enter the Dragon, Bob Wall accidentally cut Bruce Lee's wrist with the breakaway bottles. After the wound healed, Lee legitimately kicked Wall during the re-shoot with such force that an extra broke his arm trying to catch Wall.
• During the making of Even Dwarfs Started Small, one actor got run over by a van and set on fire in two separate incidents. Director Werner Herzog responded to this by promising that he'd jump into a cactus patch and let the actors film it if they got through the rest of production without any more accidents. The staff kept their word, and Herzog kept his. He went on to state that jumping into a patch of cacti was relatively easy — it's getting out that's the hard part.
• While filming The Evil Dead (1981), Bruce Campbell twisted his ankle on a root while running down a steep hill. Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert decided to tease him by poking his injury with sticks, thus causing Campbell to have an obvious limp in some scenes.
• Ellen Burstyn received a permanent spinal injury while making The Exorcist. In the sequence where she is thrown away from her possessed daughter, a harness jerked her hard away from the bed. She fell on her coccyx and screamed in pain. Said daughter, Linda Blair, also had a long-term injury in another scene, as she was too loosely strapped to the bed when it was being rocked and fractured her lower spine, eventually leading to scoliosis.
• Vin Diesel's stunt double Joe Watts sustained a serious head injury after a major fall during filming F9 at the Warner Bros. Studios in Leavesden, Hertfordshire. The stunt involved the stunt double jumping from a balcony using safety wiring. The stunt double had to be airlifted to the hospital where he was placed in induced coma following the event.
• Frankenstein (1931): Boris Karloff, who played the Monster, suffered a back injury carrying Colin Clive's Dr. Frankenstein up the windmill stairs in the iconic climax. He would require several surgeries on his back for the remainder of his life.
• Vincent D'Onofrio gained so much weight for Full Metal Jacket that he twisted his knee during filming of the boot-camp scenes, injuring it so badly, it required surgical reconstruction.
• In the 2005 remake of Fun with Dick and Jane, while shooting the coffee shop robbery scene, Téa Leoni dislocated her shoulder while sliding on the counter. You'll notice that she struggles to hold the things they steal.
• While filming Fury (2014) in Oxfordshire, a stuntman was accidentally stabbed in the shoulder by a bayonet during rehearsals.
• Leonardo DiCaprio accidentally broke Daniel Day-Lewis' nose while filming their fight scene in Gangs of New York.
• The General (1926):
  • Several National Guardsmen, who were employed as extras for the Civil War battle scenes, were injured by mishaps caused by misfired muskets or explosions.
  • Buster Keaton was knocked unconscious when he stood too close to a cannon firing. Assistant director Harry Barnes was accidentally hit in the face by a blank charge.
  • Train brakeman Fred Lowry sued the production for US$2,900 after his foot was crushed when it was run over by a locomotive wheel during filming of one of the railway scenes.
• During filming of the battle scenes for Gettysburg on Little Round Top, Bradley Egen, an extra playing a Union soldier, was unintentionally struck in the head by the butt of a musket and suffered a mild concussion.
• While filming a scene for Ghostland, Taylor Hickson crashed through a glass door after striking it with her fist; she was told it would be safe but the glass shattered. This caused massive injuries to her face, requiring multiple reconstructive surgeries and leaving her with a permanent facial scar. Hickson ended up suing the film's producers over the incident.
• During an explosion-effects misfire on G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Sienna Miller's suit caught fire, igniting the area between her breasts.
• While making Gladiator, Russell Crowe lost all feeling in his right forefinger for two years after a sword fight, aggravated an Achilles tendon injury, broke a foot bone, cracked a hip bone, and popped a few bicep tendons out of their sockets. He was also hit in the face by tree branches, hence the scars in the opening scene.
• The Godfather:
  • Al Pacino injured his knee while filming a scene where he gets into a car after the restaurant hit, which ended up being cut. The cane that Sonny toys with that we assume belongs to Vito was actually Pacino's.
  • When Sonny beats up Carlo, James Caan actually hit Gianni Russo, breaking two of his ribs and chipping his elbow.
• Michael Imperioli was hospitalised while filming his death scene in Goodfellas. He broke a glass in his hand and had to be rushed to the emergency room. When doctors saw what appeared to be a gunshot wound in his chest, they tried to treat it. When Imperioli told them what was really up, he was made to wait for three hours.
• While filming The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Eli Wallach was almost poisoned during filming when he accidentally drank from a bottle of acid that a film technician had set next to his soda bottle. He drank milk afterwards and filmed a scene with a mouthful of sores.
• An accident while filming the "Greased Lightning" number on Grease led to Jeff Conaway developing an addiction to painkillers.
• On The Great Waldo Pepper, experienced stunt-pilot Frank Tallman, during filming of the aerial scenes, managed to perform two planned crashes without injury. However a third (accidental) crash occurred while landing a Nieuport biplane when a rudder bar broke at 400 feet, sending his aircraft nose-diving into a hill. Tallman survived but suffered two cracked vertebrae, required 58 stitches, and had to be taken off filming for two weeks.
• David Niven almost drowned during filming of an ocean storm scene inside a large water tank for The Guns of Navarone. He sustained a cut lip that led the actor being hospitalized with sepsis, which halted production on the film for a month. He insisted on returning to complete filming of his scenes before he had fully recovered, later causing a relapse of his illness that resulted in another seven weeks in hospital.
