Movie Scenes That Actually Killed Stunt Actors

Harry O'Connor, who served as a stunt double for Vin Diesel in "xXx," died on the Prague set of the film while performing a paragliding stunt in his place. An experienced skydiver and stunt performer who'd joined the industry after retiring as a Navy SEAL, O'Connor reportedly collided with a pillar of the Palacky Bridge while paragliding and broke his neck in the process before passing away. It was his second effort to complete the stunt, the first of which was successful and used in the movie.

Director Rob Cohen later said on his commentary track, "We had 500 stuntmen involved with this picture; 499 didn't get a scratch. It shows you the lengths to which we will go to bring this kind of intense experience to the viewer. Stuntmen know they are in danger. They make their living through danger. Most of the time, it's all right. Sometimes, unfortunately, it isn't." O'Connor was 44.

In one of the grisliest accidents to ever occur on a Hollywood set, stuntman Jose Marco, a double for Burt Reynolds, was brutally attacked by a real-life shark while shooting an underwater scene for "Shark!" Marco was filming alongside a subdued bull shark in scuba gear when a great white managed to make it through the nets protecting the area from the rest of the sea and charged at the camera crew before launching at Marco and disemboweling the actor where he swam.

Crew members tried to steer the shark away from Marco with spears, but the animal was undeterred, and the stuntman's resulting injuries were so severe that he died shortly after being transported to the hospital. The incident was catastrophic, but producers wanted to (and ultimately did) use the footage of Marco's death in the movie, along with publicizing the incident as a marketing push. Director Samuel Fuller was so disgusted that he disavowed the movie, unsuccessfully attempting to have his name removed from its credits. Marco was 32.

Angela Bassett's double in "Vampire in Brooklyn" had invited her mother and siblings to the set of the film to watch her work on the day her life was cut short. Sonja Davis' mother Wanda Sapp would later reveal that she overheard her daughter casting doubt on the safety of the stunt she was about to perform during their fateful visit, telling The Los Angeles Times, "The last words I heard my baby say was when she yelled down to the stunt coordinator, 'Are you sure?' I could feel Sonja wasn't comfortable with the stunt."

Davis had been performing a 42-foot backward jump off a building, but rather than landing safely on the air bag that was supposed to cushion her fall, she instead bounced back into the building before making impact with the ground, much to her family's horror. Her mother initiated a multi-million dollar wrongful death suit against the studio, Paramount Pictures (along with director Wes Craven and producer/star Eddie Murphy), but the case was ultimately dismissed. Stunt coordinators on the film would later claim in an oral history of the movie that Davis didn't perform the jump correctly, but there were also no ambulances on set during the incident. Davis was 32.

Director Richard Fleischer has a long list of classics on his resume, including sci-fi favorites like "Fantastic Voyage" and "Soylent Green." But in 1987, just a few years after helming "Conan the Barbarian" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, he turned out a comedy caper called "Million Dollar Mystery" that's not quite as well-remembered. Unfortunately, what it is known for is an on-set death involving a legendary stuntman named Dar Robinson.

Robinson was a stunt pioneer who invented a safety system known as the decelerator, which helps stunts involving falls from great heights. The subject of his own documentary, "The Ultimate Stuntman," he'd worked on several major movies, including Steve McQueen's "Papillon" and the first "Lethal Weapon." In 1986, however, Robinson paid the ultimate price for a daring shot while "Million Dollar Mystery" was filming in Arizona. He was completing a motorcycle chase scene when he lost control of his bike in the middle of a planned high-speed turn, launched off a ledge, crashed into a rock, and then impaled himself on a tree. He died en route to the hospital.

Prior to his death, Robinson had set records with his increasingly daring jumps, spurring his final film's stunt coordinator, George Fisher, to remark (per the Los Angeles Times), "We have a saying ... it's always the easy ones that get you." Robinson was 39 when he lost his life.

