10 Actors Injured On Oscar-Winning Movies

Film sets can be dangerous places - just ask Harrison Ford who broke his ankle on the set of ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ last year – and even prestigious Oscar-winning pictures have had their fair share of accidents and injuries.

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Here are 10 actors who did themselves a mischief on the set of an Oscar-winning movie.

Leonardo DiCaprio cut his hand open on Django Unchained
Oscars: 2

Leo may not have won an Oscar as plantation owner Calvin Candie, but he would have if there were one for best on screen injury. The actor slammed his hand onto broken glass during a dinner table confrontation with Django injuring himself so badly he required stitches. Tarantino kept the take though, using it in the final scene.

Viggo Mortensen broke two toes on Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers
Oscars: 2

The Aragorn actor fractured two toes when he kicked a steel orc helmet while the cameras rolled. Peter Jackson assumed his cry of despair was a fancy bit of acting but it was real, genuine pain.

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George Clooney suffered a spinal injury on Syriana
Oscars: 1

The Cloonster still suffers back pain from the injury he sustained on the set of his Oscar-winning geopolitical drama. He says the injury, which happened while filming a torture scene with Mark Strong, was so painful he even considered suicide while recovering in hospital.

Ellen Burstyn permanently damaged her spine on The Exorcist
Oscars: 2

Above: Courtesy of HuffPo

During one scene of William Friedkin’s supernatural chiller, the possessed Regan throws Burstyn’s Chris McNeil to the floor. An overzealous stuntman pulled her to the floor via a hidden wire just a little too violently, leaving her with a permanent lower back injury that has plagued her ever since.

Natalie Portman displaced a rib on Black Swan
Oscars: 1

Portman’s training regime for Darren Aronofsky’s psychological ballet thriller was so extreme, the already-slender star shed 20lbs in weight. The punishing dance routines would leave her and co-star Mila Kunis in agony, but it was a displaced rib, which saw one rib painfully slip under the other, that would be her most painful.

Margaret Hamilton suffered third degree burns on Wizard Of Oz
Oscars: 2

The actress who played the Wicked Witch was lucky to be alive when her costume caught fire after a trap door failed to trigger. The star was supposed to disappear from Munchkinland in a puff of smoke, but instead the pyrotechnics set her costume alight. She suffered second and third degree burns and was off set recovering for a month. She refused to work with fire again when she returned.

Orson Welles chipped his anklebone on Citizen Kane
Oscars: 1

The writer-director-star damaged his ankle during a scene where Kane chases Gettys down the stairs. He tripped, chipped his anklebone, and had to continue directing from a wheelchair for two weeks while he recovered. For scenes that required him to act, he wore metal leg braces to ease the pressure from his leg.

Russell Crowe broke multiple bones on the set of Gladiator
Oscars: 5

Crowe is one of Hollywood’s most battle-scarred actors thanks to injuries he picked up on ‘Cinderella Man’, ‘Les Miserables’, and in his most famous role of ‘Gladiator’. On the set of Ridley Scott’s epic he broke bones in his foot and his hip, as well as injuring both bicep tendons. Yes Russell, we ARE entertained.

Al Pacino twisted his ankle on The Godfather
Oscars: 3

It may not sound like the most serious of injuries, but try telling that to anyone who’s done it, it can be agony. In the scene where Michael Corleone assassinates Sollozzo and McCluskey, Pacino mistimed the jump onto the getaway car’s running board, twisting his ankle. The injury forced him to use crutches and a cane for two weeks on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning epic.

Harrison Ford ruptured a disc on Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom
Oscars: 1

Many hours of mounting and dismounting elephants during the Sri Lankan shoot on the Indy sequel resurfaced an old back injury, so by the time Ford arrived in London to shoot interiors, he was in agonising pain. Spielberg jetted him off to LA for treatment where a ruptured disc was diagnosed. He required urgent treatment which resulted in a $1m insurance bill for Paramount.

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Image credits: Paramount/The Weinstein Company/Warner Bros./YouTube/HuffPo/20th Century Fox/MGM/Wenn/Universal