• While filming a rooftop scene for Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Ellie Cornell accidentally slipped and her torso was cut by a large nail. She lost a large amount of blood but recovered, going on to continue on with the film.
• Australian stuntman Scott McLean suffered critical brain damage while filming The Hangover Part II in Bangkok after a taxi he was leaning out of the window of failed to dodge another vehicle, causing his head to collide with it. Warner Bros. then issued a statement stating he was put into a medically induced coma, and were reportedly paying his hospital bills. He soon recovered, stating he had suffered "likely permanent brain and physical injuries" before suing the studio for unspecified damages.
• During the hallway shoot-out in Hard Boiled, Tony Leung Chiu-wai was cut in the eye by a shard of glass. If you pay attention, Leung suddenly covers his face with his arm, an indication of when he was hit with the glass. He was given a day off to get medical attention and returned to the set to finish filming without problems.
• Harry Potter:
  • The commentary of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban mentions that Tom Felton "took that punch well".
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: David Holmes, Daniel Radcliffe's stunt double, suffered a major spinal injury after he was caught in an explosion that was part of the stunt, leaving him paraplegic for life.
• Ron Perlman broke a rib while filming the subway scene in Hellboy (2004). He jumped onto a train that was coming towards him at about forty-five miles per hour.
• Christopher Lambert refused to use a fake sword for the fight scenes in Highlander II: The Quickening. In his first scene with it, he cut his finger to the bone and Michael Ironside dislocated his jaw in the dome fight. After these accidents, Lambert agreed to use a plastic sword. While filming their duel, Lambert chipped one of Ironside's teeth, while Ironside inadvertently chopped off part of Lambert's finger. Both men recovered from their injuries, but Ironside said precision thrusts and parries were impossible when wielding a twenty-two-pound broadsword.
• During the filming of The Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky, who also played the Alchemist, shot a scene where he asked one of his seven disciples to cut off his head with a prop sword. The actor swung too hard and cut his neck, almost killing him. Looking back, Jodorowsky noted that if a real sword was used, he would have been straight up decapitated.
  • An abandoned scene was where the cast would leap into the sea to be one with the "infinite waters." Unfortunately, none of them could swim and all the effort was spent instead on rescuing them.
• While filming the chase scene for The Horror of Party Beach, members of a local motorcycle club were hired to play a bike gang. Not wanting to be in the back of the field, one of the members sped up to the front and collided with the actor playing the gang leader, triggering a pileup that injured the actor and several bikers. Meanwhile, a police car responding to the incident was involved in its own crash.
• Stuntman Bob Morgan, husband of Yvonne De Carlo, was seriously injured and lost a leg during a break in filming a gunfight on a moving train for How the West Was Won. Chains holding logs on a flatbed car broke, crushing Morgan as he crouched beside them.
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom:
  • Harrison Ford injured his back and was out for several weeks. To continue production, Steven Spielberg used Ford's stuntman Vic Armstrong to perform the action sequences (even the simpler ones Ford could do) from behind, and Ford later filmed a few token close-ups.
  • According to Ke Huy Quan, he accidentally hit Kate Capshaw, giving her a black eye during filming of the mine cart chase scene.
• Donald Sutherland was struck by a car while filming a scene of him running for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).
• James Bond:
  • From Russia with Love:
    • While scouting locations in Argyll, Scotland, for that day's filming of the climactic boat chase, Terence Young's helicopter crashed into the water with art director Michael White and a cameraman aboard. The craft sank into 40-50 feet of water, but all escaped with minor injuries. Despite the calamity, Young was behind the camera for the full day's work.
    • Daniela Bianchi's driver fell asleep during the commute to a 6 am shoot and crashed the car. Her face was bruised and her scenes had to be delayed for two weeks while the facial contusions healed
    • During an explosion for the ­boat scene, three stuntmen were injured and Walter Gotell suffered burns to his eyelids.
  • Goldfinger:
    • Harold Sakata accidentally gave Sean Connery a back injury while filming their fight scene. The incident delayed filming, and Connery allegedly used the injury to get a better deal out of the producers for the next 007 movie.
    • Sakata was badly burned when filming his death scene, where Oddjob was electrocuted by Bond. Sakata, however, kept holding onto his hat with determination, despite his pain, until Guy Hamilton called "Cut!"
  • While filming the Little Nellie battle for You Only Live Twice in Miyazaki Prefecture, aerial cameraman John Jordan, who was standing on the landing strut of the camera helicopter, was struck in the foot by the autogyro's blade. Although doctors in the area were able to reattach the foot, he had it amputated when he returned to the UK.
  • Roger Moore injured his teeth and knee on his first day of shooting on Live and Let Die. Fortunately, he was filming the boat chase, so he was largely seated.
  • Moore had a near-miss on The Spy Who Loved Me. He decided at the last minute that it would be much more dramatic if he was sitting in the chair, instead of standing behind it when the gun underneath the dining table was fired. The special effects team had only reinforced the back of the chair for the original planned shot, which meant Moore risked serious injury if he didn't leap away in time.
  • On For Your Eyes Only, Cassandra Harris' stunt double was injured when she was hit by the dune buggy during her death scene.