Written and directed by the late schlock auteur Albert Pyun (famous for Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Cyborg"), the 1982 sword-and-sandal adventure "The Sword and the Sorcerer" starred Lee Horsley as Prince Talon, who learns he's descended from noble blood and must take on a powerful and evil wizard. Though it's not one of that decade's most memorable movies in the genre, it made the news after one of the film's performers — 37-year-old John Hale "Jack" Tyree — died in a stunt gone wrong during production. 

Tyree was a veteran of the industry who'd worked on everything from "Escape From New York" to "History of the World: Part I." He was filming a scene in Hollywood's Griffith Park for "The Sword and the Sorcerer," in which he was to jump from an 80-foot cliff. He unfortunately landed a few feet away from the airbag intended to cushion his fall, causing severe injuries that eventually cost him his life. "It was definitely a high-risk stunt," said an official at the time (per the Calgary Herald). "But Jack was a real professional. He had some more difficult high falls before, tougher than the one he faced [on 'The Sword and the Sorcerer']." Perhaps surprisingly, the stunt itself was actually left in the film, despite Tyree's tragic passing, and the film was dedicated to him in the credits. 

Filmmaker John Woo was one of the hottest action directors of the '90s. After a string of groundbreaking features in his native Hong Kong, Woo was wooed by Hollywood and came over to helm such favorites as "Hard Target," "Broken Arrow," and "Face/Off." By the late 2000s, he was back directing smash hits in China, and one of his first in his return to his homeland was "Red Cliff," starring Tony Leung ("Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"). It was the highest-grossing movie of the year in the Middle Kingdom, but came at the cost of a stuntman's life.

A period piece about the battle of China's Three Kingdoms, the set of the film became a deadly inferno when a blaze overtook the production, claiming the life of stuntman Lu Yanqing and injuring six other crew members. The accident took place during a ship battle scene in Xiaotang Shan, just outside of Beijing. During the filming of the sequence, a smaller vessel engulfed in flames was planned to collide with a larger ship. But high winds carried the fire to the second ship and the flames spread uncontrollably, injuring those onboard and killing Yanquing.

"The crew of 'Red Cliff' is deeply distraught and full of regret," read a statement from the U.S. studio Lion Rock, which was co-financing the film (via The Hollywood Reporter). 

Not long after cameraman Robert Van Der Kar lost his life in a helicopter accident while shooting the hit TV series "Magnum P.I.," that show's star, Tom Selleck, was involved in a movie that also saw a tragic behind-the-scenes death. That film was "High Road to China," a 1983 adventure movie that tried to capitalize on the popularity of the first Indiana Jones movie, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" – whose lead role Selleck regretted turning down. Set in the 1920s, "High Road to China" had Selleck playing a pilot who is hired to help track down the father of a wealthy socialite (Bess Armstrong).

Today, "High Road to China" is barely remembered, notable only as one of the many "Indiana Jones" imitators that assaulted moviegoers in the early '80s. It flopped in theaters and is among Selleck's most forgotten feature films, but its box office failure isn't the worst thing that came from it. Filmed mostly in Yugoslavia, the production needed remote locations for some of its biggest scenes, and that meant moving its performers in by air. Stunt pilot David Perrin, fellow pilot Nigel Thornton, and mechanic Jaron Anderson were taking a helicopter to shoot one scene when the helicopter crashed, killing all three men.

Another film in a long line that saw deadly helicopter crashes during production, "Hired to Kill" is — like "Delta Force II" — a low-budget action movie from 1990, this one starring Brian Thompson, Oliver Reed, and George Kennedy. Thompson plays a mercenary who poses as a photographer when he's hired to rescue a freedom fighter being held behind enemy lines. During filming the year before the movie hit theaters, a helicopter being used to shoot a mid-air scene crashed, injuring the pilot and several others, and killing a stunt actor.

