I'm Fascinated By These Hollywood Actors' Reasons For Doing Or Not Doing Their Own Stunts

1.Jacob Elordi has done many of his own stunts for Euphoria. "Sam [Levinson, creator] and I kind of have this head nod when there's an intense scene and the stunt guys would kind of lay it out for us," Elordi said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "And then when we give each other the head nod, it kind of means that we're just going to go for it when the camera rolls."

For example, the scene in Season 1 where Nate and his father, Cal, fight was very, very real. "Eric [Dane, who plays Cal] and I, we're incredibly close, so I basically said to him, 'Let's rock and roll and make it sort of as real as possible,' because I think it's super important, and he was on-board as well," Elordi explained. "So Eric f*cking smashed me. I was bleeding. I got a concussion. I ended up throwing up after work. It was gnarly."

Additionally, Elordi was also directly involved with filming the fight scene between Nate and Fez in Season 2. "Filming it was amazing. We have our great stunt coordinator, Jeff Barnett, he's a legend," Elordi said in an interview with Digital Spy. "He pretty much just put us in this space, and it was just Angus [Cloud, who plays Fez] and I going nuts on each other, and Angus smashing sugar glass bottles on my head. And it was brutal. It was definitely brutal."

2.Dylan O'Brien was severely injured during a stunt for Maze Runner: The Death Cure. However, the actor still enjoys performing his own stunts when he can.

O'Brien was reportedly run over by a stunt car while filming. The incident left him with various critical injuries, including a concussion, brain trauma, and facial fractures. The actor took six months to recover before returning to shooting. "I really was in a dark place there for a while, and it wasn’t an easy journey back,” O’Brien said in an interview with Vulture. “There was a time where I didn’t know if I would ever do it [acting] again…and that thought scared me, too.”

Despite this experience, O'Brien doesn't want to give up on doing his own stunts entirely. "I think young actors all go through their own sort of ways of learning about ways to look after yourself. But these stunts, it’s always been something that I loved to do," he said in an interview with ET Canada. "It’s so much fun, and it’s so much a part of what you’re doing and what the movie is. It brings it to life. I still enjoy it, and I always will."

3.Samuel L. Jackson has been open about not doing his own stunts. "Why would I do that? If you want a long career, you don't do all that stuff," the actor told Access Hollywood. "You're gonna get hurt. Something's gonna happen. You're gonna twist an ankle, break a nail, something. No, you do as little as you can."

4.Kristen Stewart did her own stunts for Snow White and the Huntsman, and called the experience "terrifying."

Speaking at WonderCon in 2012, Stewart explained: "I got to jump off cliffs and ride horses, and that terrifies me. I was really, really not happy about having to do all that [horseback riding]. I don't like that — I hate that. I fell off a horse once and hurt myself really badly. I broke and dislocated my elbow when I was, like, 9."

5.Ryan Reynolds used to do many of his own stunts, but retired the practice after sustaining neck injuries filming the 2012 action thriller Safe House.

In an interview with Empire Magazine, Reynolds explained: "I remember the doctor sitting in the office — it was about the seventh time I had been there that year — and he writes on a prescription pad, rips off the note, and it reads 'Stuntman.' Point taken. So now I use four different guys that come with me."

6.Zendaya performed her own trapeze stunts alongside co-star Zac Efron in The Greatest Showman. "There was a lot of slamming into each other sometimes," she said in an interview with Today.

Here's the full interview:

7.Sandra Bullock said she's grown more hesitant about performing her own stunts since becoming a parent. Bullock explained in an interview with Bang Showbiz at the UK gala: "I insist on doing my stunts all the time. But one thing that makes you reconsider doing your shot is having a child. You go, 'What if I fall and die on this one? Would that be a smart move?'"

8.Keanu Reeves performs many of his own stunts. For example, the actor revealed on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert that he jumped off an approximately 46-story building "around 19, 20 times" for a scene in The Matrix Resurrections.

"It was awesome," Reeves said about the stunt. "Can you imagine just leaping off a building with wires?"

Here's the full interview:

9.Drew Barrymore refuses to do her own stunts anymore after a stunt on Santa Clarita Diet left her in the hospital with a concussion.

"I will never do my own stunts again," Barrymore said in an interview with People. "That was the end of a wonderful era. I can look back at a bunch of movies that I totally was a baller and always threw myself in there. I whip it in Charlie’s Angels! But I will never do a stunt again because I could’ve died, and it was really scary."

10.Although she still had help from her stunt double, it turns out that Jamie Lee Curtis really DID dangle from that helicopter in True Lies.

"The stunt itself, of course, was one of the most spectacular ever done, and Donna [Keegan, stunt double] deserves all of that credit," Curtis wrote in a Facebook post. "But we did need a shot of me post being pulled out of the limousine over the burning wreckage. In order to get the shot, we had to wire me to the helicopter at base camp and then fly for 20 minutes over the water to get to the 7-mile bridge where the wreckage took place."

11.KJ Apa seems to use a stunt double for a lot of Archie's scenes on Riverdale. In 2017, Apa shared a photo on his Instagram story of him and his stunt double, captioning it: "#riverdale wrestling team."

12.Chris Evans prefers to do his own stunts whenever he can. In an interview with MTV News, the Marvel star explained how he was able to film many stunts for Captain America: The First Avenger: "The good thing about Cap is that most of his abilities are rooted in what a human being is capable of — he's not flying, he's not shooting fire."

"For the most part, the stunts involved were hand-to-hand combat," Evans continued. "So any time I can put the gloves on and get in the ring, I'll do it."

13.Danny Trejo has actually called out actors for doing their own stunts. In an interview with Yahoo Movies, the actor explained why he thinks stunts should be handled by professional stunt people: "I know that all the big stars hate me to say this, but I don’t want to risk 80 peoples' [sic] jobs just to say I got big huevos on The Tonight Show. … We have stunt people who do that stuff."

"If I get hurt, everybody’s out of a job," Trejo added. "So I don’t choose to do that."

14.Although Tom Holland does still work with stunt doubles, the Spider-Man and Uncharted star also does many of his stunts himself.

For example, the Washington Monument scene in Spider-Man: Homecoming was reportedly a lot of Holland's own stunt work. "You might think [it] was all CGI, but that was really Tom climbing and leaping around to save his friends," P.J. Rickards revealed in an article for Insider.

15.Tom Cruise is also famous for doing the majority of his own stunts. For instance, while filming Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, the actor really DID hang onto the outside of a plane while it was taking off. They filmed the scene eight times.

That's far from the only risky stunt Cruise has performed for Mission Impossible scenes. For starters, he also jumped off a 120-foot building and held his breath for six minutes for an underwater scene in which the set was filled 20 feet high with water. "It’s been said in other interviews, if he wasn’t an actor, he would have been a great stuntman," Mission Impossible stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood said in an interview with Business Insider.

16.And finally: Hollywood legend Jackie Chan used to famously do his own stunts, but has since retired from the practice. The star has risked it all for his action sequences, even having a near-death experience while filming a stunt for Armour of God.

"Honestly, I'm not young anymore," Chan explained his decision to back away from stunts in an interview with Toronto City News in 2012. "I just don't want to risk my life."