As movie and TV viewers, we get to see the finished product, but we miss out on what happens behind the scenes. Check out these popular actors and actresses who suffered injuries and near-death experiences while Filming. 

1. Charlize Theron

In 2005, Charlize Theron was filming the action movie Aeon Flux when she attempted a backflip in platform shoes. Unfortunately, she landed directly on her neck. Not only could she have suffered a fatal injury because of a slipped disc that nearly penetrated her spinal cord, but she would have also been paralyzed. 

2. George Clooney

While shooting Syriana in 2005, George Clooney was supposed to be brutally beaten for a scene. The chair he was tied to got knocked over (fiercely), and he sustained a bad head injury that included significant brain bruising. He was forced to undergo surgery and eventually healed up quite nicely. 

3. Halle Berry 

Head injuries are no joke, and Halle found herself on the end of a particularly bad one when she was filming a fight scene for the 2013 Thriller, The Call. She slammed her head on the ground and knocked herself unconscious. Thankfully, she recovered quickly. 

4. Jackie Chan 

Jackie Chan is the king of self-inflicted wounds and broken bones in the entertainment industry. He has always taken great pride in performing his own stunts, and there are more incidents than we can count. Nonetheless, we'll go with Armour of God, filmed in 1986. 

Jackie jumped from a tree but missed his landing because all the branches he grabbed broke. He smashed his head into the ground, fracturing his skull and blood was pouring from his ears. He has a plastic plug that he uses to fill the hole in his head to this day. 

5. Sylvester Stallone 

Talk about making the audience believe it! Sylvester Stallone decided he wanted Dolph Lundgren, his co-star in the 1985 film Rocky IV, to knock him out to sell the scene. That resulted in his rib cage getting punched in, his heart being compressed from the swelling, and nine days in ICU. Ouch. 

6. Uma Thurman

When Uma Thurman did a scene for Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief in 2010, she nearly got hit by a van. The vehicle was rolling toward her rapidly because someone forgot to apply the emergency brakes. She was completely unaware of what was happening, but luckily, her co-star Pierce Brosnan jumped in and stopped the van before it hit her. 

7. Jim Caviezel 

The 2004 film Passion of the Christ caused Jim Caviezel to put himself in unfavorable conditions that led to him getting hypothermia, a lung infection, and pneumonia while filming. If that wasn't bad enough, he also got struck by lightning when recording one of the most iconic scenes from the movie. Yikes. 

8. Brendan Fraser 

During his 1999 film The Mummy, Brendan Fraser wanted the hanging scene to be as real as possible, so he chose to act it out without pulling any punches. He needed resuscitation, as he stopped breathing and woke up to someone thanking God that he was still alive. 

9. Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence came dangerously close to suffocating due to a fog machine that started malfunctioning while she was running through a tunnel for a scene in The Hunger Games (2012). The area was enclosed, and Lawrence had to fight her way out to avoid a seriously close call. 

10. Jason Statham 

Jason Statham is a British action hero who has won many people's hearts with his rugged charm and dangerous, sometimes unbelievable stunts. One of those stunts almost cost him his life when filming The Expendables 3 in 2014. The brakes went out on a three-ton vehicle that he was driving, and he jumped out right before it ran straight into the Black Sea. 

11 – Dylan O'Brien 

Maze Runner: The Death Cure was released in 2018 but filmed in 2017 for the most part. When O'Brien was doing a stunt scene that required him to jump from the top of one car to another, he got caught underneath and dragged. He fractured his eye sockets and cheekbones and had numerous lacerations. They halted production for a year after that, but at least he lived to tell the tale. 

12. Michael J Fox

The camera crew allowed Michael J. Fox to act out a hanging scene on his own during his role in the 1999 movie Back to the Future Part III. He just had to know the proper hand placement to prevent himself from getting choked, but he miscalculated terribly. Someone had to climb up and cut him down once they realized that he was on the verge of death. 