The actor, Clint Carpenter, had been a regular stuntman on the kid's action series "V.R. Troopers," and was riding with a pair of fellow stuntmen. While performing what was later described as a "routine fly-by," moving across the camera's field of vision — set up on a rooftop — the vehicle attempted to make a tight turn. For unexplained reasons, the helicopter failed to achieve the turn and crashed into a group of trees, killing Carpenter, who was pronounced dead before he even made it to a nearby hospital.

Passengers Michael Kane, pilot Marc Wolff, and stunt coordinator Mark Cuttin (along with a third unknown stuntman) all sustained injuries. Though they suffered broken ribs, a leg fracture, and a punctured lung among them, they were able to escape with their lives.

Doubling for an actor on the set of a major motion picture isn't always hazardous, as stand-ins can often be used simply to rehearse scenes. When the bigger-name actors aren't needed, and the action isn't deemed all that dangerous, it's these replacement actors who take their place on the set. It's not supposed to be as risky, but when it came to filming "Proof of Life" — the 2000 film starring Russell Crowe, Meg Ryan, and David Morse — it proved fatal for one stand-in and stunt double.

"Proof of Life" is an action movie about a negotiator brought in to secure the release of a hostage amid a conflict in South America, but it wasn't an action scene this time that led to a death. Instead, it was an otherwise mundane moment that was supposed to involve a slow-moving truck lumbering down a mountain road. But during the shot, the truck took an unplanned detour — turning left and tumbling over the side of a cliff. The stand-in for David Morse, Will Gaffney, was aboard and was killed in the incident. 

"We are all deeply pained by the tragic loss of Will Gaffney, and the production is doing everything possible for his wife and family," director Taylor Hackford, who was unable to explain the accident, told Variety. "The weather and circumstances were perfect. No one, at this time, has any idea what happened other than to say it was a freak accident." 

In the 1930s, Jack Budlong wasn't strictly a stunt performer; he was also a professional horseman and actor. But for the 1941 movie "They Died With Their Boots On" — a Civil War classic about Gen. Custer that starred Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Gene Lockhart — Budlong was brought in for the film's sprawling war scenes. Reportedly, Budlong played both Union and Confederate soldiers at various points in the production, and it was during one sequence when he was in the Southern grays that the horse rider was killed.

Budlong, who is said to have been a close personal friend of Flynn, had cajoled the star into getting him a role as a stunt-performing extra during the film's war scenes. Not much of a veteran stunt actor, though, Budlong's inexperience may have been what led him to insist on using a real saber rather than a prop. So when, during filming, his horse began bucking due to the simulated artillery exploding around them, Budlong was tossed off the animal and landed right on his very real, very sharp blade. 

Budlong was taken to a Los Angeles hospital, but it was far too late for him: the saber had punctured his abdomen and exited via his back. He wasn't the only casualty of filming, though, as the production of "They Died With Their Boots On" led to countless injuries and at least two more deaths besides Budlong.

Westerns were once the biggest genre in Hollywood, and with so many cowboys, ranchers, and rough-riding outlaws up on the screen, that meant a bevy of stunt riders were needed. One of them was Fred Kennedy, who had worked all across Tinseltown, performing all kinds of horseback stunts, from chases and jumps to falls. Active since the late '30s, he'd seemingly done it all, and had even helped train horses in how to fall without injury, following an outcry from the SPCA over animal cruelty.

But even with that kind of experience, the best stunt actors can still get into accidents on the set. The 1959 John Ford film "The Horse Soldiers," starring John Wayne and William Holden, required a scene in which Kennedy was to fall off his saddle, a move that director Ford even offered him a bonus for. When action was called, though, he slipped and fell off his stirrup step and broke his neck when he hit the ground. According to reports, actress Constance Towers, who was supposed to run over to the actor and plant a kiss after the planned fall, was the one who noticed he was in distress. But it was too late to get Kennedy help, and he died at the scene.

Movies about dangerous professions are inherently going to involve precarious stunts, so when it came time to film a story about the construction of a skyscraper, there was extra danger involved. Experienced stuntman A.J. Bakunas was  doubling for lead actor George Kennedy on the Lexington, Kentucky set of "Steel" when tragedy struck. In the scene, he attempted a daring drop that would feature him plunging from the top of a high-rise to simulate the falling death of Kennedy's character.

