13 Movie Scenes That Went Terribly, Terribly Wrong For The Actors

Robert Pattinson almost tore his butt cheek while shooting Twilight.

1. Brendan Fraser was almost hanged for real while filming The Mummy (1999).

Universal Pictures

Turns out, a fake hanging isn't quite as ~safe~ as it sounds. "They killed me for 18 seconds. I was hanging from the noose standing on a board," Fraser said. "Steve [Sommers] said, 'The noose doesn't match the stunt guys. Can we bring up the tension a little bit?' They did the take and I figured, 'I'll hold my breath,' and something went wrong. The next thing I knew, I was waking up."

2. Robert Pattinson almost tore his butt cheek while filming Twilight (2008).

Summit Entertainment

"We were doing the fight scene at the end of the first one, and I tore my glute — well, almost tore it," Pattinson said. "In my second shot of the whole movie, of the whole series. They had to get a physiotherapist to come in and massage my butt cheek for the rest of the day." *Insert your "Twilight was an ACTUAL pain in the butt" jokes here.*

3. Margaret Hamilton was set on fire while filming The Wizard of Oz (1939).

MGM

There's no shortage of terrifying stories that came out of this film's set, but the most famous would probably be Hamilton's flame-filled exit. Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, experienced a trap-door malfunction during the Wicked Witch's famous first appearance, which left her entirely exposed to an active pyrotechnic device, causing her to sustain third-degree burns.

4. Sean Astin impaled his foot on glass while filming The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001).

New Line Cinema

Similarly to The Wizard of Oz, there's no shortage of injury tales from the set of this trilogy. One of the more serious injuries involved Astin when a shard of glass went THROUGH his foot as he was wading into the water. “His foot had been completely impaled on this shard of glass,” director Peter Jackson said. “We were a good hour and a half’s drive to town. We called for a chopper.”

5. Isla Fisher was drowning in front of an audience while filming Now You See Me (2013).

Summit Entertainment / Via youtube.com

The idea of drowning is bad enough, but add in a room full of people watching and you have a nightmare. This was a reality for Fisher while shooting a complicated magic-trick sequence. "Even though I had a quick-release magnetic chain on the handcuffs, the chain that went between my legs couldn't be broken and it got stuck," Fisher said. "Everyone just thought I was doing fabulous acting." Luckily, the crew caught on after a few minutes.

6. Sylvester Stallone was in intensive care for five days while filming Rocky IV (1985).

United Artists

Stallone IS Rocky, if for no other reason than that he took a real-life beating from Dolph Lundgren...because he thought it was a good idea? "I said, 'Hey, I got an idea: For the first 45 seconds, really try to knock me out. I mean, go for it.' Bad idea. He comes across — boom, boom! He catches me in the chest," Stallone said. "Next thing I know, I’m in intensive care for five days. He hit my heart so hard that it banged against my ribs and started to swell."

7. And Meryl Streep ALSO nearly drowned while filming The River Wild (1994).

Universal Pictures

When THE Meryl Streep tells you she's tired, maybe listen? While shooting this film, Streep — who did many of her own stunts — was told by the director to do ONE MORE take on a very rough river, which nearly cost her her life. "The boat surfed down into the hole, rose, and flipped over, and I went into the river. I remember sinking down to the bottom with this powerful and freezing water pulling me in deeper," Streep said. "My first thought was that if I died, my husband would come to the set with a machete."

8. Linda Hamilton sustained partial hearing loss while filming Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

TriStar Pictures

During the escape-from-the-hospital scene, Hamilton made the simple mistake of forgetting to put her ear plugs in, which proved to have serious consequences. "To this day, I have serious hearing loss in one ear. We were shooting a scene in an elevator," Hamilton said. "The doors closed, we had shotguns and started blasting, and suddenly I was in agony. I fell to my knees in pain. I thought I'd been shot. The noise was so intense, so extreme, I'll never forget it."

9. Daniel Craig sliced off the tip of his finger while filming Quantum of Solace (2008).

Sony Pictures

Craig wouldn't truly be James Bond if he hadn't brushed off an injury like it was nothing, which is exactly what happened during a stunt gone wrong during his second outing as Bond. “It wasn’t as extreme as all that. I was bleeding a lot. I had to get it cauterized," Craig said. "Filming stopped and everybody went, ‘Oh god! He sliced the end of his finger off!’ They went looking for it but couldn't find it.”

10. Jim Caviezel was literally struck by lightning while filming The Passion of the Christ.

Newmarket Films

Yup, you read that correctly. Caviezel and assistant director Jan Michelini were on set together under an umbrella when lightning literally struck them. "I’m about a hundred feet away from them, when I glance over and see lightning coming out of Caviezel’s ears. Both Caviezel and Michelini got struck,” producer Steve McEveety said. "The main bolt hit Caviezel, and one of its forks hit Michelini’s umbrella."

11. Harrison Ford AND J.J. Abrams both broke bones while filming Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).

Disney

Ford and the Millennium Falcon go way back, but apparently, the ship has some bad blood with the actor. During shooting, a hydraulic door shut on him, which caused MULTIPLE injuries to MULTIPLE people. "The door went down; he broke his ankle. It was pretty brutal," director J.J. Abrams said. "I was trying to lift the door off of him and I broke my back. I felt this pop, and a week later I went to the doctor and he was like, 'Oh dear, you fractured your L4.'"

12. Channing Tatum put his head through a wall while filming Foxcatcher (2014).

Sony Pictures Classics

What was supposed to be a simple stunt involving Tatum's head and a prop mirror almost turned into a trip to the ER when Tatum got caught up in the heat of the moment and slammed his head multiple times. “I went through the wall on the other side,” Tatum said. “I missed the stud by about 4 inches. I was lucky. But the cut on my head was real.”

13. And, finally, Cary Elwes was actually knocked out while filming The Princess Bride (1987).

20th Century Fox

The script required an actor to "tap" Elwes on the head with his sword, but the sword was SO HEAVY, the force of the tap knocked him out for real. “That was the last thing I remember from that day’s shoot,” Elwes said. “I woke up in the emergency room, still in costume, to the sound of stitches being sewn into my head. From the same doctor, no less, who had treated me only a few weeks earlier for my broken toe. I remember him saying to me after I came to, ‘Well, Zorro! You seem to be a little accident prone, don’t you?'”