Many people have the dream of becoming a famous actor or actress, but they’re not aware of how dangerous acting can be.
Stars like Sylvester Stallone, Jackie Chan, Jim Caviezel and George Clooney have all almost died on the set of their films due to poor conditions on set and accidents during filming.
While filming an action scene for the Armour of God released in 1986, Jackie Chan jumped from a roof of a building and grabbed onto a branch which snapped causing him to fall twenty five feet, hitting his head on a rock. The action star fractured his skull and had a piece of bone shot into his brain. He was then rushed to the closest hospital where they inserted a plastic cap to prevent further injury.
The Passion of the Christ was released in 2004, and starred Jim Caviezel as Jesus Christ, who was struck by lightning during the mounting of the cross scene. He walked away without any major injures, but throughout the rest of production he reportedly suffered from a separated shoulder, hypothermia, pneumonia and lung infections.
Practical effects can be seen as the main source of these problems. A good example of this is in the 1981 movie Roar, which used live lions and tigers in its film without any safety precautions. This lead to over 70 cast and crew members being attacked and seriously injured during production. Due to limitations in technology, the use of computer generated imagery was impractical as animals would have looked unrealistic. This lead to director Noel Marshall and cinematographer Jan De Bont having to take a more dangerous approach.
However, now that producers have access to CGI, many practical effects can be replaced with anything that the director feels is necessary. Because of the use of this technology, what happened during the filming of Roar won’t happen again. Anything from action scenes to scenes involving large animals is not as dangerous now thanks to CGI.