Bakunas was a well-known name in the industry long before he went to work on the film. By all accounts, he had been preparing for the jump for weeks and decided to increase the length of his fall to 323 feet instead of the ninth-story leap he'd already completed. He wasn't doing it to make the stunt more impressive, but instead simply hoping to top a stunt performed on another set by rival stuntman Dar Robinson — who was still nearly a decade away from his own fatal stunt. 

Bakunas completed the jump as planned, but the airbag below ruptured, injuring him critically right in front of a massive crowd of spectators who had assembled to watch the stunt. The actor was still alive and conscious as he was rushed to the emergency room and treated, but he eventually succumbed to his injuries. Bakunas was only 27.

Stunt actor deaths are usually the result of something going wrong, whether it's a malfunctioning airbag or the crash of a helicopter. On rare occasions, though, the stunt is pulled off without a hitch in the moment and the director gets his shot, but something goes terribly wrong after. And that's exactly what happened on the set of the 1978 movie "Hi-Riders" when 29-year-old Pennsylvanian stuntman Vic Rivers drowned in a shallow pond after a car chase that saw him submerged in the water.

In the scene, Rivers — an experienced stunt driver who had previously worked on the cult classic "Grand Theft Auto" — was supposed to race down a road, fly his car off a bridge, and roll the vehicle over into the body of water below. Well, he did just that, and the stunt was pulled off without any problems at first: Rivers' car flipped and plunged into what was described as "a three-foot streambed" located on Paramount Ranch. But the unthinkable happened after Rivers crashed: according to published descriptions of the incident, Rivers emerged from the vehicle light-headed and unable to stand. Possibly suffering a concussion, the stunt actor collapsed into the water and drowned before assistance could get to him.

It may be expected that dangerous stunts result in injuries on major action movies, but it's a little more surprising when it happens in a romantic comedy. Yet over in Australia, one such movie actually led to the death of stunt actor Collin Dragsbaek. It was 1996 and filming was underway on the film "Love Serenade" starring future "Lord of the Rings" actor Miranda Otto.

The tragedy occurred while filming a scene that had Dragsbaek taking a fall off a grain silo. He was supposed to land on a safety airbag, but a critical error resulted in the device being faulty, and Dragsbaek was killed when it didn't adequately cushion his 29-meter fall. His death cast a pall over the production, one that the film's director, Shirley Barrett, had to work hard to get through. ”It was absolutely devastating when it happened," Barrett told The New York Times after the picture was released. "It has been very hard for us to live with, to think because of this idea of yours, a comedy even, someone had died. But we just kept going. We had to.”  

Dragsbaek's death prompted calls for improved safety procedures, but stunt actor Chris Anderson, who ran his own stunt agency, felt that new rules weren't necessary. He argued that the attitude of productions needed to change. "The rules and regulations are very good," he told the Sydney Morning Herald. "It's a matter of policing them more properly. People are becoming complacent."

Many productions in Hollywood history are said to be cursed movies whose development, filming, and release were plagued with problems. One of the earliest to earn this title was the 1925 biblical epic "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ," which stars Ramon Navarro in the title role — not to be confused with the 1959 remake with Charleton Heston. In addition to an out-of-control blaze, a director fired partway through production leading to a complete restart of filming, and local riots that halted filming, a stuntman died filming the chariot race.

It all went down during the filming of the climactic race, or at least an early take of the action-packed sequence. Star Francis X. Bushman, playing one of the chariot racers, described the incident (per Yahoo Entertainment): "During one take, we went around the curve and the wheel broke on the other fellow's chariot. ... The hub hit the ground and the guy shot up in the air about 30 feet." He continued, saying, "It was like a slow-motion film. He fell on a pile of lumber and died of internal injuries." 

