From hearing loss to spinal injuries to painful stunts gone wrong , some actors have suffered
lasting consequences for the sake of making their art.
In 2016, production on the final chapter in the "Maze Runner" series was suspended indefinitely
due to a horrific on-set accident involving Dylan O'Brien.
The franchise's young star sustained severe brain trauma when a stunt involving a motorcycle
went very wrong.
O'Brien effectively needed to have his face put back together by a skilled reconstructive
surgeon.
The actor told The Salt Lake Tribune —
"[I have] four plates that will be a part of me forever.
I feel really lucky to have come away from it — in terms of coming away from it at
all on the day, and really how my face has healed.
I was really lucky with a really brilliant doctor, and he salvaged a lot of what I used
to look like.
[...] I think it's really astonishing how well everything healed and how my doctors
fixed me up."
After a bit of a break to heal up, O'Brien got back to work in Hollywood, but his traumatic
experience left him with some lasting worries.
In 2020, he told Variety —
"Even to this day, if I’m on set and I’m doing a stunt, if I’m in a rig, if there’s
some action going on, I am slightly irritable.
There is a degree of anxiety in me that I don’t think there’s ever not going to
be."
Natalie Portman put herself on a strict diet and lost 20 pounds to play the part of fragile
ballerina Nina Sayers in Darren Aronofsky's dark drama "Black Swan."
She wasn't the only one to take a method approach to her character, though: her co-star Mila
Kunis followed suit, but didn't get nearly as much attention for her transformation.
She told radio host Howard Stern —
"I used to be a smoker, and so I smoked a lot of cigarettes and I ate a limited amount
of calories.
Twelve hundred calories, and I smoked.
I don't advocate this at all.
It was awful."
Kunis later revealed that her body has never returned to the state it was in before preparations
for "Black Swan" began.
She told Harper's Bazaar —
"My shape is different.
When I got down to 95 pounds, I was muscles, like a little brick house, but skin and bones.
When I gained it back, it went to completely different areas."
"I will never dance again.
I promise you, I will never put on that pointe shoe ever again."
In a candid 2018 interview with The New York Times, Uma Thurman shared some revelations
about director Quentin Tarantino.
During the production of "Kill Bill," Tarantino reportedly forced Thurman to perform a dangerous
driving scene that left her with lasting damage.
She told the Times —
"I was scared.
He said: 'I promise you the car is fine.
It's a straight piece of road.
Hit 40 miles per hour or your hair won't blow the right way and I'll make you do it again.'
[...] But that was a deathbox that I was in.
The seat wasn't screwed down properly.
It was a sand road and it was not a straight road."
Thurman lost control of the Karmann Ghia and it veered off the road, crashing into a tree
and leaving her in so much pain that she feared that she'd lost her ability to walk for good.
While it wasn't as bad as she'd initially feared, the accident left her with lasting
injury to her neck and knees.
The accident is part of the reason that Thurman, who'd also starred in Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction,"
hasn't worked with the director since "Kill Bill: Volume 2."
Wolverine, the adamantium-claw wielding member of the super-heroically mutated X-Men, is
one of the most pronounced and famous grumps in all of popular culture.
Every iteration of the character, in print, on the small screen, and in a series of feature
films spanning two decades, has been depicted as a scowling, grumbling, tough guy who alternately
mutters dialogue in a raspy mutter or angry shout.
No one has played Wolverine more often than Hugh Jackman, who has strapped on the claws
and taken on that distinctive voice in nine "X-Men" universe movies between 2000 and 2016.
Seven years after last playing the role, Jackman revealed that his voice and vocal cords still
suffer from the consequences of that iconic voice.
He told BBC Radio 4's "Front Row" in 2023 —
"My teacher at drama school would have been horrified by some of the things I did in 'Wolverine.'
I've done some damage to my voice, through playing Wolverine."
Specifically, Jackman has said that when he performs in musicals, he finds that he can't
reach the high notes the way he once did.
He continued —
"I put that down directly to some of the growling and yelling I did."
The fishiest star of the DC Universe may look like an unbeatable, impossible-to-hurt superhero,
but Jason Momoa is only human.
After the first "Aquaman" movie became a global box office sensation in 2018, Warner Bros.
quickly ordered a sequel, "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom."
Throughout the filming of the physically demanding and stunt-heavy action movie, Momoa suffered
for his art, chalking up his vulnerability to his advancing age.
The actor told Ellen DeGeneres —
"I'm getting old.
I messed up my eyes.
I just got something in it that kinda cut it up, and then I've gotta get surgery, I
have a hernia, I've got ribs out.
I'm just getting beat up."
In addition to what he confirmed was a scratched cornea and hernia, Momoa revealed to Yahoo!
that he wound up with a facial scar after a fight scene in the 2018 movie "Braven" went
sideways.
He recalled —
"I got knocked out.
A stunt guy hit me.
He blindsided me.
We didn't make eye contact, and he hit me before I could grab for him, and everything
went black."
Momoa required hospitalization for the incident, and shooting on "Braven" was put on hold for
a day.
After breaking into stardom with her role as Van on FX's award-winning dramedy "Atlanta,"
Zazie Beetz was suddenly being offered work in movies much bigger than the shorts and
indies in which she was used to performing.
In 2018, she co-starred in the big-budget superhero comedy "Deadpool 2" as Domino, a
member of the titular hero's X-Force of powerful rogues.
Domino's special power?
She's extremely lucky.
"Luck isn't a superpower."
