In 2005, MTV attempted to bring their cult animated TV show Aeon Flux to the big screen.
The filmmakers cast Charlize Theron as the titular character, and while this particular
movie wasn't exactly great, Theron kicks just as much ass as she has done in any of her
other action movies.
But she nearly lost it all when a stunt went wrong during filming.
Theron was meant to do a backflip, misjudged her landing and ended up falling onto her
neck, which, in medical terms, tends to be a bit of a no-no.
In fact, Theron was a mere centimetre away from being paralyzed, but was exceptionally
fortunate and pulled through with no permanent damage other than some recurring pain, which
she says she's since corrected with surgery.
She did her own stunts again in 2017's Atomic Blonde without incident, so the accident clearly
didn't slow her down for long.
While you might not think of The Exorcist as much of an action spectacular, it did have
a few moments that required some minor stunt work.
In one scene, Ellen Burstyn's character Chris is thrown to the floor by her daughter Regan,
who is played by Linda Blair.
In another, Blair was meant to thrash up and down on her bed.
Both actors ended up with permanent injuries from these stunts.
For Burstyn, the scene was relatively simple.
During one of Regan's demonic outbursts, Chris is supposed to be thrown to the floor.
To achieve this effect, the filmmakers tied her to a harness and yanked her to the ground,
simulating the force of the demon.
After the first take, she mentioned to director William Friedkin that the operator had pulled
the harness too hard, but on the second take, she was pulled down even harder, and shattered
her tailbone as a result.
Meanwhile, Blair's thrashing was accomplished by tying her to a mechanism using a special
corset, which could fling her up at a right angle, then back down again.
In one take, however, the corset came loose, and Blair repeatedly slammed her back into
the mechanism, fracturing her lower spine.
To make things even more uncomfortable, Friedkin used both takes in the final movie.
Both characters' screams of pain are very much real.
"I couldn't stand that he was willing to just get a quick shot of it before they called
the ambulance, you know."
In 1981, Noel Marshall released Roar, a film about big cats that has since become remembered
as one of the most disastrous film productions of all time.
The cast and crew suffered so many injuries from the film's animals that it's actually
not clear how many people ended up getting hurt.
During filming, Tippi Hedren suffered multiple scalp wounds and a shattered leg, while Melanie
Griffith was mauled, nearly costing her an eye, and required facial reconstruction.
And those weren't even the worst injuries, as a cinematographer was nearly scalped by
a lion and Marshall himself ended up getting gangrene from his numerous animal wounds.
"He's crazy.
He was crazy."
The problem was that the animals were entirely untrained, and all of the scenes with them
were improvised.
They were all the property of Marshall and Hedren, and there was no on-set trainer.
The film was shot on Marshall and Hedren's own ranch, and this was before most modern
safety requirements.
Of course, it must have hurt all the more when, after literally shedding blood for the
camera, Roar completely tanked at the box office.
You might not know who Charles McGraw is, but you've probably seen his movies.
As a character actor, McGraw made appearances in all sorts of films but the most famous
was 1960's Spartacus.
In this classic movie, McGraw plays Marcellus, Spartacus' gladiator trainer and a minor villain,
who has his comeuppance when Spartacus drowns him in a pot of soup during a slave revolt.
It was during the filming of the soup scene that McGraw ended up seriously injured.
Kirk Douglas, who played Spartacus, was meant to force McGraw's head into the soup, but
the actors slipped.
McGraw's jaw ended up hitting the side of the soup pot, which, of course, was an actual
iron cauldron.
The shot is in the final film, and if you watch it carefully, you can see the moment
of impact itself, and a somewhat dazed expression on McGraw's face, which is real, because Douglas
had just shattered McGraw's jaw.
That wasn't the end of it, though.
Douglas blamed McGraw for the accident, which angered stuntman Louie Elias.
Elias then stepped in to do a take of the scene, but ended up also hitting his face
on the pot, and ended up needing four stitches on his chin.
Elias claimed that was his own fault for slipping, but it's hard hard to rule out the possibility
that Kirk Douglas just liked smacking people in the face.
In 2001's Cast Away, Tom Hanks really lost 50 pounds to portray Chuck Noland, a FedEx
logistics officer who ends up stranded on a deserted island.
