Fatal Method Acting: Difference between revisions

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=== [[Radio]] ===

* Theater critic and writer Alexander Woollcott died in 1943 of a heart attack while participating in a live radio current events talk show.

* Veteran New York DJ Jack Spector had a fatal heart attack during a live show in 1994 (the station staff noticed a long stretch of dead air after a song and found him unconscious on the floor).

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* During a production shoot on location in the Philippines for the [[Chuck Norris]] film ''Braddock: Missing In Action III'', a Philippine Air Force helicopter hired by the Cannon Film Group crashed into Manila Bay killing four Filipino soldiers and wounding five other people, including a member of the film crew.

** A similar incident happened on the set of ''Delta Force 2'' two years later. Five people (including a cameraman and one of the actors) were killed in a helicopter accident and two others were injured when the engine failed. Both films had the same lead, director and producers.

* Famous stunt pilot Paul Mantz was killed in the filming of ''[[The Flight of the Phoenix]]'' when he misjudged the rate of descent and crashed into a small hillock.

* The 1928 production ''[[wikipedia:Noahchr(27)s Ark (1928 film)|Noah's Ark]]'', directed by [[Casablanca|Michael Curtiz]], had three stuntmen drowning in the scene of the flood (plus [[Troubled Production|the main actress getting pneumonia, one of the actors breaking two ribs, and an extra needing a leg amputation]]).

* In October 2011, a currently unnamed stuntman [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15499964 died while filming a stunt for] ''[[The Expendables|The Expendables II]]'' in Bulgaria.

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* [[Crocodile Hunter|Steve Irwin]] was filming his own documentary, ''Ocean's Deadliest,'' when he was fatally stabbed in the chest by a stingray spine while snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. Kids, take animals seriously.

** Even worse is that it was a freak accident. If the stingray hadn't gotten him in the chest, he could have ridden it out after a few days of excruciating but non-lethal pain.

*** Worst of all, given the general [[Tempting Fate|Fate-Tempting]] his usual actions around dangerous animals invoke, Irwin was completely unaware of the stingray's presence.

*** It was also ironic in that stingrays aren't really that dangerous. They're usually quite docile unless you step on one.

* Stuntman Tip Tipping was killed when his parachute failed to open while he was filming an episode of the British series ''999'', which was - ironically enough - a show with the premise of reenacting dangerous accidents.

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* [[Curtis Mayfield]]: equipment falling on him caused severe injuries. He was paralyzed from the neck down though he continued to record. His paralysis, as well as diabetes, eventually caused his death, but it would take 9 years. He still recorded one more album, ''New World Order'', entirely on his back (so that he had enough breath to do vocals).

* Bill Duffield, the lighting director for [[Kate Bush]]'s 1979 Tour of Life, died when he fell through the rigging and onto the stage shortly before the tour's first performance in Poole, England. His death deeply affected Bush and is often rumored to be one of the reasons she [[Reclusive Artist|never toured again]] after the Tour of Life finished.

* Ty Longley, guitarist for the band Great White was on stage in West Warwick, Rhode Island when pyrotechnics used by the band's crew created a spray of sparks that ignited the foam soundproofing material in the ceiling around the stage. 100 people died in [[wikipedia:The Station nightclub fire|the resulting fire]], including Longley.

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=== [[Music]] ===

* Charles Haddon, singer for the British band Ou Est Le Swimming Pool killed himself by jumping off of a television mast immediately after the band's performance at the 2010 Pukkelpop Festival, apparently of guilt after he injured a spectator stagediving.

** Another musician died onstage the day before ''at the same festival''. Michael Been - the singer for the American alternative band The Call - died of a heart attack while working as sound technician for his son's band, indie rock group Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

* In mid 2010, the Irish-Czech indie folk duo [[Once|The Swell Season]] were performing a concert at an amphitheater in a vineyard in California. In the middle of the concert, a man killed himself by jumping off from a scaffolding near the amphitheater and landed on the stage, mere inches from singer and pianist Marketa Irglova. In fact, the jumper ''would have killed her'' if he had landed just a couple feet closer. Since the accident, the band has only performed a handful of further concerts, partially due to a planned hiatus and partially due to the trauma of this suicide.

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** On the set of another ''[[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] film'', ''[[From Russia with Love]]'', [[Sean Connery]] had a [[Real Life]] hero moment when he saved co-star Daniela Bianchi from being literally mowed down by a helicopter. It was coming in too steep and heading straight for her, and Connery tackled her out of the way. Clearly the right choice to play [[James Bond]].

** Also, considering the barrier to separate Connery from a shark in ''[[Thunderball]]'' wasn't very big, he was in serious risk by swimming with the fish.

** According to urban legend, Tom Jones passed out while holding the extremely long final note to the theme song in ''Thunderball''.