  • Moore's stunt double on Octopussy, Martin Grace, had a serious accident while filming on the train. Hanging on the side of it, the train went into a non-assessed area of the track and he rammed into a pylon, seriously damaging his leg and hip and hospitalizing him for several months. He made a full recovery. In a similar vein, the actor who uses the buzz saw yo-yo broke his arm when he fell over the balcony onto Octopussy's bed. Despite his injury and having to wear a cast, he insisted on completing the rest of his scenes.
  • For the scene in Licence to Kill where Dario cuts at Bond's wrist binds, Benicio del Toro accidentally cut Timothy Dalton's hand.
  • Pierce Brosnan injured his hand while doing the ladder stunt in Goldeneye. Also, Famke Janssen claimed that he slammed her into a wall so hard she broke a rib.
  • While filming a fight scene in Tomorrow Never Dies, a stuntman's helmet hit Brosnan in the face, which required eight stitches down one side of his face, leaving the crew no choice but to film many of his scenes from one side only.
  • On Die Another Day, Brosnan suffered a knee injury jumping on to a hovercraft and Halle Berry needed surgery after debris from a smoke grenade flew into her eye.
  • On Casino Royale, Daniel Craig got splinters from the piece of wood used to protect his genitals during the torture scene. He also lost two teeth in a fight scene. The damage was so severe that Craig's dentist had to be flown in from London to fix caps into his mouth.
  • On Quantum of Solace, Craig suffered an injury to his face, which required four stitches, another to his shoulder, which required six surgical screws to be inserted in an operation, and his arm in a sling, and then his hand was injured when one of his finger tips was sliced off. He laughed these off, noting they did not delay filming, and joked his finger wound would enable him to have a criminal career (though it had grown back when he made this comment). He also had minor plastic surgery on his face.
  • On Skyfall, Craig ruptured both of his calf muscles during the rehearsal period, whereupon rescheduling took place requiring two weeks rest for his injuries.
  • On Spectre, Craig was injured at least twice during principal photography. He suffered a knee injury when filming in Austria, which required him to spent most of the shoot in a leg brace that was removed in post-production. He then hit his head on the interior of an Aston Martin DB10. It was such a grueling shoot that in a press junket he joked that he'd rather slit his wrists than go through such an ordeal again.
  • Craig sustained an ankle injury while filming No Time to Die in Jamaica and subsequently underwent minor surgery. In a separate filming accident, a controlled explosion caused exterior damage to the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios and left a crew member with minor injuries.
• Just as mentioned in the Live-Action TV section, the Jackass films is no stranger to injuries since it has the cast doing dangerous stunts, with the aftermath often being shown directly on-screen after a stunt. While none have proven fatal, some injuries have been far more serious than others:
  • Jackass: The Movie features a "Department Store Boxing" stunt where Johnny Knoxville got a boxing beatdown by Eric "Butterbean" Esch, knocking his head onto the concrete floor, giving him a severe concussion that required stitches.
  • During Number Two, Knoxville was supposed to do an Evel Knievel-style motorbike flip, but made the mistake of letting go during the flip, falling onto the ground before the handlebars dropped onto his crotch. They learned at the hospital that he'd torn his urethra, putting him out of commission for a few weeks and requiring he wear a catheter for three years afterward.
  • Also during Jackass Number Two Ryan Dunn was performing a stunt with Bam Margera in which both of them are pulled out of shot by a running horse with a rope tied around their feet. Dunn dropped straight onto his shoulder, causing damage to the muscles and leading to a life-threatening blood clot near his heart and brain. While recovering from that injury and lyme disease, Dunn fell into depression and reclusion, isolating himself for two years before returning to Jackass.
  • Jackass Forever was always slated by Knoxville to be the final film and his last stunt-heavy project, and it also resulted in what may be his most extreme injury: getting hit by a bull, flipping him and causing him to land on his head. Not only did it knock him out with yet another concussion, it also resulted in a brain hemorrhage, with a later diagnosis of lasting brain damage. While he recovered after months of hospitalization and therapy, if his own pledge won't stop him from trying his luck, the fear of another concussion probably will.
• While filming a scene in Jönssonligan dyker upp igen where his character was supposed to travel up a building using a food lift, Gösta Ekman attempted to close a hatch as scripted only to get his head stuck between it and the wall while the lift was still moving. He was hospitalised for some weeks afterward due to neck and face injuries, some which still were visible by the time he returned to set; this led to the directors deciding to shoot some scenes from angles that would make it less obvious which scenes were filmed before and after the accident.
• Sean Kanan suffered internal bleeding after doing 20 takes of being thrown out a door and landing on his stomach for The Karate Kid Part III. He collapsed at a Las Vegas hotel four days after shooting the scene and was discovered to have two quarts of blood pooled in his abdomen.
• While filming a fight scene for Kick-Ass 2, Chloë Grace Moretz's stunt double suffered a head injury when she was thrown into a wall by Olga Kurkulina.
• Killer Angels: The sequel, Devil Hunters, ends with the main characters (Ray Lui, Sibelle Hu and Moon Lee) jumping out of a window, over an exploding balcony, from the main villain's Taking You with Me suicidal attack. Unfortunately for the trio (who performs their own stunts), the explosion is poorly-timed and triggers earlier than expected. While Ray is first to leap out and is unharmed, Moon and Sibelle aren't as lucky, especially Sibelle who needs a skin transplant and spending months to recover after the incident (in the film itself her character is engulfed entirely in flames, which was NOT supposed to happen, but it did).
