Tom Cruise, Jason Statham, Ellen Burstyn: Hollywood actors who suffered severe injuries on film sets

The seamless spectacle of Hollywood movies is always praised, but there are times when the actors have put their bodies at risk, sometimes accidentally and sometimes unintentionally. The incidents are wild and the impact they left on the actors’ bodies is also traumatic. Here’s a throwback to when Hollywood actors got severely injured while shooting.

Tom Cruise

During the filming of ‘Mission Impossible 6’, Tom Cruise broke his ankle while leaping from one building to the next, and during the same shot he continued to run on it to finish the stunt. During the stunt, Cruise’s foot smashed into the wall, resulting in a broken ankle. According to BuzzFeed, Cruise said that he "knew instantly that it was broken," but he pushed through the pain because he didn't want to have to film the stunt again, so he pulled himself on top of the building and hobbled past the camera to secure the shot.

Ellen Burstyn

There are several reasons why ‘The Exorcist (1973)’ was considered a cursed film set and Ellen Burstyn’s permanent spine injury is considered one of them. During a particular scene in the movie, the actor was purposefully slammed into the ground twice while shooting which resulted in a permanent injury in her spine.

In the scene, Ellen Burstyn's character was supposed to be thrown to the ground by her possessed daughter. Burstyn, who was wearing a wire, was pulled too hard by the person controlling the wires and that hurt her spine. Cursed or not, the incident was a traumatic incident for Ellen Burstyn.

Sean Astin

Sean Astin accidentally cut his foot open on a shard of glass that was sticking out of the water while filming a scene in ‘Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.’ It all went down during a scene shot at Lake Mavora, New Zealand. Astin had been wearing prosthetic hobbit feet, but one wrong step turned deadly serious. A sharp object hidden in the riverbed stabbed straight through the fake foot, and deep into his real one. Astin suffered a gruesome foot injury that left him gashed, bloody, and airborne in a helicopter.

Margaret Hamilton

During filming of ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ Margaret Hamilton suffered severe burns to her face and hand when a fire special effect for the Wicked Witch exit scene went wrong, igniting her copper-based green makeup and costume, leading to a six-week recovery before she could return to work and famously refusing to shoot any more fire sequences. The actor sustained second-degree burns on her face and third-degree burns on her hand.