Note: There are mentions (though no photos or graphic descriptions) of animal death and cruelty.
1. Natalie Wood, who starred in a number of films including West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, and Gypsy, died under extremely mysterious circumstances while filming Brainstorm.
Wood, who was 43 at the time, was with her husband Robert Wagner on his boat on a weekend vacation. According to Wagner himself (though he initially denied this), he and Wood argued, and then he went to bed without her. The next morning, she was found drowned a mile away.
Wood had been drinking, and it's possible her death was an accident, but she was found with bruises that could mean she was attacked. Nearby witnesses had heard a woman scream. The captain of the boat, Dennis Davern, allegedly drunkenly confessed to Wood's sister years later that he'd seen Wagner push Wood, who then fell overboard, and that Wagner refused to rescue her...though this is unconfirmed.
We'll likely never know exactly what happened...though one person might: Christopher Walken, who was also there that night, and had reportedly also argued with Wagner.
2. Ed Harris almost drowned on the set of the James Cameron film The Abyss — he shot a bunch of the scenes underwater, and in one scene, one of his safety divers got caught in a cable. So, when Harris signaled for oxygen, no one came — another crew member came to the rescue, but incorrectly inserted the regulator, so that Harris was breathing a mixture of air and water. “For a split second, I really thought I was a goner,” Harris said.
He was saved by the underwater director of photography, but was still traumatized by the experience: He cried on the way home. "There was a part of me that was really disappointed in myself for not being able to do this thing. And there was also a part of me that just didn’t know what to do. … I really thought I was going to die for a second."
3. James Cameron also almost drowned in one of the diving tanks when the assistant director — who was monitoring his oxygen levels — went on break. He threw off his equipment to quickly surface, but another diver intercepted him to give him his own extra equipment. However, the equipment was faulty, and Cameron breathed in water. He actually had to punch the diver in the face to get him off of him so he could continue to the surface.
4. Jason Statham also almost died in a freak accident while filming The Expendables 3. He was test driving a truck when the brakes failed and it flew off a cliff and 60 feet into the sea and was impaled. He was forced to leap from the car (the doors had been removed) and landed in the water, where he would have drowned if he had not been a strong swimmer and diver. "It's the closest I've ever been to drowning," the actor admitted.
5. A bunch of the actors involved in Roar (which featured "132 big cats, one elephant, three aoudad sheep, and a collection of ostriches, flamingos, marabou, storks, and black swans," according to star Tippi Hedren) were injured by the animals. Writer/director/producer/Tippi's then-husband Noel Marshall literally had to star because no other male star wanted to work with that many dangerous animals. The other stars were Hedren's daughter, Melanie Griffith, and two of Marshall's sons.
Griffith was mauled so badly she needed plastic surgery. Hedren herself got gangrene and needed skin grafts. Marshall contracted blood poisoning. Cinematographer Jan de Bont literally had his scalp torn off (he survived). However, no animals were reportedly harmed.
6. Multiple strange deaths and illnesses ocurred to those involved in Rosemary's Baby. First, composer Krzysztof Komeda died after falling at a party and going into a four-month coma (which mirrored how Rosemary's friend died in the book). Then producer William Castle almost died after severe kidney stones that caused him to hallucinate scenes from the film — he reportedly even yelled, “Rosemary, for God’s sake, drop the knife!”
And director Roman Polanski's heavily pregnant wife Sharon Tate died when she was murdered by the Manson Family. Tate had appeared in the background of some of the film's scenes and had originally wanted the lead role of the pregnant but cursed Rosemary. Finally, former Beatle John Lennon was killed across the street from Rosemary's Baby's main filming location (the Beatles released a song called "Helter Skelter"...words that were written in blood at the scene of Tate's murder).
7. Speaking of serial killer Charles Manson — he was friendly with a number of big players in Hollywood, including Dennis Wilson and Mike Love, the co-founders of the Beach Boys. In fact, Manson and his friends actually moved into Wilson's house. Wilson later allegedly told Love that he'd seen Manson murder a Black man (though this is contested), causing Wilson to break off the friendship.
8. Multiple dark happenings plagued the last few Harry Potter films, including the murder of Robert Knox, who played Marcus Belby. Knox was stabbed to death protecting his brother.
9. Jamie Waylett, who played Crabbe in the films, was fired before the last film (you may have noticed Blaise Zabini in scenes Crabbe was meant to be in). He had been arrested for marijuana possession and possession of a knife. He was also later arrested for violent disorder during the London riots, where he was reportedly seen with a petrol bomb.
10. Daniel Radcliffe's stunt double David Holmes was paralyzed after a stunt gone wrong in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. He was doing a stunt on a broomstick when an explosion went wrong and he slammed into the wall, falling to the floor. "I have gone from being able to stand on my hands for half an hour at a time, and then all of a sudden I can't sit up in bed," he said he realized upon waking up.