• Near the end of filming Kill Bill, Uma Thurman was injured in a crash while filming the scene in which the Bride drives to Bill. She was uncomfortable driving the car and asked a stunt driver to do it, but Quentin Tarantino assured her that the car and road were safe. She lost control of the car and hit a tree, suffering a concussion and damage to her knees. Thurman requested the crash footage, but Miramax would only release it, in Thurman's words, if she signed a document "releasing them of any consequences of [Thurman's] future pain and suffering". Tarantino was apologetic, but he and Thurman were acrimonious for years afterwards; she said after the accident she "went from being a creative contributor and performer to being like a broken tool". Miramax released the footage in 2018 after Thurman went to the police following the accusations of sexual abuse by Harvey Weinstein.
• Chow Yun-fat was injured during the filming of the church shootout in The Killer (1989), when a piece of plaster cut his face, missing his eye by an inch. You can see the cut during the part where Jeff and Li talk before leaving the church.
• Peter O'Toole was often injured while making Lawrence of Arabia. He received third-degree burns, sprained both ankles, tore ligaments in both his hip and thigh, broke his thumb, dislocated his spine, fractured his skull, was bitten by a camel, sprained his neck, tore a groin muscle, and was concussed twice. He also seriously injured his hand during filming by punching through the window of a caravan while drunk. A brace or bandage can be seen on his left thumb during the first train attack scene, presumably due to this incident.
• The Lord of the Rings trilogy resulted in several injuries for many cast members, including bruises and broken bones.
  • Viggo Mortensen is the absolute king of this though; he cracked a front tooth (with the crew insisting he go to a dentist rather than glue the broken bit on to keep filming), nearly drowned floating down a river and broke his toe kicking a metal helmet (he incorporated his scream of agony into his acting when Aragorn is grieving over the apparent deaths of Merry and Pippin, with that take being the one in the finished film). Off-set, Mortensen also managed to get a black eye while surfing, so he had to be filmed in profile for many of the Moria scenes until the bruising healed.
  • Orlando Bloom broke a rib when he fell off a horse.
  • Bernard Hill got his ear sliced in two during the Battle of Helms Deep.
  • Liv Tyler accidentally stabbed herself in the thigh with a sword.
  • Sean Astin was injured twice. First, he stepped on a piece of glass in a river that went through his prosthetic foot and required him to be airlifted to hospital. Secondly, Andy Serkis pulled his wig so hard it gave him a hairline fracture.

M-Z

• One of the more spectacular stunts in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior was actually a serious accident. One of the motorcycle-riding raiders hits a car, flies off the bike, smashes his legs against the car, and cartwheels through the air towards the camera. This was a real, genuine accident: the stuntman was supposed to just fly over the car without hitting it. But the nearly fatal incident looked so dramatic, that it was kept in the movie. The stuntman broke his leg badly, but survived.
• The Man from Hong Kong:
  • Jimmy Wang Yu was injured during filming when he crashed his hang glider into rocks in Sydney Harbor. He fell 100 feet from the disabled glider onto a sand dune. The accident left him knocked unconscious and he was absent from filming for two days.
  • George Lazenby did the stunt where his arm catches fire and goes on fighting himself - only for it to go wrong when he was unable to get his burning jacket off. The take of him struggling is kept in the movie. He received minor burns to his arm from doing this stunt.
  • A sound recordist was injured during production filming when he broke his ankle whilst a stuntman also broke his foot.
  • Two stunt men were injured in a car crash whilst filming the car chase sequence and they were both hospitalized.
  • Brian Trenchard-Smith had an accident during filming when he was hit in the eye with chemical spray.
• Frank Sinatra injured his hand during the filming of his fight scene with Henry Silva in The Manchurian Candidate. Accounts vary as to whether it was a broken finger (according to his daughter Nancy) or a broken wrist (according to other sources), but all agree that he carried on filming through the injury and it never healed properly as a result.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The Avengers: While performing a 30-foot fall from a building, stuntman Jeremy Fitzgerald slammed into a pile of bricks and tore off a chunk of his scalp.
  • Thor: The Dark World: Jaimie Alexander suffered severe injuries when she slipped off a metal staircase during a rainy morning on the set. The fall caused her to slip a disc in her thoracic spine and chip 11 of her vertebrae, as well as dislocate her left shoulder and tear a rhomboid on her right side. The injuries took her out of filming for a month.
• The Matrix:
  • Carrie-Anne Moss twisted her ankle while shooting an action scene, but decided not to tell anyone until after filming, so she wouldn't be re-cast.
  • On The Matrix Reloaded, Moss broke her leg training for a wire stunt, Laurence Fishburne fractured an arm in another training incident and Hugo Weaving put out a disc in his neck while being pulled back on a wire.
• Maximum Overdrive's director of photography Armando Nannuzzi was seriously injured when a radio-controlled lawnmower used in a scene went out of control and struck a block of wood used as a camera support, shooting out wood splinters. The splinters were fired at Nannuzzi's face, resulting in him losing an eye. He sued Stephen King for $18 million in damages due to unsafe working practices. The suit was settled out of court.
• Dylan O'Brien nearly lost his life after being struck by a vehicle while filming an action scene for Maze Runner: The Death Cure. This left him several injuries including brain trauma, and forced the production to be shut down for six months.
