Jackie Chan’s Brain

Armour of God(1986)

Jackie Chan has already appeared on our list but this injury takes the cake. Chan actually almost died when a simple stunt (simple for him) turned into brain surgery. While shooting Armour of Godin Yugoslavia, he completed a stunt where he had to jump from a castle wall to a tree below. Always the perfectionist, he decided to try the stunt again to get a better take. Unfortunately this time he missed the tree branch and slammed his head against the rocky ground. The impact was so fierce that a piece of his skull had shot up into his brain, and blood poured from his ears.

After being rushed to a hospital for brain surgery, Jackie Chan was able to make a full  recovery. Now he has a permanent hole in his head now, with a plastic plug there to keep his brain inside his skull.

Brad Pitt’s Achilles Tendon

Troy

In the movie Troy, Brad Pit plays the historic role of Achilles, the Greek warrior who was invulnerable in all of his body except for his heel. Strangely enough, it was Pitt’s Achilles tendon which brought down the big Hollywood star. In a scene in the movie, Achilles runs, jumps, and easily kills a giant Trojan warrior named Boagrius, played by Nathan Jones. The injury came when the actor landed.

Director Wolfgang Petersen described what happened on set. “Look at his face when he lands, there’s a second you can see something’s wrong. Great for the scene, terrible for the movie. Brad was hobbling around for months and we had to come back later to finish the last scene – which, ironically, was another big one-on-one combat scene, the one between Brad and Eric (Bana). We shot the first few frames, when they size each other up, in September. But it wasn’t ’til December we shot the rest.”

Source: SMH

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Hand

DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012)

While shooting a scene for Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Leonardo DiCaprio sliced open his hand. The actor needed stitches after he slammed his hand so hard on a table that a huge gash opened and he began to bleed while filming a scene. “Leo had slammed his hand on the table countless times and he moved his hand further and he crushed a crystal cordial glass,” producerStacey Sher said. “Blood was dripping down his hand. He never broke character. He kept going. He was in such a zone. It was very intense. He required stitches.”

Jamie Alexander’s Spine

Thor: The Dark World (2012)

Jamie Alexander took a spill on a metal staircase while filming the upcoming sequel to Thor, Thor: The Dark World. It turned out to be quite the fall because she injured several parts of her body, from her vertebrae to her shoulder. The actress talked to the New York Post about what happened.

“It was raining, it was dark outside, it was like 5 in the morning — and I went down a metal staircase and slipped and slipped a disc in my thoracic spine and chipped 11 of my vertebrae… I knocked my left shoulder out of place and tore my rhomboid on my right side . . . It took me out of filming for a month.,” she said. She also said, “Everyone thinks it’s really funny to tease me about staircases now that I fell down one . ”

Source: NYPost

Channing Tatum’s Penis

The Eagle (2011)

While filming The Eagle in Scotland, Channing Tatum received one of the worst surprises of his life. In a scene in a freezing river, actors would stay warm  by pouring a mix of boiling water and river water down their suits. Channing was asked if he wanted some warm water by a crew member and the actor thought, why not? The only problem is the crew member forgot to mix the boiling water with the cold river water. The water was so hot it basically burnt the skin off the tip of his penis. He was rushed to a hospital, put on morphine. Thankfully for Channing and his wife, everything healed OK.

George Clooney’s Back

SYRIANA (2005)

George Clooney suffered a severe back injury on the set of Syriana when a stunt went wrong and injured his spine. The injury was so painful that he contemplated committing suicide. In an interview with Rolling Stone Clooney said, “I was at a point where I thought, ‘I can’t exist like this. I can’t actually live.’” “I was lying in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm, unable to move, having these headaches where it feels like you’re having a stroke, and for a short three-week period, I started to think, ‘I may have to do something drastic about this. You start to think in terms of, you don’t want to leave a mess, so go in the garage, go in the car, start the engine.” he continued.

Lucky for Clooney and his fans, the actor successfully had his spine surgically repaired and even went on to win an Oscar for his supporting role in movie.

Source: RollingStone

Arnold Schwarzenegger & Sly Stallone’s

Shoulders

THE EXPENDABLES 2 (2012)

I don’t know if it’s just because both Arnold Schwarzenegger (64 years old) and Sly Stallone (65 years old) are getting older or if the strain of working on the sequel The Expendables was too much for them.  Because both actors required shoulder surgery after shooting the 2012 action movie. Separately, they both went to the same hospital, at the same time to get the operation where Schwarzenegger took a picture and tweeted “Look who was coincidentally waiting in line behind me for his shoulder surgery. Now we’re ready for another round of great times and action when we shoot The Tomb. #greattobeback.”

Jackie Chan’s Right Leg

RUMBLE IN THE BRONX (1995)

One of the best things about Jackie Chan movies is that in the end credits, you get to see the stunts that went wrong. In the Rumble in the Bronx end credits, Chan is seen jumping onto a moving hovercraft. When he lands, he immediately rolls over and grabs his foot. Later in the end credits you learn that he broke his right foot and had to finish the movie in a cast. The clever thing is that production had a special shoe-painted sock made that could cover the cast and watching the movie, you’ll never notice it. (BTW that is Jackie Chan singing the theme song, A Good Conscience underneath the end credits.)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Arm

PREMIUM RUSH (2012)

Hollywood uses fake glass when actors are thrown into or just smash glass in a movie. It is made of sugar and will not cut or injure you. Unfortunately, when actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt crashed into the back of a taxi’s window while filming Premium Rush, the taxi was real and so was the glass. The cut he suffered on his right arm required 31 stitches and left one NYC taxi driver with a great story to tell.

Bruce Willis’ Left Ear

DIE HARD (1988)

The greatest lone-wolf action movie of all-time (OK, maybe that is just my opinion) Die Hard, features rockets, bombs, and gunfire. Safety measure where put in place to protect the actors from the fire and heat of the pyrotechnics; however there was just one small oversight.  They forgot to protect the actors’ ears. In fact, Bruce Willis lost two-thirds of his hearing in his left ear during filming. In the scene, Willis had to fire a gun loaded with extra loud blanks from underneath a table. This made for a great scene but the absence of ear plugs along with the excruciatingly loud noise bouncing off the bottom of the table back into the actor’s ear left him permanently damaged.

Written by Shawn Cauthen