Amazingly, Hanks is able to carry the movie almost entirely by himself.
But the real surprise is that one minor injury on set nearly killed him.
During filming, Hanks suffered a small cut on his leg.
Nothing major, and Hanks basically shrugged it off.
But two weeks later, the wound was still there and still very sore.
Deciding that it was time to get the cut checked out, Hanks saw a doctor who told him something
shocking: He was about to die.
The cut had a staph infection, and it was getting worse by the minute.
Hanks had been completely unaware that his own blood was turning into poison inside of
him and passing the infection throughout his body.
Now, if this had happened to a FedEx employee on a deserted island, he'd be in big trouble.
In fact, it's not uncommon for survivors to have to battle infections while awaiting rescue.
Obviously, however, Tom Hanks has movie star health insurance, so he spent a few days in
the hospital, and thankfully, recovered just fine.
After six seasons of confusing twists and turns, Lost finally had its series finale
on May 25th 2010, with a two-parter simply titled "The End."
The episode features Matthew Fox's character Jack Shephard facing down The Man in Black,
played by Terry O'Quinn, in a cliff-side knife-fight as the island crumbles around them.
But production on the show very nearly ended in tragedy.
In an episode of his podcast dedicated to "The End," Jorge Garcia describes how during
the episode's filming, Fox was supposed to be stabbed by O'Quinn with a collapsible prop
knife.
Since this was a pretty low-risk scene, originally the production wasn't going to force Fox to
wear any sort of pad, but the stunt coordinator stepped in at the last second.
The only pad they could find that would fit under Fox's shirt without being too obvious
was a piece of Kevlar.
This ended up saving Matthew Fox's life, because a prop mix-up caused the collapsible knife
to be swapped for the real one.
O'Quinn stabbed Fox for real, but he only suffered minor injuries thanks to the Kevlar.
If he had gone without the pad as planned or if they had used any other pad, he would
have been very seriously injured, or even killed.
In 2004, Mel Gibson directed The Passion of the Christ, an R-rated depiction of the suffering
Jesus is said to have endured at the hands of the Romans during his execution.
In an era that saw the release of Hollywood's goriest horror movies, Gibson's dark and gritty
crucifixion story stood its own ground in terms of sheer violence.
Star Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus, also suffered quite a bit during filming.
A weird cavalcade of injuries befell him on set, more than one of which could easily have
killed him.
For example, the film shows Jesus carrying his own cross while being whipped by Roman
soldiers.
One of the extras in these scenes accidentally whipped Caviezel for real, leaving a 14-inch
gash on his back.
The cross prop itself also weighed 150 pounds and fell on Caviezel at one point, sending
him face-down in the sand and causing him to badly bite his own tongue.
This shot is included in the film, and the blood pouring from his mouth is totally real.
"The man put a stethoscope on my heart,and he said, 'Mel, he can die.'
Some of the greatest things about Mel Gibson was that he was a gambling man.
And he said, 'Jim, what do you think?'"
On top of being nearly crushed and whipped, during the filming of Jesus' famous Sermon
on the Mount, Caviezel was struck by lightning.
trial, but were all eventually acquitted.
2005's Syriana gave George Clooney an Academy Award for best supporting actor and a spot
on many critics' top 10 lists, but it also got him something far more dangerous: a pretty
serious brain injury.
During a scene in which Clooney is tied to a chair, the chair was accidentally knocked
over backward with Clooney still tied to it.
He hit his head on the hard ground, but thought he was okay, so he took it easy for a bit,
and then went back to work.
But over the next several months, Clooney began suffering from horrifyingly painful
headaches.
Because he had a family history of painkiller addiction, he didn't take any sort of pain
relieving drugs.
But the headaches were so bad that he has since revealed that he contemplated taking
his own life just to get away from the intense pain.
Clooney kept returning to the doctor over and over until they finally figured it out.
During the fall, he had ruptured a sac called the dura mater, a membrane that stretches
from the spine into the brain.
The headaches and associated pains had manifested because his brain wasn't floating in the fluid
like it's supposed to, but instead smacked into his skull, bruising it badly.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.