Movies That Caused Serious Damage To Actors' Bodies

And you thought Red Rover was the most dangerous game on the playground.

Filmed in summer 2017, "Tag" centers on a nation-spanning, grown-up version of the classic chase game between a group of totally normal men. Rather than coasting to an easy payday, Jeremy Renner showed some serious heart on the set of the comedy movie, breaking not one, but both of his arms at the same time on the movie's third day of shooting. 

Specifically, the "Avengers" star fractured his right elbow and left wrist during a stunt that went south. As co-star Jon Hamm delicately put it during an appearance on "Ellen," Renner's arms "snapped like a matchstick," which seems like a pretty alpha way to describe a coworker's grievous injury.

Instead of leaning into the skid and writing Renner's injury in, the production used expensive movie magic to give him CGI arms. Like Superman's computerized face in "Justice League," the mishap stands a chance of making the movie into an interactive experience in which viewers are constantly looking for the seams around Renner's digital pythons.

In all seriousness, the production may have miscalculated in their decision not to fold this accident into the movie's story. Especially since — as pointed out by The Ringer — you can still actually see Renner's cast during a donut-tossing moment in the "Tag" trailer. 

The moral of the story? Don't play games with Jeremy Renner. Even if it kills him, the man will run you down.

Darren Aronofsky knows how to make viewers very, very uncomfortable, as he showed with his work on "Requiem for a Dream" and "Black Swan." The director's intense roles have been known to mess with actors' heads, and that appears to be the case for the star of his 2017 film "mother!" Jennifer Lawrence, starring opposite Javier Bardem, revealed that she hyperventilated so hard while filming one scene that she actually dislocated a rib.

"mother!" is a creepy psychological thriller in which unwanted guests invade the home of Lawrence's character, with terrifying paranormal results. Considering how much the actress screams in the trailer, it makes sense that there would have been frights behind the scenes—and it sounds like one scene got very serious, with Lawrence saying she had to be put on oxygen. Even worse? The take was blurry, and Aronofsky said they'd need to reshoot it.

This intense look into the world of ballet was, unsurprisingly, pretty hard on the bodies of its stars. Mila Kunis, who plays the understudy that Natalie Portman's character becomes obsessed with, lost 20 pounds to look like a ballerina. That might not sound too drastic, but it sent the 5'4" Kunis down to 95 pounds.

Kunis lost the weight by sticking to a strict 1200-calorie diet. On the low end of safe diets, it's not necessarily damaging—but Kunis added smoking tons of cigarettes to the mix. Add to that four hours of ballet training every day for seven weeks, and you have the recipe for a messed-up body. By the end of the film, Kunis had a torn calf ligament and scars on her back from being lifted.

After the shoot, Kunis said she gained the weight back instantly. (Hopefully by eating a full pizza the day she wrapped, because honestly, she earned it.) But her body "has never been the same. My shape is different...When I gained it back, it went to completely different areas." The shoot was so hard on her, she'd be very reluctant to take on another role that required such physical transformation. If you have any scripts about people chilling on beach, give Kunis a call.

Gerard Butler seems to specialize in making movies that could kill him, but he never imagined a wave would bring him the closest he'd get to death.

"Chasing Mavericks" is a surfing film about a young man who's insistent on riding the most dangerous waves. It required a lot of real surfing for the cast, including Butler, who had limited experience but was excited to learn. In the end, Butler did most of the surfing himself, only using doubles for the biggest of waves.

One day as the surfing shots were coming to a close, Butler was out on the water and wiped out—and the wave knocked him down so deep, he wasn't able to come up before the next one crashed down on him. "I was down for that wave and I was down for a long time just turning, turning," said Butler. "And then the next wave came over and I began to think 'Wow, I'm going to die making a movie.'"

Taken away in an ambulance, Butler immediately wanted to get back to the shoot, but they took him to the hospital anyway. Though he only sustained a bit of a scrape, the feeling that you're about to drown is not something you shake off easily. "I've been in car accidents, I've been smashed on the edge of a roof—almost went over—I've been hit by a lot of stuff, almost lost my eye on my last movie," he recalled. "I was hit by a bullet casing. This was I think by far the most dangerous in my life, I think that was the closest I've come."

Robert De Niro is no stranger to putting his body through hell for a role. He famously gained 60 pounds to play Jake LaMotta in "Raging Bull," and for "Cape Fear," his transformation was more specifically extreme. To play a frightening criminal out for revenge, De Niro trained for six months to get his body fat down to a single digit. When he filmed the shirtless scenes, he cut weight like a fighter, refusing to drink any water during the shoot. He would only swish seltzer through his mouth and spit it out when he was dying for a drink.