Although on a positive note, Holmes has since taken up car racing and hosts a podcast with Daniel Radcliffe, who has called Holmes "an incredibly important person in my life." Radcliffe had also hosted a celebrity charity auction and dinner to pay for Holmes's medical bills, and the two remain close — as well as Holmes and other HP stars.
11. O. J. Simpson is best known today for the murder trial of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman. What you may not know about O. J. is that he was getting more and more into acting, and just a month before the murders, he had completed filming the pilot for Frogmen. After the murders, the series was obviously not picked up, and the pilot never aired.
Also, Simpson's costar Todd Allen had once accompanied O. J. to Ross Cutlery between shooting. Ross Cutlery is the suspected source of the murder weapon, which was never discovered.
12. In the last creepy Hollywood facts post, we talked about real corpses and skeletons being used on film. Well, here's a new and possibly the worst example — the Hong Kong film Men Behind the Sun, which allegedly used real footage from a child's autopsy.
13. Years later, people are still bringing up alternate theories as to why Bruce Lee died from brain swelling. It was originally believed it was an allergic reaction to the painkiller Equagesic, which he took after a headache — however, several months earlier, he'd actually had a similar reaction (almost dying from brain swelling) without the painkiller, while working on Enter the Dragon.
In that incident, the brain swelling seemed to have been caused by heat stroke — Lee had a reduced ability to deal with heat because he'd had his sweat glands removed from his armpits. Why? So he wouldn't have sweaty pits onscreen. So, basically....his death may have been caused by pressure to appear perfect onscreen.
14. Stunt person deaths are always tragic, but they feel especially dark when they come from family movies like the Disney film Gone Fishin'. Stunt doubles for the film's leads (Joe Pesci and Danny Glover) were filming a stunt where a boat goes off a ramp then lands between two other boats when something went wrong and the boat rolled and flipped off the side of the ramp, hitting the two boats it was supposed to land between and sending them flying into a crowd of extras and stunt performers.
29-year-old Janet Wilder, who often worked as a part-time stunt person on shoots to spent more time with her husband (longtime stunt person Scott Wilder), was struck and killed while holding the hand of her husband (who was also injured). They were both with Scott's father, a legendary Hollywood stunt person.
15. Speaking of Disney...Phill Lewis, best known for starring as the beloved Ms. Moseby on Disney Channel sitcoms The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and Suite Life on Deck, drove drunk and fatally hit a 21-year-old woman in 1991. He served one year in prison in the middle of his career, then went right back to a booming acting career, appearing in a number of sitcoms before beginning his tenure with Disney.
16. Stuntperson Paul Dallas died at age 34 while filming a stunt for the show L.A. Heat. In the stunt, Dallas jumped from a three-story building and was meant to land on an air bag. However, he missed the bag, and died from massive head injuries soon after. He had actually previously founded a company focused specifically on producing safe air bags.
17. Just a month later, up-and-coming 27-year-old actor Ken Steadman died in a dune buggy accident on the set of the show Sliders. The buggy flipped when it hit a dry lake bed.
18. Lorenza Izzo similarly almost drowned in The Green Inferno — and the film even used the footage of her almost dying. It's the scene where her character Justine tries to escape a canoe of cannibals and jumps into the water — Izzo grabbed a rock and fought against the current as she screamed. Director Eli Roth said they had a safe word, but "it was so loud that when she was screaming it at the top of her lungs, none of us heard her." They thought she was acting until they realized she was shouting in English and Spanish.
19. Another cannibal-themed film, Cannibal Holocaust, caused a ton of controversy upon its release. In fact, in Italy, director Ruggero Deodato was charged with obscenity, animal cruelty, and later murder after it was suspected that some of the actors had actually died in the film. The actors literally had to come to court to prove they were alive. Deodato was, however, charged with animal cruelty (though it was later overturned) — multiple animals had been killed onscreen.
20. Relatedly, a real snake (a harmless bull snake) was reportedly killed onscreen in Friday the 13th. It was killed with a machete while its handler — who was not told it would be killed — watched. The handler was reportedly "inconsolable" and had to be held back by crew members.
21. And finally, Judy Garland endured some seriouslyyyy messed up treatment as a child star. When Garland was 10, her mother would reportedly feed her stimulants to stay awake for days straight on shoots, then sleeping pills when she was done. Studio bosses allegedly did the same to Garland and frequent costar Mickey Rooney in her preteen years (though Rooney has denied this).
To make her look younger in The Wizard of Oz, Garland was reportedly put on a diet of black coffee, chicken soup, diet pills, cigarettes (80 a day), and amphetamines. Her ex-husband Sid Luft also claimed that the 40-something munchkin actors would grope her on set by putting their hands under her dress. For her starring role, Garland was reportedly only paid $500 a week, which was closer to Toto's salary than any of the male leads.