** On ''[[You Only Live Twice]]'' in between takes, a big light fell from the ceiling and almost crushed actress Karin Dor (Helga Brandt). If the cameraman hadn't called her over from where she was standing she would have been killed.

** Another near miss in a James Bond film occurred during the filming of ''[[Octopussy]]''. The film required several shots of stunt men climbing about on the outside of a train. During filming, the train went out of the approved area that they were supposed to work in, and one stunt man was dashed against a concrete barrier, breaking both his legs.

* Pierce Brosnan was clearly also a great choice for Bond, though this time, the heroic life-saving happened after he left the role. In 2009, while filming the ''[[Percy Jackson]]'' movie, he noticed an empty van starting to roll down a hill toward Uma Thurman and another person. They couldn't hear him when he yelled to warn them of the impending danger, so he ran to catch up with the van, got in and stopped it himself. [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Epic.]]

** Also not the first time he saved a co-star from danger; Halle Berry choked on one of the grapes while filming the final scenes of ''[[Die Another Day]]'', but Brosnan coolly helped her out via the Heimlich.

* While filming the river scene in ''The Two Towers'' of ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Lord of the Rings]]'' trilogy, Viggo Mortensen was pulled under by a current and nearly drowned.

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** Weirdly enough Cameron himself nearly drowned early on in the shoot, when his diving suit malfunctioned while he was still weighed down at the bottom of the tank during filming. Seemed to happen a lot on that shoot.

* During film of ''[[The Last Samurai]]'', [[Tom Cruise]] was nearly decapitated when the animatronic horse he was riding malfunctioned during the filming of the first battle in the forest. If Hiroyuki Sanada hadn't been quite as skilled, his sword would have killed Cruise. As is, Sanada was able to stop his blade within an inch of Cruise's neck.

* John Simm did one of his own stunts in the 2002 version of ''[[Crime and Punishment]]'' and got thrown down a flight of stairs, breaking several ribs and suffering internal bleeding. Initially, he ''refused to go to the hospital'' even after he'd developed a high fever, because the fever and the pain "helped him with the performance" and he didn't want to halt the production. Eventually, they managed to drag him to a hospital.

** [[Doctor Who|Maybe he knew that he'd regenerate?]]

* Brendan Fraser has a hanging scene in ''[[The Mummy Trilogy|The Mummy 1999]]''. During the scene he was unconscious for a few minutes as people didn't realize he was actually being hung. So that struggling you are seeing? Not acting.

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** Famously, Hurt was subsequently forced to nap while sitting down, precisely the solution adopted by the real man he was portraying.

* [[Harold Lloyd]] was posing for stills while holding a prop bomb when the not-prop bomb exploded and blew off the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand. Lloyd spent the rest of his career, including his wildly successful run of films in the 1920s, performing complicated stunts with a special glove designed to disguise this.

* Supposedly in the film adaptation of ''[[The Neverending Story]]'', during the Swamp of Sadness scene, Artax apparently actually got caught in the elevator and died, or the actor playing Atreyu had his leg caught in the elevator and he got sucked under. Thankfully he survived, but depending on what happened (hard to say), the actor who played Atreyu was apparently scarred for life.

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** Also a runner was struggling for breath while doubling for Caroline Carmen inside a block of ice.

* Nearly happened to Matthew Fox in the last episode of ''[[Lost]]'' due to a real knife (if, thankfully, dulled) not being swapped out for a collapsible one. Luckily, Fox was wearing a kevlar pad. Not only had it been suggested he not wear protection, but he was in the process of trying various other forms of protection; none of the others would've saved him.

* [[Lucille Ball]] nearly drowned in the "shower" episode of ''The Lucy Show''. Vivian Vance saved her by literally pulling her up by her hair, then ad-libbed altered dialogue as Ball gasped for breath. The live audience, unaware of her close call, found it all hysterically funny.

* During the filming of the scene where Ace is trapped in the water tank in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "Battlefield", the front of the glass tank cracked and broke. Realizing that the water was about to pour out onto a floor with live electrical cables, Sylvester McCoy yelled "Get her out of there!" and Sophie Aldred was lifted clear just as the water poured out, saving her life.

** In another ''Doctor Who'' example, the story "Revenge of the Cybermen" was being filmed in a cavern. Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith) was to drive a boat in a whirlpool. The boat wouldn't run, and the stuntman jumped in and saved her from drowning.

* ''[[The Brady Bunch]]'' episode where they visit Kings Island Amusement Park includes a scene of them on the roller coaster The Racer, which was filmed with a camera mounted onto the ride car. Robert Reed thought that the camera looked unsafe and made them do a test run first. When they did, the camera flew off and would have killed the actors if they had been on the ride.

* Bob Denver was nearly killed by a live lion used in one episode of ''[[Gilligan's Island]]''. Nevertheless, most of the cast considered the episode to be their favorite... presumably they almost [[Just Eat Gilligan|got off the island]].