• Mighty Joe Young's director of photography Don Peterman and camera operator Ray de la Motte were injured while preparing a crane shot in July 1997 in Thousand Oaks, California. Both suffered extensive neck and head injuries.
• Hilary Swank contracted a bacterial infection from a blister she developed on her foot during training for Million Dollar Baby. The infection was so serious that she almost had to be hospitalized for three weeks. Catching the infection in the nick of time, she instead chose to take a week off for medicated rest and didn't tell anyone about the injury, because she didn't believe it was in character.
• Moby-Dick: Gregory Peck injured his kneecap, Richard Basehart broke his ankle while jumping into a longboat and Leo Genn slipped a disk and caught pneumonia before shooting had finished.
• Mortal Kombat: The Movie:
  • During filming of the battle between Liu Kang and Reptile, Robin Shou fractured his ribs after multiple takes of hitting the pillar.
  • Bridgette Wilson dislocated her shoulder while performing a stunt; she was quickly able to continue working when paramedics put it back into place.
  • Linden Ashby recalled urinating blood after being kicked in the kidney.
• Production on Moulin Rouge! halted for two weeks after Nicole Kidman fractured two ribs and injured her knee while rehearsing a dance routine. Many of the scenes where she is seen only from the chest up, including "a real actress", were shot while she was in a wheelchair. Consequently, Kidman also had to be replaced by Jodie Foster for the lead role in Panic Room (though Kidman did have a voice cameo in the film).
• Winona Ryder broke her arm in three places while filming a bike-riding scene in Mr. Deeds.
• The Mummy Trilogy:
  • The Mummy: During the hanging scene where Evey barters for Rick's life as he's being hung in Cairo's prison for an unspecified crime, Brendan Fraser (who played Rick O'Connell) nearly choked to death, as the rope around his neck had too much tension on it. He ended up losing consciousness and was woken up by an EMT.
  • On The Mummy Returns, Fraser tore a spinal disk, cracked a rib, and injured his knees. Dwayne Johnson suffered from food poisoning and sunstroke. He lost over 10 pounds and said it was "the worst I have ever felt in my life".
• During the filming of National Velvet, Elizabeth Taylor badly injured her back when she was thrown from a horse. Although the movie became her Star-Making Role, this injury is often blamed for the chronic back pain that would plague her for the rest of her life.
• Juliette Lewis accidentally broke Tom Sizemore's nose while filming their fight scene in Natural Born Killers. Sizemore just carried on with the scene.
• While filming Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal severely cut his hand after he improvised smashing a mirror, resulting in him needing to go to hospital and get 42 stitches; he also needed to wear a cast while wrapping up filming (which is why in the first few scenes Lou often has his hands behind his back to hide the cast).
• Dale Van Sickel, first President of the Stuntmen Association, was driving a car that was supposed to go off the end of a wharf for No Deposit, No Return. Oil had been applied to the wharf to facilitate the stunt, but too much was put down. The car went out of control and hit an abutment. Van Sickel suffered brain damage, and remained an invalid for the rest of his life. Before the accident he had been semi-retired, only taking a few jobs a year "to keep from getting stale". His family sued Walt Disney Productions.
• The Omen: Gregory Peck accidentally slammed a car door on the hand of Guglielmo Spoletini, who portrayed the Italian taxi driver, which almost required his finger to be amputated.
• Jim Caviezel really suffered making The Passion of the Christ. He sustained gashes to his back from multiple whippings, hypothermia, and a separated shoulder from carrying a giant cross. He was also struck by lightning before filming the Sermon of the Mount scene.
• While filming the climactic speedboat fight scene for Patriot Games, Sean Bean sustained a gash above his left eyebrow after Harrison Ford struck him with a metal hook.
• While filming Pearl Harbor, a stunt plane dressed like a Japanese fighter crashed during a flight over the set. The pilot survived the crash escaping serious injuries.
• The Phantom of the Opera:
  • A worker suffered severe injuries when he was thrown from scaffolding that was not properly secured on the set of the film.
  • Patrick Wilson fell off his horse approximately three times while filming his own stunt scene, riding the horse bareback. He also nearly drowned while filming the water scenes in the lake.
• Police Story 2:
  • Maggie Cheung suffered a major head injury while trying to outrun the falling metal frames. Crystal Kwok, who plays a policewoman in this movie, filled in as Cheung's double for the remainder of the movie.
  • A stuntman suffered an injury when he crashed through the glass during the restaurant scene.
• While filming the scene in Popeye where Pappy throws Popeye the can of spinach, Ray Walston hit Robin Williams in the head so hard that he required several stitches in his scalp and delayed filming for several weeks.
• Predator:
  • The stuntman who doubled for Arnold Schwarzenegger for the fall into the river blew out his knee performing this particular stunt.
  • John McTiernan broke a wrist while on location.
• While filming Premium Rush in the streets of New York City, Joseph Gordon-Levitt lost control of his bicycle and collided with the back of a taxicab before flying towards its rear windscreen. He required 31 stitches after his right forearm was slashed by the impact.
• When Count Rugen hits Westley over the head in The Princess Bride, Cary Elwes told Christopher Guest to go ahead and hit him for real. Guest hit him hard enough to shut down production for a day while Elwes went to the hospital.
• Thomas Jane was accidently supplied a real knife rather than a prop and ended up (non-fatally) stabbing Kevin Nash for real during their The Punisher (2004) fight scene. Amazingly, Nash stayed in character and didn't ask for medical help until after the scene was finished and there are rumors its the one they ended up using for the finished movie.
