Budding actress, former champion skier, and stuntwoman in training Heidi von Beltz’s life was forever changed following a devastating injury she sustained during the filming of the 1981 comedy The Cannonball Run on which she was acting as a stunt double for star Farrah Fawcett.

Von Beltz’s task that fateful day was to sit in the passenger side of an Aston-Martin and help operate a smoke machine that would give the effect of the car being on fire as it sped along weaving between oncoming vehicles. The only problem was that the car didn’t have seatbelts so when it accidentally crashed into a van, von Beltz was launched through the windshield which broke her neck and left her quadriplegic.

After a lengthy court battle, von Beltz was awarded a rather paltry $3.2 million most of which went towards paying off a mountain of legal and medical bills. One good thing that arose from von Beltz’s accident though was that the film industry established new safety guidelines that made seatbelts mandatory on all car-related stunt work – a fact von Beltz was very proud of before her death in 2015 at the age of 59.

Part of the reason Quentin Tarantino and his former muse Uma Thurman didn’t speak for years was a scary accident that occurred on the set of Kill Bill that could’ve been avoided if a stunt driver had been used.

Despite voicing her concerns that the rickety old Karmann Ghia the Bride drives in the opening scene of Vol 2 might not be in the best working condition, Tarantino cajoled her into doing the stunt herself. The actress ended up speeding at 40 miles per hour down a dirt road before losing control and crashing into a palm tree which left her with a concussion and serious damage to her neck and knees.

Fifteen years on from Kill Bill, Thurman still experiences chronic pain in what she’s recently referred to as her “permanently damaged neck” and “screwed-up knees” as a result of the accident. Physical pain isn’t the only lasting effect of the incident, however.

Thurman’s trust in Tarantino as a colleague and friend was effectively broken and their successful working partnership came to an end. Quite literally adding insult to injury, footage of the accident was also withheld from Thurman by the Brothers Weinstein until Tarantino finally released it to her this year following Harvey Weinstein’s downfall.

Though the gesture goes some way to atone for Tarantino’s negligent actions, it’s a case of too little too late.

Teen Wolf star Dylan O’Brien was filming a scene for the third and final instalment of the Maze Runner series when a stunt gone terrifyingly wrong resulted in him suffering a concussion, several facial fractures and brain trauma.

The scene in question takes place during the movie’s opening sequence and features O’Brien’s character attempting to board a moving train from a car. Although the actor was secured by a harness, he was somehow pulled off the car and slammed into another vehicle.

Filming of The Death Cure was halted indefinitely while O’Brien recovered from facial reconstruction surgery that left him with four metal plates holding one side of his face together. To give his surgeons credit, O’Brien’s face healed miraculously but the biggest toll the accident took on him was psychological – as is to be expected with a near-fatal incident.

During his recovery, O’Brien was plagued by panic attacks and felt like a different person entirely post-accident. For six months, he found himself in a very dark place and even considered giving up acting altogether. Though he’s gone on to finish The Death Cure and fit in a few other projects too, O’Brien still finds it difficult to talk about the accident today.

All those death-defying stunts we saw Harry Potter perform weren’t the work of Daniel Radcliffe and a crap-tonne of crafty CGI but his trusty stunt double David Holmes. The actor worked as Radcliffe’s double for the first six Harry Potter movies until tragedy struck while rehearsing for The Deathly Hallows Part 1.

While Holmes was performing an aerial stunt that involved being pulled backwards at high speed by a wire he was slammed into a wall before hurtling to a crash mat on the ground below. The accident broke the stunt actor’s neck and left him paralysed from the waist down.

Holmes’ injury was undoubtedly a life-changing one but he was determined to stay positive and not let his disability define him. He now gets his adrenaline fix careering around race tracks at ridiculously high speeds in a specially modified car and has also podcasted about his experience with spinal injury alongside setting himself the not too tiny task of helping to raise £15 million to fund new equipment for the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital where he spent six months following the accident.

(Excerpt) Read More at: WhatCulture.com