"Yes it is."
"No it isn't."
"Yes it is."
"No ma'am!"
"Mm-hmm."
"Mario No-pez."
"Yeah."
Life did not imitate art on the set of "Deadpool 2," unfortunately.
According to USA Today, the film was a physically grueling experience for the actors, with Beetz
training for four hours a day for months before filming began.
That was far from the worst part, though, as things would continue to go wrong for her
once rehearsal ended.
During one action sequence that involved a high-speed truck chase, Beetz lost consciousness
— and during an elaborate fight scene, a stray casing from a freshly fired shell landed
on her chest, burning her skin and leaving a permanent scar.
Alfre Woodard agreed to take on the role of 21st-century spacecraft builder Lily Sloane
in the 1996 film "Star Trek: First Contact" because she was friendly with several members
of the cast, including Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, and especially director Jonathan Frakes.
A pivotal scene called for a massive explosion when the enemy Borg sends a ship into the
past, which slams into Earth and sends many of the good guys flying.
Woodard recalls practicing the sequence for many hours, in which she and a number of stunt
performers were to jump as if they'd been knocked into the air, spin around, and land
so the cameras could capture their reactions.
Woodard told Collider —
"The explosion was so intense it just knocked us off our butts.
We just fell any way we could."
At that point, Woodard realized she'd torn up her costume and her arms were covered in blood.
Frakes got his shot, but Woodard still bears scars on both of her arms from the stunt.
A lot can go wrong on a movie set, even on a relatively low-tech comedy.
Case in point: in 1986, Steve Martin, along with Martin Short and Chevy Chase, starred
in the action-tinged comedy "Three Amigos!"
In this goofy romp, three silent-era Western film stars get stuck in a terrorized Mexican
village and have to save its residents who think they are the brave heroes they play
in the movies — and not the spoiled and cowardly actors they really are.
Martin's character, Lucky Day, deals with a number of uncomfortable situations to which
he's unsuited, including several shootouts.
That may have led to a case of tinnitus — a persistent, high-pitched, and grating ringing
of the ears.
The actor and comedian has suffered from the condition ever since the production of "Three
Amigos!," but he thinks something else could've also triggered it.
He told Pitchfork in 2015 —
"I was shooting The Three Amigos and I got tinnitus.
I blamed it on gunfire at the time but since then I realized it was just my destiny after
listening to music too loud my whole life and playing live concerts with 28,000 screaming
people — it was like being in a football stadium."
"It's like living with a six-year-old."
Thankfully, Martin has learned to live with the tinnitus.
He continued —
"It becomes your natural background noise."
While making 2013's "Thor: The Dark World," Jaimie Alexander — who plays Thor's ally
Sif — suffered a painful-sounding injury.
Speaking with MTV News, Alexander explained that she'd slipped and fallen from an unfortunate
height, elaborating —
"I herniated a disk in my thoracic spine, dislocated my left shoulder, tore my right
rhomboid, and chipped 11 vertebrae."
Alexander thought the injury might not be a big deal, but the next morning, it was still
pretty bad — and then it got worse.
She continued —
"I got in a car to go to the hospital, and I sat in the car and compressed my spine a
little bit, and went paralyzed in my right leg and my right hand."
After a month of physical therapy, Alexander was back on set swinging a sword — but spinal
injuries like that don't just go away entirely.
It seems like playing an Asgardian might not be all it's cracked up to be.
Blake Lively's 2016 hit "The Shallows" proved that she had some genuine action chops — and
the actor was duly rewarded with a lead role in her very own spy thriller, "The Rhythm
Section."
Sadly, things went south for Lively in late 2017, as an on-set injury she sustained while
filming an action sequence with Jude Law caused the film to halt production.
Sources informed The Hollywood Reporter that Lively's hand injury wasn't thought to be
all that serious at first, but the surgery she underwent after sustaining it apparently
failed to fix the issue.
Further surgeries followed, with both Paramount and Lively awaiting instruction from surgeons
on how best to proceed.
In early 2018, she was cleared to return to the set.
Filming resumed later in the year, but Lively's hand never quite returned back to the way
it was before.
"I severed a ligament here, so my knuckles are kinda dropped, and I, you know, dislocated
these two bones…"
In "The Wizard of Oz," the beloved 1939 film adaptation of L. Frank Baum's fantasy novel,
Jack Haley played the Tin Man, the friendly metal monster on his way to see the Wizard
to acquire a heart.
However, Haley wasn't MGM's first choice for the role — or even the first actor cast.
According to Vanity Fair, Buddy Ebsen — best known for his later leading gigs on "The Beverly
Hillbillies" and "Barnaby Jones" — was hired first.
When rehearsing in makeup and under studio lights, the crew repeatedly covered Ebsen's
face with aluminum dust to keep his white grease paint from running.
One night during the rehearsal period, Ebsen awoke with painful cramps in his limbs.
His face had turned blue, and he couldn't breathe.
The actor spent two weeks of hospitalization in an oxygen tent — his body had to divest
itself of the large amount of toxic aluminum sitting in his lungs.
With his recovery taking longer than they liked, MGM fired Ebsen and installed Haley instead.
Another cast member of "The Wizard of Oz" also experienced a severe medical reaction.
Ray Bolger portrayed the brainless Scarecrow, and on the final day of shooting, he took
off his rubber-and burlap-based prosthetic mask for the last time.
When he did, he discovered that he had received burlap-like scars all over his chin and mouth.