• Robert De Niro accidentally broke Joe Pesci's rib while assaulting him in Raging Bull. Pesci would later break that same rib again while filming his death scene in Casino.
• The Quiet Man: Maureen O'Hara broke her hand slapping John Wayne early in filming because he unexpectedly blocked the blow. Because it was filmed sequentially, O'Hara spent the rest of the shoot with a broken hand, without a cast on.
• Racing Stripes: While riding one of the zebras, Hayden Panettiere was thrown off and ended up hospitalized with a concussion, whiplash and damaged vertebrae. She was forbidden from discussing it publicly during the film's production and release (presumably to avoid bad publicity), although she eventually revealed the accident on The Graham Norton Show in 2013, eight years after the film's release (Panettiere joked that a lawsuit would be unlikely at this stage).
• Rebel Without a Cause:
  • Real switchblades were used in the knife fight. James Dean and Corey Allen wore chainmail under their clothes. Even so, Dean was injured several times while shooting the scene.
  • Dean badly bruised his hand during the scene where he punches the desk. He had to wear an elastic bandage for a week.
• On the first day of shooting Red River, Montgomery Clift burned himself on his thigh with a blank cartridge practising while quick draws.
• Resident Evil: The Final Chapter: The stunt double for Milla Jovovich, Olivia Jackson, lost her left arm after being severely injured following an on-set motorcycle crash with a camera crane at high speeds.
• Marilyn Monroe injured her ankle while making River of No Return. This kept her off the set for several days and ultimately put her in a cast.
• While filming their fight scene in Road House (1989), Marshall R. Teague threw a real log at Patrick Swayze, thinking it was a breakway prop. By the end, Swayze was covered in bruises and had two broken ribs and a busted knee.
• While filming the climax of Scarface (1983), Al Pacino burned his hand when he placed it on an exposed portion of the gun barrel. The injury was enough to shut down production for a week.
• Scream:
  • In the first movie, Skeet Ulrich (Billy) has a scene where Sidney attacks him with an umbrella. However Skeet has a wire in his body from a surgery long ago that when touched, sends a nasty shock through his body. The stunt woman playing Sidney couldn't see well in the Ghostface getup when doing the scene. So when she attacked him, she accidentally hit the wire and that scream of his is very much real.
  • In Scream 3, Scott Foley (Roman) likewise took an injury in the climax when Neve Campbell struck him in the back with an ice pick, missing the pads on his back. Again, that scream of pain is real.
• Tobey Maguire injured his back while filming Seabiscuit. This nearly cost him Spider-Man 2.
• John Hawkes suffered a severe disc injury on his back while filming The Sessions. He has confirmed that his "spine now has not enough movement."
• While filming the chase scene in Se7en, Brad Pitt slipped on the hood of a car and went through the windscreen, cutting his hand in the process. The injury was added to the film, though, to Pitt's disappointment, the scene showing the injury was cut.
• Sherlock, Jr.:
  • Buster Keaton grabs a water spout while walking on a moving boxcar train. The water unexpectedly flooded down on him much harder than anticipated, throwing him to the ground. The back of his neck slammed against a steel rail on the ground and caused him to black out. The pain was so intense that he had to stop shooting later that day and he had "blinding headaches" for weeks afterwards, but continued working, having a well-known high threshold for physical pain. It wasn't until 1935 that a doctor spotted a callus over a fracture in his top vertebra in an X-ray. The doctor informed Keaton that he had broken his neck during the accident nine years earlier and not realized it.
  • While filming the climactic chase, the motorcycle Keaton was riding skidded and smashed into two cameras, knocking over Eddie Cline and throwing Keaton onto a nearby car.
• Leonard Sachs was injured while filming a scene in The Siege of Sidney Street that took place in a burning building. The room and all the props were coated with fire-proof jelly, as was the actor's shoulders and arms. However the special-effects crew neglected to apply the jelly to Sachs' head because to do so would have taken 20 minutes and the production was on a tight schedule. As a result, Sachs suffered burns to his hair and scalp.
• Sliver cameraman Michael Benson suffered lung injuries after a helicopter crash left him trapped for two days inside a Hawaiian volcano crater. The crew aboard the helicopter was flying over an active volcano to shoot the film's original opening sequence, but the footage was lost in the crash.
• During the scene in Spartacus where Spartacus drowns Marcellus in a cauldron of soup, Kirk Douglas accidentally broke Charles McGraw's jaw. His jaw struck the rim of the pot, sustaining a fracture but he managed to continue the scene nonetheless.
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • Spider-Man: Willem Dafoe accidentally chipped Tobey Maguire's chin while filming their final fight scene.
  • Spider-Man 3: Thomas Haden Church broke three knuckles during the subway scene where he swings to punch Spider-Man and ends up punching a chunk of the wall away. The effects crew had told him that the brick in the middle was fake while the upper and lower ones were real. Unfortunately, the foam brick had not actually been put in place yet, and when Sam Raimi yelled "action", Church spun around and punched the real brick on the first take.
• Ernest Borgnine broke his foot filming The Split. You'll notice that he walks with a limp in The Wild Bunch.
• Star Trek:
  • Marina Sirtis also suffered some mild burns during the Enterprise-D crash sequence in Star Trek: Generations.