Not content to settle for his bulked-up physique, De Niro felt his teeth looked too pristine for the role, so he paid a dentist $5000 to get them shaved down to look more grungy. Unfortunately, repairing teeth was a little harder—he paid $20,000 to get his movie star smile back.

Matthew McConaughey has always been known for his incredible good looks since first starring in the cult classic "Dazed and Confused" and then in films such as "A Time to Kill" and rom-coms "The Wedding Planner" and "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days." But these days, the actor seems hellbent on transforming that handsomeness into something else—and it all started with his Oscar-winning performance in the 2013 "Dallas Buyers Club," telling the true story of hustler Ron Woodruff, who in 1985 Dallas, worked around the system to help AIDS patients get the medication they need after himself being diagnosed with the disease.

The then 44-year-old dropped nearly 50 pounds for the role, and, in turn, won an Oscar for the performance. Describing the experience of losing the weight, the actor told BBC, "I did it in as healthy a way as I found possible. I met with a nutritionist. I gave myself four months to lose the weight. I had my programmed meals, lost 3.5lb a week—like clockwork —and got down to my desired weight, which turned out to be 47lb lighter."

The one thing he found most surprising was how energized his brain became. "The surprise was how the energy that I lost from the neck down transferred to the neck up. I became clinically aware, almost hyper, I needed three hours less sleep a night. I had an amazing amount of energy from the head up. That was something I didn't know was going to happen." While McConaughey never mentioned having any long-lasting problems, it did change him a little. He's never really looked the same again.

McConaughey continued his trend of looking as unattractive as possible in 2017's "Gold," for which, among other things, he gained weight.

It's clear Tom Hardy isn't afraid of a little hard work getting into massive shape for a role. He played a MMA fighter in "Warrior" (in which he broke several bones) and the brooding Mad Max in Fury Road (in which co-star Charlize Theron accidentally broke his nose), but it was his turn as the beefed-up and menacing Bane in the 2012 "The Dark Knight Rises" that Hardy admits was hard to bounce back from.

Speaking with The Daily Beast about his upcoming portrayal of Chicago mobster Al Capone in "Fonzo," Hardy said he hoped he wouldn't have to undergo the same kind of physical transformation he did playing Bane, because adding all that muscle weight to his slight 5'9" frame takes a toll. "It's not the classic Al Capone that you necessarily envision with the silhouette. I don't want to give too much away about it, but there's definitely a transformation with that role," said Hardy. "I don't know if it's as drastic as Bane. I've probably damaged my body too much. I'm only little! If I keep putting on weight I'll collapse like a house of cards under too much pressure."

Hardy added that being ripped like that is a young man's game. The older he's gotten, the less time and energy he has to maintain the physique. "I think you pay the price with any drastic physical changes. It was all right when I was younger, to put myself under that kind of duress, but I think as you get into your 40s you have to be more mindful of the rapid training, packing on a lot of weight and getting physical, and then not having enough time to keep training because you're busy filming, so your body is swimming in two different directions at the same time. And then after the film I'm tired, and you maybe have to change your shape again and go back to your normal size for the next film."

We're just kind of excited to see Hardy play Capone.

The anachronistic musical spectacular "Moulin Rouge" was pretty hard on star Nicole Kidman, who fell down the stairs during a dance number and injured her right knee. Due to delays and recovery, the incident led to a $3 million insurance loss. The knee continued to give her problems, which caused Kidman to drop out of "Panic Room," which she'd already started filming for three weeks. Briefly uninsurable, she had to hold part of her salary in escrow just to be able to film her part in "Cold Mountain." That's a lot of trouble for playing a singing courtesan.

It wasn't even Kidman's only "Moulin Rouge"-related injury. She also broke a bone, although it wasn't caused by dancing, stairs, or any of the other frenetic activities of the film. On "The Graham Norton Show" she recalled a particularly painful corset incident, saying, "I had this thing that I wanted to get my waist down to 18 inches, which Vivien Leigh had on "Gone with the Wind" and I was just like, 'Tighter, tighter!'" The corset got so tight, her rib snapped—and she ended up shooting much of the film with it broken.

"3096 Days" is an adaptation of the Natascha Kampusch memoir that details her life as a kidnapping victim who was trapped in her abductor's basement from ages 10-18. Her story is full of violence and abuse, as her captor systematically raped and starved her to break her will. When Antonia Campbell-Hughes got the part, she knew she was going to get into it all the way. "It's not a biopic or a case study," she explained. "But playing someone real, you feel you have to give a bit more. There was an understanding from the beginning that I would suffer as much as she did."

