1. Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV
Sylvester Stallone wanted to make the confrontation between Rocky and Ivan Drago as realistic as possible, so he told actor Dolph Lundgren to have a legitimate fight during filming.
Lundgren struck him so hard that it broke his sternum and caused it to press on Stallone's heart, endangering his life and eventually leaving him in intensive care at the hospital for 8 days.
2. Jackie Chan in Armor of God
Jackie Chan is famous not only for doing his own stunts but for making them nearly impossible and near-suicidal stunts, so "getting hurt" by Jackie Chan is part of the very process of making a movie, something usual and customary.
However, his worst injury, one that "nearly killed him" as he explains in his autobiography, was in 1986 on the set of Armor of God.
In one scene, Chan had to jump off a wall and land in a tree. Although the first time the stunt went perfectly, the actor insisted on repeating the take; this second time, the tree branch snapped and Chan fell 5 meters to the ground, hitting his head on a stone. The result was a skull fracture and a piece piercing his brain. The actor had to undergo immediate surgery, resulting in a permanent hole in his head and mild hearing loss in his left ear.
3. Charlize Theron in Aeon Flux
Filming on the sci-fi thriller Aeon Flux had to be suspended for a month when Charlize Theron tried to perform a stunt that resulted in a significant neck injury. To recover, she was in a hospital for 5 days, and afterward, she had to undergo physiotherapy for six weeks.
Although in the end, it was not too serious, hitting herself like that really scared the actress, who has since tried to avoid any risky maneuver and leave her in the hands of a stunt double.
4. Jaimie Alexander in Thor: The Dark World
Jaimie Alexander, who played Sif in the film, was on leave for a month without being able to work on the set of Thor: The Dark World, after an accident involving rain, stairs, a slip, and, as a consequence, serious injuries.
According to what the actress recounted, she was going down a metal staircase when she slipped and fell, leaving her with the displacement of a vertebra and injuring 11 others, as well as a dislocated shoulder and a torn muscle.
5. Channing Tatum in The Eagle
During a scene in the epic historical drama The Eagle, Channing Tatum's character must cross a river of icy water. To warm up the actor between takes, a production member mixed boiling water with river water and poured it inside his suit. When the filming for that day was finished, Tatum decided to take a last splash of warm water, but the person in charge of doing it forgot to mix the boiling water with the cold water, pouring only the first, and causing serious burns.
What's worse, is that while the actor struggled to remove his suit so that the boiling water would come out, it kept going down, until he finally reached (ouch) his private parts.
The nearest hospital was an hour away, so the actor asked the driver (a former special forces marine) to knock him out, as he couldn't take the pain.
Later, Tatum proudly declared: "I had five doctors treating my burned penis."
6. Jim Caviezel in The Passion of the Christ
To deepen the religious and miraculous tone of the film itself, an unprecedented event occurred during its shooting, when the assistant director was struck twice by lightning. Minutes later, the protagonist Jim Caviezel himself was also struck by lightning, when he was recording the scene of the sermon on the mount.
“I knew I was going to get struck by lightning like 4 seconds before it happened,” said the actor, which ended with part of his head catching fire and the extras helping him extinguish it. Miraculously, he did not have any serious injuries.
During the rest of the shoot, however, Caviezel did not have a good time either, since some reports indicate that he suffered, among other things, hypothermia, pneumonia, allergies, and a lung infection.