  • Alfre Woodard was burned by a pyrotechnic effect on the set of Star Trek: First Contact that left some mild scarring on her upper arms.
• Stripes:
  • John Larroquette accidentally broke his nose after he put his head through a glass door. The injury was so bad, that he nearly sliced his nose off. It required a lot of makeup to cover it up in the film and he still has the scar to this day.
  • While shooting the boot camp scenes, director Ivan Reitman secretly told the actors as recruits to drag Warren Oates (Hulka) into the mud with them. Oates ended up chipping a tooth, and upon learning Reitman manipulated the whole thing, furiously chewed him out. After that, Reitman never used Enforced Method Acting in any of his films.
• Super Mario Bros. (1993):
  • During the chase through the pipe, someone thought that the mattress was going too slow, so they loosened one of the wires that was pulling them. When the crew came back from lunch, nobody checked the rig. They then shot the scene where Mario and the Brookyln Babes flew out of the tunnel, only to find they were going way too fast and out of control. One of the Babes almost fell off the mattress twenty five feet onto solid concrete. They all stayed on, but when it hit the ground, it flipped over and they all smashed their heads. Aside from a few bruises, they were okay.
  • John Leguizamo accidentally broke Bob Hoskins' finger while doing a stunt with the Mario Bros. van.
  • Hoskins claimed that during the course of the production, he got stabbed four times, got electrocuted and very nearly drowned. "And that's just what happened to me."
• During the torture scene in Syriana, George Clooney suffered head and spinal injuries and memory loss when he hit his head on the floor after the torturer knocked his chair over. The impact ruptured his dura mater, resulting in loss of cerebrospinal fluid. The injury was so painful that he contemplated committing suicide while recovering.
• Jude Law broke a rib filming his death scene in The Talented Mr. Ripley.
• During the filming of a sand-storm scene in The Ten Commandments (1956), an extra carrying a flaming torch tripped over and the torch set fire to the clothing of a young girl standing next to him. She only suffered minor burns thanks to the quick thinking of make-up artist Frank Westmore who raced over and tore off her burning costume. During the filming of the same scene, several Egyptian extras were stung by scorpions, or bitten by cobras, both of which had been blown out of their burrows in the sand by the artificially generated storm.
• Terminator:
  • The Terminator: Linda Hamilton injured her ankle filming a chase scene. She wrapped it in tin foil.
  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Hamilton suffered permanent hearing damage in one ear during filming when she fired a gun inside an elevator without using her ear plugs. She also injured her knees from falling on the ground during multiple re-shoots of her being hit with a nightstick by actor Ken Gibbel. Frustrated by Gibbel's refusal to hit her properly, she legitimately knocked him out with a broom handle during the escape scene. Arnold Schwarzenegger nearly broke some fingers while twirling his shotgun with one hand. While there was a shotgun with a lever loop lengthened to fit his hand, he mistakenly picked up a standard-sized unit and injured his hand while attempting the stunt.
• They Came To Cordura has Dick York in a starring role. However, while riding on a railway handcar, York suffered torn muscles in his right side lower back. Though the tissues mostly healed, he was left in great pain thereafter, relying on painkillers to get through a day. The crew of Bewitched even built a sloped wall for him to lessen York's discomfort between takes.
• The Three Musketeers:
  • Michael York had his leg cut in one duel and almost lost an eye in another. It got so bad that at one point, York remembers doubling for his injured stunt double. He later resorted to stuffing his script inside his clothes for protection.
  • Oliver Reed was stabbed in the throat while filming the fight near the windmill and almost died. He also took a sword to the hand.
  • Frank Finlay was struck in the face by a two-by-four, and burned in separate fight scenes.
  • Christopher Lee fared better than most of the cast, getting off with just a sprained knee and a pulled shoulder muscle.
  • While filming their fight scene, Faye Dunaway accidentally pushed Raquel Welch for real, causing her to fall and sprain her wrist.
• The Three Stooges: Being the cornucopia of slapstick the series is, the Stooges were bound to have suffered injuries while making their films.
  • In Pardon My Scotch, Curly accidentally saws a wooden table that Moe happens to be standing on in half, causing Moe to fall when he tries to walk across it. In the take you see on screen, Moe Howard broke three ribs in that fall, and he managed to complete the take before passing out.
  • In Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise and The Three Troubledoers, Moe got hit in the face with a dirty substance (black goo in the former, soot in the latter), and he had to receive medical attention because it got under his eyelids.
  • In Gem of a Jam, one gag has Curly lying on an operating table that gets titled downward towards a window, resulting in him almost falling out. While filming the scene, the table tilted too fast and Curly hit his head on the windowsill, giving him a gash in the back of his head that required nine stitches.
  • In Heavenly Daze, Larry really got hurt when he got a fountain pen lodged in his forehead. Moe was furious and chased director Jules White around the set.
  • In Self-Made Maids, the Stooges employ Acting for Two by playing female versions of themselves in drag. While filming a scene where the girls skip out the door, Moe slipped and sprained his ankle. In an act of quick thinking, Moe saved the take by hopping into the bed in the next room to get himself out of the shot, which resulted in him hitting his head on the bedpost and falling unconscious.
  • In Punch Drunks, Larry steals a truck playing "Pop Goes the Weasel" to help Curly win his boxing match. The stuntman who was on the truck broke his arm in the take that was used.