In addition to the stunt rider, multiple horses died during the production of the sequence. The disaster proved so infamous and enduring that it was the source of an urban legend surrounding Heston's remake, with many confusing the later version as a similarly catastrophic production.

The silent era of movies wasn't unlike the industry today, with filmmakers constantly trying to top one another with bigger and bolder productions. But for most, that meant pushing the boundaries of safety in the years before protections for stuntpeople were put in place. Sadly, that led to many performers losing their lives and productions that became much more audacious and far riskier. Leading the way were films like "The Skywayman," which took moviegoers into the wild blue yonder to witness the death-defying aerial action of stunt pilot Ormer Locklear.

Known as the "King of the Wing Walkers," Locklear dazzled audiences by stepping out of the cockpit and taking a stroll while thousands of feet above the ground, a feat that had to be seen to be believed. He made his screen debut in the 1919 film "The Great Air Robbery," and a year later he was cast in "The Skywayman" as Capt. Norman, an American pilot and ace who goes up against German fighters.

But in a twist he probably didn't see coming, Locklear's role proved to be the final performance of his life. His death occurred on the final day of shooting during a stunt that involved the use of flares to make the plane appear as if it was engulfed in flames. Shot at an airfield in Los Angeles, the stunt went wrong when Locklear didn't pull out of a dive on time and pulled up on the stick too late. Crashing into the ground from 10,000 feet, Locklear and his co-pilot Milt Elliot died at the scene.

Before he was the Caped Crusader, Michael Keaton was a comedy star, and just two years before Tim Burton directed him in "Batman" he starred in the 1987 comedy "The Squeeze." The film sees Keaton playing a bumbling, beleaguered artist who gets caught up in a blackmail scheme. He thankfully gets help from a beautiful private detective (Rae Dawn Chong). The film made the news before it hit theaters when a stuntman died while filming a scene on location in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Veteran stuntman Vic Magnotta, who worked on such '80s classics as "Splash" and Brian DePalma's "Dressed to Kill," was filming a car chase that was planned to culminate with a dramatic vehicular dive into the Hudson River. But after speeding off a specially designed stunt ramp and doing a flip into the water as intended, the windshield was dislodged and Magnotta became trapped in the car beneath the surface. It was a very similar accident to the one that nearly killed Jason Statham on the set of "The Expendables 3." Rescue divers who were waiting in the water and were supposed to pull Magnotta from the vehicle were unable to remove him from his safety harness in time to save his life.

Following the success of "Lethal Weapon 3," Danny Glover and Joe Pesci re-teamed for the 1997 comedy "Gone Fishin'," a story about two fishing buddies who become targets of a career conman (Nick Brimble). The Disney production made extensive use of water stunts. During the making of one action scene, a boat crash led to the death of 29-year-old stuntwoman Janet Wilder. As fate would have it, Wilder was aboard the boat with fellow stuntman Scott Wilder, her husband, who — along with several others — managed to survive their injuries.

The deadly boat crash took place during a scene meant to show Pesci and Glover's characters jumping their boat over a patch of mangroves and landing between two boats. Stunt doubles were used for the two stars, and the first take of the scene was deemed unacceptable. Director Christopher Cain wanted a do-over, unhappy with the resulting crash because of the slow speed of the boat. A second take on another day increased the speed, but at the cost of Wilder's life, as the boat was sent hurtling off a stunt ramp and colliding with two boats full of extras.

Hollywood isn't the only moviemaking industry where stunt actors have lost their lives. Around the world in India, where the Indian film industry is booming, stunts have sometimes left death in their wake as well. One recent catastrophe happened on the set of the 2023 film "Viduthalai: Part 1," co-written and directed by Vetrimaaran. "Viduthalai: Part 1" features a police constable (Soori) on the hunt for Vaathiyar Perumal (Vijay Sethupathi), the leader of an extremist dissident group called Makkal Padai. It's a tense crime thriller full of exciting action scenes, but one of them left stuntman Suresh dead.

