With modern technology, everything is possible with the help of CGI. From blood to collapsing buildings, everything can be created virtually. For action scenes, actors use special effects or fake blood, but there are cases in which unfortunate actors were injured while filming and they used their own blood for the final take. These cases were a result of accidents during filmmaking and these actors didn’t choose to interrupt the process and decided to continue filming with their real blood. This added a layer of authenticity to the scene, although they had to sacrifice their well-being for it. Thankfully, these injuries were not serious. Here are 10 actors who bled for real for a movie scene.
10) Leonardo DiCaprio’s Hand In ‘Django Unchained’
DiCaprio’s hand injury happened during one of the movie’s most climactic scenes – as Calvin Candie (DiCaprio) confronts Django (Jamie Foxx) and Dr. Shultz (Christoph Waltz). Candie has learned the pair have been pulling an elaborate scam on him to retrieve Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), a slave on his vast Mississippi plantation.
Candie slams his hand on a dining room table. It was during one take of that scene when DiCaprio unintentionally slammed his hand into glass, creating a gash that later required medical care. But that didn’t stop him from doing his job. As his hand bled quite visibly, DiCaprio kept going, even using the hand as a new dramatic prop.
9) Jim Caviezel In ‘The Passion of the Christ’
Jim Caviezel portrayed Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. During filming, he was struck by lightning, accidentally scourged, had his shoulder dislocated, and suffered from pneumonia and hypothermia. The Jesus actor revealed that he bit through his tongue while carrying the cross through Jerusalem. The blood coming down his lips is actually his own blood.
He had also hurt his shoulder but still managed to act in the scene with Virgin Mary actress Maia Morgenstern. In another scene where he was injured was when the Roman soldier scourged Jesus. It turns out Caviezel was actually hit and saw him take a 14-inch gash on his back. In fact, the blow hurt so much it, he walked out of the take and fell down.
8) Steve Carell’s Chest In ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’
The 40-Year-Old Virgin was Apatow’s directorial debut and Carell’s first starring role. The 2005 R-rated comedy sees Carell play Andy Stitzer – a hapless, nerdy electronics store employee who inadvertently lets slip to his co-workers he’s still a virgin.
Unfortunately for Steve Carell, the wince-inducing wax scene was off the cuff too. In other words, his screams of pain and even the blood on his chest were all real and captured documentary-style with the help of a four-camera set-up. The rest of the cast’s reactions – Paul Rudd giggling in the background, Seth Rogen cringing, or Romany Malco looking horrified and having to leave the room – were real too.
7) Sean Bean’s Eye In ‘Patriot Games’
While filming a fight scene for the 1992 film Patriot Games, co-star Harrison Ford accidentally caught Sean with a boat hook, resulting in eight stitches and a lasting scar above his eye. He continued to film the scene and contributed his own blood for the scene.
6) Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thumb In ‘Nightcrawler’
Nightcrawler was a demanding film for actor Jake Gyllenhaal. He needed to shed 25-30 pounds throughout the span of shooting. He worked out a ridiculous amount and needed to restrict his caloric intake. He was nearly starving for most of the production. During the filmmaking, Gyllenhaal hammered a mirror shut in the restroom and cut open his left thumb. The injury was terrible to the point that director Dan Gilroy drove Gyllenhaal to the hospital and held up with him while he got 46 stitches.
After that injury, Gyllenhaal promptly got back to set and recorded two additional scenes where he put forth a valiant effort to hide his cut-up hand from the camera.
5) Sean Astin’s Foot In ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’
While filming the final scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring where Sam (Sean Astin) runs into the water to chase down Frodo (Elijah Wood), Astin cut his foot on a piece of glass in the water. Although the crew had cleared out the water before the scene, they, unfortunately, missed the small fragment that Astin happened to step on. Astin didn’t let the injury stop him and continued to film the scene.
4) Martin Sheen’s Hand In ‘Apocalypse Now’
Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is unquestionably one of the most iconic war films of all time, and it wastes no time at all hitting audiences with some breathtaking sequences. The start of the film features Martin Sheen’s Captain Benjamin L. Willard alone in a hotel room being emotionally crushed by his experiences in Vietnam.
It’s a jaw-droppingly intense scene that is made only more powerful by the presence of Sheen’s actual blood, the actor cutting himself badly on a piece of glass mid-shot. What you may not know about it is that its presence in the final cut can be attributed to Sheen begging his director to keep the cameras rolling.
3) Daryl Hannah’s Elbow In ‘Blade Runner’
Daryl Hanna’s character, Pris, in the film Blade Runner is in a dark alley attempting to get away from J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson). But things don’t go as planned, and Hannah slips on the wet pavement and falls into a car, smashing her elbow on the window. This is one scene that looks like it was part of the script, but Hannah’s injury was completely unintentional. She later learned she had chipped her elbow in eight places, and she still has a scar to this day.
2) Noel Marshall’s Hand In ‘Roar’
For years, rumors have persisted that 70 people were injured during this film’s spectacularly ill-fated shoot — when Drafthouse re-released the film in 2015, they used that number to frame up their catchy tagline: “No animals were harmed in the making of this movie. 70 members of the cast and crew were.”
Altogether, Hedren and Marshall carried 132 creatures to their Los Angeles home. While recording the film, wounds with the creatures were normal, and many were left in the finished product of the film. One especially upsetting scene shows Marshall attempting to separate a battle between two male lions. At the point when he attempts to pull one lion away, the creature turns on him and bounces up, compelling Marshall to tumble to the ground. When he stands up, he’s obviously seeping from a cut on his hand.
1) Anya Taylor-Joy’s Nose In ‘Emma’
In the recent adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, which came out in February, Taylor-Joy played the eponymous matchmaker. One scene in the film sees Emma suffer a sudden nosebleed in an emotional moment, and Taylor-Joy somehow managed to start bleeding from her nostril right on cue. The original plan had been to cut the scene and add the fake blood under Taylor-Joy’s nose, but as she told in an interview, there was no intervention necessary.
Source: Ranker
