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7 times things went horribly wrong on film sets: from tragic deaths on Top Gun, Rust and The Crow to Tom Cruise’s US$80 million broken ankle, Daniel Craig’s missing fingertip – and a Star Wars disaster
STORYSarah Keenlyside
- Performers like Tom Cruise and Daniel Craig often put themselves in real danger for the sake of their art, but they do so willingly; other film set accidents have had much more tragic consequences
- David Holmes was only 25 when a stunt he was performing for Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe went badly wrong – but he lived to tell the tale in documentary The Boy Who Lived
The film industry is known for its glamour and excitement, but behind the scenes, things don’t always go as planned. In fact, there have been several instances where disaster has struck on movie sets – sometimes with heartbreaking consequences.
Here are seven times when disaster struck in Hollywood.
1. Brandon Lee’s death on The Crow
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In 1993 Brandon Lee – son of martial arts star Bruce Lee – was accidentally shot and killed on the set of The Crow. Lee was filming a scene where his character gets shot by a drug dealer, but there was a fragment of a real bullet in the prop gun. Lee was rushed to hospital but died after five hours of surgery, per the LA Times.
2. Halyna Hutchins’ death on Rust
In 2021, actor Alec Baldwin was rehearsing a scene in the film Rust where his character is supposed to draw his gun and shoot an intruder. However the gun was not checked properly and Baldwin fired it, killing DOP Halyna Hutchins and injuring the film’s director Joel Souza.
The film’s armourer, Hannah Gutierrez, was told by a judge that “you alone turned a safe weapon into a lethal weapon” prior to her being sentenced to 18 months in prison, per Reuters.
3. Daniel Craig losing the tip of his finger on Quantum of Solace