* An infamous 2006 Vampire Dragster crash very nearly killed ''[[Top Gear]]'' presenter Richard Hammond. In a slight subversion however, he had already done the required take successfully. It was revealed when they were watching the footage when he returned to the show that he was trying to set an official speed record (which requires running the vehicle in two opposing directions to get the average speed of each run), during which he crashed at 300 mph. ''Had he been taller'' (something which he gets mocked for frequently on the show), ''he would have been decapitated''.

* In one of the closest calls of this trope ever, In 1995, Tracey Conway, one of the stars of the Seattle sketch comedy show ''[[Almost Live]]!'', had a heart attack just after an ''ER'' spoof, of all things. A fireman in the audience gave her CPR until an ambulance could arrive. Fortunately, she recovered.

* In the first episode of ''[[The Wire]]'', the scene of McNulty urinating on train tracks and walking off while barely avoiding an oncoming train was done for real, as the last scene shot. In his commentary, David Simon talks about how worried everyone was that they'd finish filming their first episode by killing their star.

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* In the summer of 2011, there were three highly publicized stage collapses at open-air festivals which nearly cost the lives of the artist performing at the time and - in some cases, killed or injured fans in the first few rows:

** On July 17, the stage at Bluesfest in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada collapsed 20 minutes into [[Cheap Trick]]'s set. The stage collapsed away from the audience and the band were able to escape in time, but the band's equipment truck and some of their instruments were destroyed.

** On August 13, the stage at the Indiana State Fair collapsed just as country music duo [[Sugarland]] were taking the stage. The resulting collapse killed 7 people and injured 43. Sugarland, their management and the state of Indiana have been named as the defendant in several lawsuits by the survivors of the collapse.

** On August 19, one of the stages at the popular Belgian festival Pukkelpop collapsed during the performance of American indie rock band The Smith Westerns. Once again, the band members were able to escape the stage with seconds to spare, but unfortunately the stage collapsed into the audience and killed five people and injured 140. The rest of the festival, which was to include performances by big-name acts which rarely perform in Belgium, was canceled.

* When [[The Monkees]] played the Hollywood Bowl in 1967 Micky Dolenz jumped into a reflecting pool in front of the stage. Mid-air he realized he was still holding his mic, and tossed it away just in time before he could electrocute himself.

* While performing live during MTV's Spring Break, [[Radiohead]] lead singer Thom Yorke jumped into the nearby swimming pool and quickly began drowning. Because the band was still playing their instruments nobody realized Yorke's life was in danger and he frantically swam to the nearby ledge. In another twist a ''live microphone'' had been left at the poolside, and an MTV VJ realized it was there. Yorke almost touched the live microphone before the VJ smacked it out of his reach and pulled him from the pool.

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== Fictional Cases ==

=== [[Anime]] ===

* In Masakazu Katsura's early manga ''Present from Lemon'', male lead Lemon's father (''enka'' singer Momojirou Sakaguchi) died of a heart attack on stage when Lemon was a child.

* In an episode of ''[[Slayers]]'', Lina and Co are performing a play when they are attacked by Zangulus and Vrumugun, who adlib lines to make it seem like their attack is part of the play. Lina adlibs some lines that justify them fighting back, starting a battle that blows up the stage, kills Vrumugun (again) and several mooks, and gets them presented an award for best original production (Since nobody had seen the play before, the only people to realize that they had deviated from the script were people working for the theater troupe).

* Played with in a [[Detective Conan]] case. Conan, the Mouris and Kogoro's [[Old Master]] Heihachirou Shirota attend a theater rehearsal in which the troupe's diva, Shouko Ooide, dies while rehearsing... and it immediately turns out that she was ''murdered'' via poison. {{spoiler|The culprit was the troupe's manager, Hitomi Sasaki, pissed off after the victim stole her boyfriend (and the lead actor) purely to spite her ''[[Kick the Dog|and told her so to her face]]''.}}

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** In a [[Shout-Out]] to this, ''[[Guitar Hero]] II'' features "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" as an encore song - at the conclusion ''the drummer explodes''.

* In ''[[The Prestige]]'', [[Christian Bale]] accidentally kills [[Hugh Jackman]]'s wife during a magician stunt.

* The tragic ending of ''[[Moulin Rouge]]'' has the heroine die of natural causes (tuberculosis) during a curtain call.

* ''[[Network]]'' references this once and uses it once; early on (in a scene likely inspired by Christine Chubbock's suicide mentioned above), Howard Beale announces that he will be committing suicide on air at a later date. He is deterred from this by being given a new show after his on-air rant inspires record ratings. {{spoiler|Later, when his ratings sag, his producers arrange for him to be assassinated live on the air.}}

* In the sequel to ''[[Pet Sematary]]'', the boy's actress mother is accidentally killed on the set of a movie when she's electrocuted by live wires.