  • In Brideless Groom, a woman (played by Christine McIntyre) wails relentlessly on Shemp after realizing that he's not her cousin Basil, and shoves him out the door. During the filming of the scene, McIntyre's slapping around of Shemp was deemed unconvincing, and Shemp invited her to not hold back. In the take used in the final product, her final blow actually connected with Shemp's nose, breaking it. McIntyre was horrified at what she had done, but Shemp assured her it was alright. He HAD asked for it, after all.
• When Richard Harris was roughed up behind the scrum in This Sporting Life, rugby league legend Derek Turner, who was playing the character who punches him, was asked by director Lindsay Anderson to make the contact look real. So he did. He punched Harris for real and knocked him out completely. Shooting for the day had to be stopped while Harris recovered.
• Chow Yun-fat cut his finger on the front sight of a Sterling Mk IV submachine gun during a stunt for Tiger on Beat.
• Some stuntpeople on Titanic suffered broken bones, while Kate Winslet developed bruises so impressive that the makeup department took pictures for future reference. She also chipped a bone in her elbow.
• An extra on Transformers: Dark of the Moon was seriously injured during a stunt in Hammond, Indiana. Owing to a failed weld, a steel cable snapped from a car being towed and hit the extra's car, damaging her skull. The extra, identified as Gabriela Cédillo, had to undergo brain surgery. The injury has left her permanently brain-damaged, paralyzed on her left side and her left eye stitched shut. In May 2012, it was revealed that a $18 million settlement had been reached between Paramount and the Cedillo family. As a result of this accident, recycled footage from The Island (2005) was used instead, with CG robots inserted into the footage.
• Fittingly, Brad Pitt tore his left Achilles tendon while filming Troy.
• Eliza Dushku broke several ribs while doing a stunt for True Lies. The stunt coordinator had molested her, and followed through on a threat to injure her when she tried to report it.
• True Romance: Dennis Hopper was concerned about being shot with a prop gun so close against his head for fear of being burned by the barrel. Tony Scott assured him the gun was one hundred percent safe, and even tested it by having the prop man fire it against his own forehead. But upon firing the prop gun, the barrel extended about a third of an inch and Scott ended up on the floor with blood pouring from the wound.
• Audrey Hepburn was thrown off a horse while rehearsing a scene for The Unforgiven. She suffered from two broken vertebrae, and later suffered a miscarriage, which has since been attributed to the accident. She was flown out of set and spent six weeks recovering at a hospital. When she returned, Hepburn wore a back brace for the rest of production, and her wardrobe was redesigned in order to hide the brace.
• Sean Connery was hospitalized after filming his death scene in The Untouchables when fake blood from the squibs went in his eyes. Brian De Palma had to beg Connery to do another take.
• While filming Valkyrie, the side of a vintage truck detached as the vehicle turned a sharp corner, causing a number of extras on board to fall out. One man was seriously injured and ten more suffered minor injuries. The extras involved later filed a lawsuit against the production.
• In the 1982 film adaptation of Pink Floyd's The Wall, Bob Geldof spontaneously grabbed a window frame covered in broken glass while shooting "One of My Turns" and accidentally slashed his palm open on-camera. The injury and its aftermath were worked into the film because Alan Parker liked the effect; later shots of Geldof's character floating in the hotel pool even show him still bleeding out.
• Derren Nesbitt was injured while filming his death scene in Where Eagles Dare. The blood squib attached to him exploded with such force that he was temporarily blinded, though he made a quick recovery.
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:
  • In the candy forest room, Veruca Salt bashes a giant gobstopper against a jagged rock. While it is not acknowledged, her knee is bloody in this shot. Behind the scenes her actress, Julie Dawn Cole, actually cut her knee on the rock, and still has a scar there today.
  • During the scene where soap foam is shot onto the boat, it is actually real soap. This high concentration directly on them caused all of the actors on the boat to have severe skin irritations and deeply reddened their skin. Several weeks passed before the actors had recovered and were ready to film again.
• While filming the aerial combat scenes in Wings, stunt pilot Dick Grace was required to deliberately crash-land a Fokker D-VII, specially modified to "crumple" on impact. When the Fokker struck the ground, the landing gear failed to crumple, making the impact a heavier one than planned. This caused Grace's safety straps to break, sending his head through the instrument panel, leaving him with four crushed vertebrae and a broken neck. Amazingly, he spent only six weeks in the hospital and was again performing stunt work within a year.
• The Wizard of Oz:
  • As explained in the film's 75th anniversary tribute, the original actor to play the Tin Man was Buddy Ebsen. His costume included aluminum powder dusted on his face to give him a "metallic" look; however, only a few weeks into shooting, the powder caused him severe lung issues. "One night I took a breath and nothing happened." He was rushed to the hospital and spent months recovering, while Jack Haley was hired to replace him — and given aluminum paste on his face rather than powder.
  • Margaret Hamilton suffered serious burns beneath her copper-based face paint after being too close to the pyrotechnics that accompanied the Wicked Witch of the West's departure from Munchkinland.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • X-Men: Hugh Jackman got his testicles caught in his harness after a six foot jump off the set's Statue of Liberty.
  • X2: X-Men United: Jackman was injured doing a stunt in the X-Jet that caused him to bleed.
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine: will.i.am scarred his knuckles after he accidentally punched the camera.

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