10 Actors Who Were Injured By Stunts Gone Wrong

There’s nothing more impressive than a mind-boggling stunt, especially the kind where you just can’t believe anyone could have pulled that off, let alone a bunch of actors on a movie set. Stunt work is inherently risky, and cinema is full of behind-the-scenes stories about actors or their stunt doubles just barely pulling off the physical feats that made their movies so iconic. It’s worth a little risk to make movies unforgettable, just as long as everything goes according to plan.

But even the most prepared movie set can have a problem or two, and when those problems involve the stunts, things can go really wrong. For as many incredible jumps and fight scenes and dance moves and disappearing acts that go right on just the first take, there are even more stories about things going very wrong, and stunt work in particular is a science so precise that being inches or milliseconds off your cue could spell serious injury.

Actors using stunt doubles is generally a pretty wise move, especially for movies that require a lot of potentially dangerous physical activity, but sometimes the star wants to do it themselves, or the shots require close-ups of a face the audience will recognize during an action scene, or doubles are just not within a movie’s budget. In these cases, if something goes wrong, the movie star takes the hit —and production is usually stalled for a few months while they recover.

For this list, we’ve chosen to honor ten actors who suffered on-set mishaps, some even making the final cuts of their movies, and who nonetheless managed to make a full recovery, with some even continuing to do their own stunts afterward (looking at you, Tom Cruise).