Hughes worked around the clock. Her head was shaved, she had to be naked on set most days, and she ate almost nothing, since Natasha was fed very little in real life. The dedication seemed incredible, but her gaunt figure frightened people when she showed up in a thin blue dress at the "Frankenweenie" premiere. The press had a field day, speculating that she was anorexic—rumors the actress has always denied.

Since the film, she's still very thin, though claims she put weight back on after "3096." Hughes was happy with her work on the film, but is now understandably wary of the press—and will presumably think twice before wearing slip dresses after future tough shoots.

Christian Bale wins the prize for the crazy extremes he's put his body through for his craft. He has gained weight ("American Hustle"), bulked up (the "Dark Knight" trilogy)—but it was his turn in the 2004 indie film "The Machinist" that became his most infamous transformation. As a patient suffering from insomnia, Bale lost 65 pounds by basically eating a single can of tuna fish or an apple a day, along with drinking black coffee and water.

He, of course, had guidance from health professionals, but even they warned him not to go too far. He explained in an interview, "I had been to a nutritionist and when I had got down to what she had told me was a healthy weight, I just went, 'You know what? I can go more than this. I can keep going.' So I lost another 20 pounds below what she said I should stop at."

In another interview, this time with movie blogger Chronicle of Ridicule, Bale explained more of his experience. "I had a, what could be called kind of stupid, feeling of invincibility, like 'Oh, you know, I can do it. I can manage it'... for me there was the challenge of was I able to do it? ... But I didn't actually [start to] feel bad until I started eating again. It was when I started putting the weight back on, that I did it somewhat too rapidly, and apparently had the cholesterol level of a 90-year-old man and had to really begin getting fit, eating properly because I gorged too much. I didn't take the advice of everybody, which was, 'Take it slow.' You know, putting the weight back on I just wanted to consume pizza and donuts."

While Bale seemingly managed to bounce back, most likely due to the fact he was in his early 30s when he made the film, we're pretty sure he won't do that again.

Not a lot of people saw the 2011 Channing Tatum movie "The Eagle." Set in the year 140 A.D. during the Roman occupation of Britain, it earned just over $19 million at the box office. But the experience of filming it will probably be forever "burned" into Tatum's memory.

Tatum had to shoot scenes in a freezing Scottish river, where it was a production assistant's job to keep the actor warm between takes by mixing boiling water with river water, which Tatum would pour down his wetsuit. But after one particular take, the P.A. accidentally gave Tatum a bottle of pure, untempered, boiling-hot H2O... which the actor dumped into his wetsuit and directly onto his genitals. "I started hyperventilating and screaming and jumping back into the river," Tatum explained to Howard Stern in 2015. 

In the midst of what he called a "panic attack," a set medic treated the actor and told him that the extreme burning pain in his bits and pieces was "a good thing," because if he felt nothing it would indicate nerve damage. Nevertheless, Tatum's male parts were completely stripped of skin. On the bright side, it healed quickly, and he was even able to enjoy a conjugal visit when his wife came to check up on him a week later. "It was a little rough," he admitted, "but we got it down."

In the 2018 action comedy "The Spy Who Dumped Me," Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon provided most of the comedy, while co-star Justin Theroux provided a lot of the action. Part of the job: riding a scooter through city streets at high speeds. It was while filming that — when he was just about to wrap up all of his work on the film, no less — when Theroux crashed the thing and nearly brained himself.

"I'm peeling away," he said on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", "and I realize as I'm coming up on the next street that there's no lock-up, there's still actually cars going back and forth." That meant he'd somehow escaped the production's blocked off streets, a.k.a. safety. "So I grab both brakes, skidded out and kinda went flying off the bike and landed on my head." Theroux said that his head actually split open, but he seems to have survived the ordeal just fine. The movie, on the other hand, crashed hard.

In 2017, Charlize Theron, late of "Aeon Flux" and "Mad Max: Fury Road," continued her streak of dazzling action movies with "Atomic Blonde." Based on the graphic novel "The Coldest City," it was a twisty, old-fashioned Cold War-set spy thriller, with Theron portraying Lorraine Broughton, a high-level MI6 operative tasked with obtaining a missing list of double agents in 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet-style communism. 

To prepare for the film's grueling stunt work and lengthy, elaborate action sequences, Theron spent two months training in a gym, assisted and directed by eight trainers. But before she appeared in even a frame of film, Theron got hurt, and she got hurt bad. "When I trained, I cracked two teeth in the back of my mouth, clenching while fighting, because apparently my arm strength wasn't strong enough," Theron said at a Q&A session after the SXSW premiere of "Atomic Blonde" (via Variety). The actress then underwent urgent dental surgery before filming began, but the aftermath wasn't super pleasant. Many months later, when discussing the pain, Theron said, "And I'm still f***ing dealing with it."