Actors Who Died While Their Movie Was In Production

It's a filmmaker's worst nightmare: After years of toiling, their film is in production ... and tragically, one of the actors entrusted with helping the director realize their vision unexpectedly passes away. The first matter of importance is to aid and comfort the performer's family and friends in their greatest time of need, of course. But filmmakers and studios are eventually left with some very difficult decisions to make. Some are creative decisions that are sure to impact the remainder of the project, in addition to the cast and crew's careers. Some are financial, with huge implications for the entire project. All of them are among the most complex situations anyone in the movie industry can face.

Unfortunately, Hollywood has been faced with this sort of quandary before — often before the ever-burgeoning field of digital effects was at filmmakers' disposal. These are 10 times an actor died while their movies were in production, and how their losses impacted the film.

Natalie Wood's career encompassed child stardom in the Christmas holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street and adult success in such classics as Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story. Tragically, Wood's life was cut short at age 43, at which time she was filming the 1983 science fiction film Brainstorm. The film was near the end of its production when, during Thanksgiving break, Wood, her husband Robert Wagner, and her Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken embarked on a weekend boating excursion to Catalina Island. During the trip, Wood was originally thought to have drowned. At the time, the tragedy was deemed an accident by authorities. The case has since been reopened, but has yet to be resolved.

While Wood reportedly completed filming most of her scenes, director Douglas Trumbull (who created visual effects for such film luminaries as Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, and Steven Spielberg), still struggled to finish the movie. Ultimately, Trumbull rewrote some scenes and omitted others, including a scene involving a pond with Wood and Walken. Brainstorm was released in the fall of 1983, nearly two years after the legendary actress' death. All told, the situation was so disheartening that Trumbull left the feature film business for decades. 

The world was shocked when Carrie Fisher passed away in 2016. In the midst of mass cultural mourning, Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson had to find a way to set the stage for Leia's exit from the series in The Rise of Skywalker. The Last Jedi sees the steely heroine survive the Battle of Crait, effectively creating a quandary for how the Resistance general would be presented in the next film. With a recasting of the role out of the question, director J.J. Abrams ultimately turned to unused footage of Fisher from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi to craft the actor's Star Wars swan song in Rise of Skywalker. That performance was aided by the use of body doubles and digital effects. In the end, Leia does not survive in physical form by the time The Rise of Skywalker concludes, ultimately joining her brother, Luke Skywalker, as a Force spirit.

Oddly enough, this wasn't the first time digital magic had been used to create a Fisher performance, as old footage from A New Hope along with a Fisher body double was used for a crucial scene at the conclusion of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

John Candy was a beloved actor who won the hearts of audiences worldwide with a string of hit films including Stripes, Spaceballs, Uncle Buck, Home Alone, and the quintessential Thanksgiving holiday classic, Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

A dependable actor who worked constantly over the course of his career, the 43-year-old Candy was working on the Western comedy Wagons East near Durango, Mexico, when he collapsed on set and died of a heart attack in March of 1994. Filming was completed on Wagons East with stand-ins and special visual effects, but the film was ultimately doomed to fail: It was utterly thrashed by critics, marking an unceremonious end to Candy's otherwise brilliant career. Still, Candy's performance as a drunken wagon master hired to bring a group of settlers back east shines with undeniable talent. And hey — fans will always have his prior classics to return to.

Oliver Reed played Proximo, a gladiator trainer and mentor to Russell Crowe's Maximus, in Gladiator. While Reed was clearly a supporting player, there's no question he's a strong presence, giving off a weight-of-the-world vibe he perfected over the course of his career. Reed's sudden death of a heart attack at age 61 during a break in filming in May of 1999 was a huge blow to the production. Reluctant to recast Reed's role, director Ridley Scott turned to his visual effects wizards for help.

Since CGI was already being utilized to create the Colosseum, Scott opted to use the technology to digitally superimpose Reed's face onto an extra to complete a crucial scene. Since this was 1999, the idea of digitally recreating a character in some form was still relatively new. In fact, this marked only the second time in movie history the technique was used. Scott used body doubles for other scenes, including Proximo's death scene, in which he is only shown from behind. All of these were efforts worth it, as the late actor was rewarded with a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor by the British Film and Television Academy. 

Heath Ledger's death at age 28 sent shockwaves through the industry. Fans felt the full impact of his loss when The Dark Knight premiered seven months later, featuring Ledger's instantly iconic interpretation of the Joker. But that wasn't his last movie: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was. Cast as con artist Tony Shepard for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Ledger had been a key part of getting the movie greenlit. Instead of using technology to try and create a digital Tony, Gilliam instead opted to write Tony's changing appearance into the film. As a result, Tony uses the magical Imaginarium to transform into three different iterations of himself. 

Lucky for Gilliam, three heavy-hitters — Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell — were available to play Tony in the mystical realm, while Ledger represents the character in the real world. Body doubles helped Gilliam round out Ledger's role where fill-in was needed, and in the end, the film went from a $30 million production in danger of being shelved to a modest hit that made more than $64 million worldwide.