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** Another episode had a comedian who died just after a performance in a nightclub.

* Not ''quite'' sure where this belongs, but on one episode of ''[[The Tonight Show]]'' Johnny Carson had an effects technician as a guest. The tech had built a guillotine that supposedly looked more realistic than former effects, and Carson demonstrated it. After the gag, Carson remained unresponsive for some time; the other people on set appeared visibly worried that something had gone wrong until they got the hood off and Carson grinned at them.

* Similar to the above Carson example is illusionist David Copperfield's [[Department of Redundancy Department|illusion]] "[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|The Death Saw]]", wherein [[Death Trap|Copperfield is chained to a table and must escape]] [[MacGyvering|using only a hairpin borrowed from an audience member]] before the [[Time Keeps on Ticking|slowly-descending]] [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Death Saw]] cuts him in half. However, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|The Death Saw]] [[Gone Horribly Wrong|malfunctions and begins descending faster than the magician anticipated]], causing him [[Oh Crap|to panic visibly]] until [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|The Death Saw]] reaches him and [[Killed Off for Real|the inevitable happens]]. However, [[Back ~~From~~ the Dead|Copperfield appears to revive]] and the rest of the illusion in which [[Nightmare Fuel|Copperfield remotely controls the severed lower half of his body]] is [[Dead Baby Comedy|played for laughs]]. See it [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SefD84fbEE here].

* Similar to the above Carson example is illusionist David Copperfield's [[Department of Redundancy Department|illusion]] "[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|The Death Saw]]", wherein [[Death Trap|Copperfield is chained to a table and must escape]] [[MacGyvering|using only a hairpin borrowed from an audience member]] before the [[Time Keeps on Ticking|slowly-descending]] [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Death Saw]] cuts him in half. However, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|The Death Saw]] [[Gone Horribly Wrong|malfunctions and begins descending faster than the magician anticipated]], causing him [[Oh Crap|to panic visibly]] until [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|The Death Saw]] reaches him and [[Killed Off for Real|the inevitable happens]]. However, [[Back from the Dead|Copperfield appears to revive]] and the rest of the illusion in which [[Nightmare Fuel|Copperfield remotely controls the severed lower half of his body]] is [[Dead Baby Comedy|played for laughs]]. See it [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SefD84fbEE here].

** Note that this illusion is extremely convincing when performed live, especially since [[Didn't See That Coming|the audience doesn't know what's going to happen]] and it's very easy to get caught up in the moment; the bit of cloth flying off the saw is a nice detail. It's [[Fridge Logic|only later]] that one realizes that had Copperfield [[Killed Off for Real|actually been sawed in half]], it wouldn't have been [[Bloodless Carnage|quite so bloodless]].

** Paul Daniels did a hoax of this type on a BBC Halloween special. The big finish was an escape from an iron maiden - except that the maiden appeared to spring closed on him. Awkward silence, the studio audience being asked to leave, roll credits... and no "reveal" that he was alright until ''after the following programme''.

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** Which sounds similar to the [[Blackadder]] episode, Born to Be King, where it's [[Played for Laughs]].

* In the ''[[Midsomer Murders]]'' episode ''The Axeman Cometh'', a singer is killed by an electrified mic stand while on stage. The crowd initially think it's part of the act.

* Played with in an episode of ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]''. A magician survives incredibly dangerous, impossible stunts, but other people have a tendency of dropping dead of the same things that should have killed him.

* An episode of ''[[Dollhouse]]'' features attempts on the life of a pop singer, some of which occur onstage. In one case a stunt double is killed in her place.

* In ''[[The Mary Tyler Moore Show]]'', Chuckles the Clown was killed at a parade while dressed as a peanut, when an elephant tried to peel him.

* In the first season of ''[[Las Vegas]]'', [[Jean Claude Van Damme]] makes an appearance and gets killed off in a sabotaged stunt.

* In the first season of ''[[Las Vegas]]'', [[Jean-Claude Van Damme]] makes an appearance and gets killed off in a sabotaged stunt.

* In a literal example, a method actor visiting ''[[Fantasy Island]]'' asked for the chance to practice for the role of Dracula. He nearly drained his [[Love Interest]]'s blood with the vampiric abilities and appetites he received, although Mr. Rourke intervened before the "Fatal" part of this trope could play out.

* Used in one of the stories told on ''Beyond Belief: Fact Or Fiction'', where during a pro wrestling match, the guy who was booked to lose died during the match. Of course, the history between the two meant that the dead guy, who was always showing up his current opponent looked like he was just deciding to sell like a ragdoll, and since the guy who won thought he was legitimately winning that way, nobody knew he was dead until after the match. Upon finding out that he was only winning because he was fighting a corpse, the narrator then says "even in victory, he was a loser."