Tom Holland and other actors who got injured making superhero movies

Superhero movie sets can be dangerous places. Spider-Man star Tom Holland certainly found that out recently, sustaining an injury on the set of new movie Spider-Man: Brand New Day that thankfully — according to reports — wasn’t as serious as it could have been.

But he’s far from the first spandex-clad actor to find himself on the treatment table after pushing himself in the stunt-packed world of superhero filmmaking. With so much high-octane action and over-cranked spectacle on show from the likes of Marvel and DC — and actors increasingly determined to do as much of the work for real as possible — it’s inevitable that stars don’t always come out completely unscathed.

Here are some of the stars who found themselves in a lot of pain as a result of superhero movie antics.

Tom Holland

Tom Holland met fans while in costume on the set of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. (Sony Pictures/Marvel)

Tom Holland has spent the last few weeks hard at work on the set of his fourth solo outing as Peter Parker, Spider-Man: Brand New Day. But he is now due to take a break of several days from filming after suffering a head injury as a result of a stunt accident.

Read more: Why Spider-Man: Brand New Day is breaking new ground for Marvel (Yahoo Entertainment, 6 min read)

According to Deadline, Holland suffered a “mild concussion” and was treated at hospital. His break from filming, which has stopped the new movie in its tracks for now, is “out of precaution” rather than a result of any serious damage. Spider-Man should be swinging again very soon.

Hugh Jackman

Hugh Jackman has suffered numerous injuries on X-Men movies, including The Wolverine. (20th Century Studios/Alamy)

There aren’t many actors with as much superhero movie experience as Hugh Jackman, who has been playing Wolverine in some form since the first X-Men film in 2000. On the set of that very first film, he damaged his ear in a collision with a camera, while a very intimate area of his anatomy got caught in a harness while filming a wire stunt and, to begin with, nobody noticed. “I screamed so much, and they kept going because they figured it was me primal-yell emoting,” Jackman explained to Yahoo.

Read more: Deadpool & Wolverine had a Hugh Jackman Easter egg you missed (Digital Spy, 2 min read)

On X-2, he stabbed himself twice with his own claws, leaving a scar near his eye and also landing a blow on his upper thigh. But perhaps the scariest moment came on 2013’s The Wolverine, during a stunt in which he had to swing from the inside to the outside of a speeding train. His neck got caught in the opening and was almost snapped by the momentum.

Jackman said: “I just remember hanging up there on the wires and everyone just stops. I got sent home because I was a little in shock about it.” Fortunately, the eventual injury was only muscle damage, but it was a very scary brush with serious peril for the star.

Robert Pattinson

Robert Pattinson was injured on the set of The Batman. (Alamy)

The Batman had an enormous production delay — perhaps more than any other movie on this list — but it wasn’t a result of its star’s injury. Filming was only a few weeks into its swing when the entire Hollywood system had to shut down as a result of the pandemic. But, as star Robert Pattinson explained to GQ, he’d already managed to hurt himself while filming a stunt. It’s a superhero rite of passage.

Read more: Robert Pattinson locked out of The Batman Part II script (BANG Showbiz, 3 min read)

“I broke my wrist at the beginning of it all, doing a stunt, even before COVID,” said Pattinson. “So the whole first section was trying to keep working out — looking like a penguin. I remember when that seemed like the worst thing that could go wrong.”

Letitia Wright

Letitia Wright got a bad injury while filming a stunt for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. (Eyepix Group/Alamy)

In the summer of 2021, Letitia Wright was filming a motorcycle stunt with the second unit crew of superhero sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Wright’s bike tumbled from its rig, leaving her with a concussion, a fractured shoulder, and several other injuries. It wasn’t until January 2022 that Wright was well enough to continue filming.

Read more: Letitia Wright was ‘in the trenches’ making directorial debut (Cover Media, 1 min read)

As the film finally arrived in cinemas in November 2022, Wright told Variety she was still working through the “traumatic” accident in therapy. “I had great, great, great medical support, great patience on set,” Wright explained. “I’m just extremely proud of myself. I’m extremely proud of Ryan, of the team, for just the resilience — overcoming adversities every step of the way. When I finished filming, I cried like a little baby.”

Robert Downey Jr

Iron Man 3 wasn’t plain sailing for leading man Robert Downey Jr. (Marvel Studios/Alamy)

Robert Downey Jr was already a seasoned superhero performer by the time he teamed with director Shane Black to make Iron Man 3. But during the filming of a stunt on the threequel, Downey Jr landed harder than expected after a 12-foot drop and damaged his ankle. It was five or six weeks before production could get going again. According to the tell-all book The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the shot in which the star injured himself is actually in the finished movie.

Read more: Iron Man 3 was a tipping point for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Yahoo Entertainment, 9 min read)

But there was some work done in the meantime with the aid of body doubles. “We were able to reconstruct RDJ as Tony Stark on set, with the help of [a] body double and the facial captures we’d collected afterwards,” VFX supervisor Chris Townsend told IGN.

Chris Evans

Chris Evans injured himself during the famous helicopter scene from Captain America: Civil War. (Marvel Studios)

The scene from Captain America: Civil War in which Steve Rogers flexes his massive bicep to prevent a helicopter taking off lives on in GIF form. We’ve all seen it dozens of times. But that moment was anything but a picnic for Chris Evans, as he told Entertainment Tonight in a 2016 interview.