13. Kristin Chenoweth

Kristin Chenoweth once appeared as a guest on the TV series The Good Wife, but she endured a terrible injury in 2012 during the production process. She got struck in the head by a heavy-duty piece of lighting equipment. Her entire body got thrown into a curb, and she sustained a cracked hairline, cracked ribs, a skull fracture that was seven inches long, broken teeth, and trauma. Chenoweth never made another appearance on the show after that. 

14. Kate Winslet

Titanic hit the big screen in 1997 and was an instant classic. Many people don't know that Kate Winslet almost drowned while shooting the scene in the water. She says that her costume got caught on one of the underwater set pieces, and she was stuck and unable to breathe. Winslet shimmied her way out of the coat but said she thought she'd burst because of a lack of oxygen. 

15 – Tom Cruise

While giving an interview on a talk show, Emily Blunt, Tom Cruise's co-star in Edge of Tomorrow, discussed a driving scene the duo did in 2014. She said that she was driving and could hear Cruise telling her to hit the brakes repeatedly. She was too late and ended up crashing into a tree, nearly killing him. 

16. Carey Mulligan

Carey Mulligan was filming her character's death scene in the 2020 thriller Promising Young Woman when she also suffocated in real life. Her co-star placed the pillow over her face too tightly and wasn't aware that she was scared out of her mind because she couldn't breathe. He stopped when she gave a signal, but she burst into tears because it felt like she was about to die. 

17. Bob Denver

In 1966, popular Gilligan's Island star Bob Denver had a real Daniel in the lion's den moment on set. He somehow got trapped in a hut with a lion ready to pounce on him. The only thing that saved him was the bed the lion jumped on broke and the animal got distracted just long enough for the trainer to tackle it to the ground. 

18. Jennifer Lopez

In one of Lopez's recent movies, Shotgun Wedding, released in 2022, she acted out a scene where she was supposed to fall off a cliff. Ironically, her dress really did get caught in the tire of the vehicle that was about to cascade down the cliff. Josh Duhamel pulled her to safety in the nick of time. 

19. Isla Fisher

Isla Fisher was filming a drowning scene in 2013 for the movie Now You See Me when she noticed something was wrong. While submerged and chained in a tank of water, the magnetic chain that was meant to be broken easily got stuck. She couldn't breathe, and everyone assumed she was acting out the scene and not truly in distress. She managed to free herself, though she was really shaken up. 

20. Gerard Butler

In 2012, Butler visited a location in Northern California known for dangerous waters as he recorded a surfing segment for his movie Chasing Mavericks. While out there, a strong wave knocked him from his board. He ended up underwater until someone eventually came to his rescue. 

21. John Abraham

John Abraham almost got shot in the neck from point-blank range while acting out a scene in Shootout at Wadala in 2012. Anil Kapoor played a cop who was supposed to “shoot” him using a gun that contained blanks from 15 feet away. Instead, he was less than two feet away, but thanks to horrible aim, the bullet burst into flames and grazed the side of Abraham's neck instead of the middle. A little more to the right, and it would've been all over for him. 

22. Diane Kruger

In 2008, Diane Kruger nearly died from asphyxiation during the choking scene in Inglourious Basterds. Why? Quentin Tarantino decided it would be better for him to strangle her with his bare hands to make it more believable. He took it a little too far, and Kruger lost consciousness before being revived. 

23. Aaron Paul

In an unbelievable stroke of luck, Aaron Paul managed not to get crushed by a boulder that came crashing down while filming the first season of Breaking Bad in 2007. A strong wind blew and caused the boulder to fall from high up directly onto the spot where Paul was standing moments before. He'd asked the director if he could do the take from another area, which is how he avoided the collision. 

24. Tom Hanks

Wanting to go all out for his character in Cast Away, Tom Hanks ended up with a nearly fatal staph infection that was eating its way through his leg in 2000. He had refused to take a bath for days straight and cut his leg badly during filming. He thought it was just a sore, but doctors told him he could have died if the infection entered his bloodstream.