Suresh was filming a stunt that required him to swing from a suspended rope harness as part of a climactic sequence involving a train crash. But something went disastrously wrong when the stuntman was some 20 feet in the air. The rope holding him to a crane snapped, and Suresh fell to the Earth and was mortally wounded. Rushed to a nearby hospital, Suresh was pronounced dead upon arrival.

The 1980 film "The Hunter" is infamous for several reasons, the least of which is that it was dead last on our ranked list of Steve McQueen's entire filmography. In the film, McQueen plays Ralph Thorson, a notorious bounty hunter tasked with bringing two wanted men back to Los Angeles. The thriller also happens to be the final film of McQueen's career, dropping in theaters just a few months shy of his death at the age of 50. Sadly, the film is known too for being the final film of one of its stuntmen.

Though "The Hunter" isn't well regarded — it was a financial dud on top of being savaged by critics — it did feature one memorable action scene. In it, Thorson is driving a tow truck and chasing his target up the circular roadway of a city parking garage. At the end of the scene, the crook smashes through a barrier and his car goes tumbling off the deck into the river below. But while shooting that sequence the stunt driver of the car — that fell what appears to be more than a dozen stories — was killed while executing the shot. The stunt, impressive though it is, failed to save McQueen's final film. Little is known today about the stuntperson who died to bring it to life, though.

There have been many tragic deaths of stuntmen over the years, but few have been as unsettling as the recent loss of an Indian stuntman named Vivek in the 2021 romantic thriller "Love You Rachchu." During the filming of one scene, Vivek was caught on a high-tension wire that was not part of the stunt and was electrocuted. Though life-saving efforts were made after he was rushed to a hospital, the stuntman didn't survive.

"Stunt performer Vivek was performing the stunt for the Kannada film 'Love you Rachchu' and standing on a crane near an 11-KV electric wire at Joganapalya village in the district," said police in a statement (via the India Times). "Somehow a metal wire came in contact with the wire, and he got electrocuted." Vivek's death led to the film's director and producer, Shankar S. Raj and Guru Deshpande being detained by local police as they investigated possible negligence in the production. A government official commented that safety standards on the film may have been ignored, and Vivek's death became the catalyst for safety reform in the country's movie industry. 

The film's star, Ajay Rao, also commented on the incident, telling the India Times, "I heard their screams and rushed to see what happened and came to know that Vivek died on the spot. I was not part of the scene. A high tension line was nearby, and the film crew stocked water around the spot for the fight scene."

The Clint Eastwood action thriller "The Eiger Sanction" may be one of Clint Eastwood's most underrated movies. He stars as a retired assassin brought back for one more mission after the death of a close friend. Joining a team of mountaineers, his job is to ferret out a Soviet spy while scaling a treacherous peak in the Swiss Alps. Engaging, action-packed, and brimming with first-class location stuntwork, "The Eiger Sanction" was the perfect vehicle for the "Dirty Harry" star. Unfortunately, the production wasn't a pleasant experience for many involved and was capped off by the death of climber and photographer Dave Knowles.

The film was shot on location on the real, treacherous Eiger mountain. Climbers had died on the mountain previously, and shooting an action-thriller on the cliff face had never been attempted before. The tragedy came when production had to get a point-of-view shot of climbers seeing rocks fall on them. "I can't say I had a premonition," Chic Scott, another climber who also worked on the film, said in an interview with Jasper Fitzhugh in 2015. "I just felt really frightened and didn't want to be there." Scott took a break from the shoot during the fateful shooting of a rockfall sequence and later tried to join Knowles atop the mountain by helicopter, but when he arrived he was informed that there'd been a deadly incident. "We flew up to that same location and there was the scene that we had been faking for two days," he said. "Dave Knowles hanging dead on the end of the rope."

According to Scott, the production was halted and the crew regrouped, resuming filming several days later. The accident, having shaken the cast, including Eastwood and other stuntmen, took out six-figure life insurance policies before going back to work.