Read more: Chris Evans is ‘sad’ not be back for Avengers: Doomsday (BANG Showbiz, 2 min read)

He said: “That was in the first week of filming. And I actually messed up my arm doing it, I really did. It’s a fake helicopter, obviously, but it was drifting beyond the ability of control. I tweaked a little something. To this day, I’m still messed up.”

Zazie Beetz

Zazie Beetz was in the thick of the action as Domino on Deadpool 2. (20th Century Studios/Moviestore Collection)

Superhero sequel Deadpool 2 presented an enormous step up in action for Zazie Beetz, who played the X-Force mutant Domino. According to USA Today, she pushed herself to the limit on the set, fainting after a truck convoy action scene and sustaining a burn on her chest — which left a scar — as a result of a stray shell casing from the many, many bullets fired in the movie.

Read more: Zazie Beetz admits acting on set was ‘devastating experience’ at start of career (Cover Media, 2 min read)

“I never really pictured [a superhero movie] would be my trajectory,” said Beetz. “I was nervous, because you sign onto a franchise and you’re contracted with them to continue on with the story, and you don’t really know what you’re signing up for.” When it came to the action, she certainly found out.

Jason Momoa

Jason Momoa injured himself during action sequences in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. (Warner Bros/Alamy)

Jason Momoa might look indestructible, but he found himself battered and bruised after filming his DC sequel Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. He explained on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that his age was catching up with him when it came to filming high-octane stunts. “I love my job and I get a little too excited — then the age thing, you know, I’m an aging superhero right now,” he admitted.

Read more: Jason Momoa says Aquaman’s DC future is “not looking too good” (Digital Spy, 2 min read)

Momoa added: “I messed up my eyes. I just got something in it that kinda cut it up, and then I’ve gotta get surgery, I have a hernia, I’ve got ribs out. I’m just getting beat up.” Sounds very painful indeed, but Momoa is always in good spirits — even about this stuff.

Jeremy Renner

Jeremy Renner hurt himself while filming the mammoth action scenes for The Avengers. (Marvel Studios/Alamy)

Jeremy Renner has shown amazing fortitude over the years of his action movie career, most recently returning to acting after a snow plow accident that probably should have taken his life. But before that, he suffered a painful-sounding injury on the set of 2012 team-up movie The Avengers. “One day he just turned wrong and his whole body shut down,” director Joss Whedon told The Hollywood Reporter. “He could not do anything. He was in enormous pain, and we had to shut that sequence down and shoot it a couple of weeks later.”

Read more: Jeremy Renner claims he declined “Hawkeye” season 2 because ‘penny pinchers’ offered ‘half the money’ of season 1 (Entertainment Weekly, 3 min read)

In the same article, Renner explained the details of that injury, which meant that sequence had to be shunted later in the filming schedule. He said: “I tore the muscle from my back to my shoulder. I got chewed up pretty good.”

Jaimie Alexander

Jaimie Alexander injured herself during a scene on Thor: The Dark World. (Marvel Studios/Alamy)

Jaimie Alexander hasn’t been particularly well served in the MCU in her role as Lady Sif, getting a particularly disappointing cameo in Thor: Love and Thunder. But while filming action for the 2013’s Thor movie The Dark World, Alexander sustained a catalogue of pretty horrific injuries in a fall. She told MTV: “I herniated a disk in my thoracic spine, I dislocated my left shoulder, I tore my right Rhomboid, and chipped eleven of my vertebrae. I slipped and fell down something very high, and I hurt myself pretty badly and it scared me. I knew when I couldn’t get off the ground I was like ‘OK, I’m in big trouble’.”

Read more: Jaimie Alexander Wants Sif To Team Up With A Powerful Cosmic Hero, And I’d Love To See This Happen (CinemaBlend, 3 min read)

The next morning, she felt like things got worse. “I sat in the car where I compressed my spine a little bit, and I went paralysed in my right leg and my right hand,” she explained. Fortunately, the paralysis was just a result of swelling rather than anything more serious and disappeared after physical rehab. But it shows just how far Alexander went for the Thor franchise.

Noah Centineo

Noah Centineo as Atom Smasher in DC superhero movie Black Adam. (Warner Bros/Everett Collection)

Noah Centineo had great fun filming his role as Atom Smasher in Black Adam. Presumably more fun than anybody had watching it. But, as he explained to Entertainment Tonight, he had a little too much fun while filming one scene in which he did a lot of sprinting. “I just wanted to make it funny, you know? We’ve done it serious so many times, let’s see if we can add humour to it, and it was funny because I pretended to hit my knee. I spun around, threw my arm in the air and it dislocated completely.”

Read more: Noah Centineo wows fans by flaunting dramatic body transformation (BANG Showbiz, 2 min read)

Multiple attempts to pop the joint back in were to no avail. In the end, it took 13 tries and a cut to the costume before they managed to get Centineo back in action. Not that that was the end of it. He added: “They got it back in but I was so excited that it went back in that I was like ‘yeah!’ and it went right out again.” Oops.