10 A-listers who survived horrific accidents

Known for hosting NBC’s The Tonight Show and his own eponymous show, Jay has made dramatic headlines in the past, particularly after suffering two horrific accidents only a few months apart.

In November 2022, Jay, 74, was injured in a gasoline fire when one of his cars erupted into flames, leaving him with severe burns on his face. He released a statement to Variety saying: “I got some serious burns from a gasoline fire. I am ok. Just need a week or two to get back on my feet.“ His Good Morning America co-hosts flooded him with support on the live show, with George Stephanopoulos saying, “We do wish him the best,“ while his friends Michael Strahan and Robin Roberts sent their love.

The injuries were pretty severe and led to the star needing to have extensive surgery and reconstruction work on his face.

Jay told E! at the 2024 Daytime Beauty Awards, “My recovery was nine days. I missed two days of work, so it was not bad,“ quipping that he was left with an even “better face… so I’ll take it“. At the ceremony, Jay gave a special shout out to his surgeon Dr. Peter Grossman, who was given the Outstanding Achievement in Medicine Award.

He described what happened when he pulled over in the Las Vegas Review Journal: “I turned down a side street and cut through a parking lot, and unbeknownst to me, some guy had a wire strung across the parking lot but with no flag hanging from it.“ Then, “I didn‘t see it until it was too late. It just clotheslined me and, boom, knocked me off the bike. The bike kept going, and you know how that works out.“ Jay’s severe injuries involved a broken collarbone, two broken ribs and two cracked knee caps.

Another unlucky incident with motorcycles involved Oscar-winning actor George Clooney and led to his wife, Amal, banning him from riding them ever again.

While filming in Sardinia, Italy for Catch-22, the critically acclaimed actor – who has two Academy Awards, a BAFTA, and four Golden Globes to his name – was caught in a collision when his scooter crashed into a Mercedes on the morning commute.

It seemed both parties were at fault. Police told NBC that the driver of the car didn’t “respect the right of way,“ which led to the crash happening, while rebuking George for going too fast.

Miraculously, the Ocean’s Eleven star was released from hospital on the same day with only minor injuries. According to La Nuova, he suffered “a slight trauma to the pelvis and bruises to one leg and arm“. The Wolfs actor was soon back at work, looking fully recovered from his dramatic ordeal.

Back in high school, comedy star Amy Schumer suffered a gruesome accident while out surfing. The Trainwreck star found herself stranded on a desolate beach after a whole surf fin went into her leg. Recalling the incident, she told Vanity Fair: “I have a pretty bad scar on my leg from surfing, forty-one stitches, three layers. I skegged myself. My whole fin went into my leg, and I had to yank it out. I was by myself.“

Thankfully a good samaritan came to Amy’s rescue. She recalled how a man held her leg with his bare hands while “fat and blood“ poured out.

To this day the Hollywood star, who created her own TV show Inside Amy Schumer that gained five Primetime Emmy Awards, has no idea who her rescuer was! “I wish I knew who that guy was, because he saved my life, for sure. He had blue toenail polish and nail polish; he had long stringy hair. And I remember him being beautiful. Anyway, he held my leg closed,“ she said.

Once upon a time, Justin Theroux almost forgot his own name after an accident left him with temporary amnesia. The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice actor was skateboarding in New York City when he was suddenly hit by a van and was thrown off to the side of the road.

Recounting the traumatic experience on the The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Justin said: “I got hit by a van and woke up with people all around me. I clearly blacked out. There was a woman over me weeping (and) there were two men holding my arms so I wouldn‘t touch my head. The woman was screaming at me, ‘Who are you? What‘s your name? What‘s your phone number?“

Justin ended up bleeding for over an hour before an ambulance appeared, a delay which at the time must have been terrifying, though now the star can see the funny side. “This is kind of the New York hilarious part of it: the ambulance took about an hour and 20 minutes to get there. I was lying on the pavement and people are now kinda getting bored with this guy with blood pouring out of his head.“ The Leftovers star ended up staying in hospital overnight where he had a brain scan but was safely discharged the next morning.

Since the incident, Justin‘s relationship with skateboarding has changed. He spoke to Men‘s Journal about how he used to live “a much more active lifestyle in New York, where I was almost always walking, on a bicycle or a skateboard to get places“. Instead, Justin has switched to the more static workout of weightlifting in order to avoid any more nasty accidents.

Critically acclaimed actor Miles Teller was in a car accident when he was 20 that almost took his life. The Top Gun: Maverick actor, in between his sophomore and junior college years, was riding in a car with friends that flipped eight times in the air.

Talking with Peter Travers for ABC News about the event, Miles said: “My buddy lost control of my car going 80 mph. We flipped eight times. I got ejected out the window. The car landed and I was just lying like 50 feet from the car, unconscious, covered in blood. My buddy thought I was dead.“

When the actor started auditioning for roles, the injuries from the accident were significant enough to be noticed by casting directors. He was left with two rocks in his face, leaving him with scars which he attempted to remove by laser. Miles opened up to Travers that his scars did prevent him from getting acting jobs as he recalled: “People were straight up just like, ‘Yeah, Miles is a good actor, [but it] doesn’t make sense for this character to have scars.“

However Miles, 37, has appeared in many films since showing that his scars have not stopped his success. Hollywood film director, Cameron Mitchell, who cast Miles in Rabbit Hole, was most complimentary of the facial feature. “I love it. It tells a secret“.

Titanic star Leonardo Di Caprio may not have survived a sinking ship on screen, but he has encountered numerous near-death experiences in real life. His series of survival tales sound like a movie script and include an exploding plane engine, a shark attack and a knotted parachute mid skydive.

Not even safe in business class, Leonardo, 49, witnessed the entire wing of his plane explode on a commercial flight. He told Wired that the engines shut down and the scariest part was: “gliding with absolutely no sound“. The plane made an emergency landing with the tyres of the planes exploding on arrival.

Not just at risk in the air, the Oscar-winning actor encountered a great white shark while diving in South Africa. “A great white jumped into my cage when I was diving. Half of its body was in the cage, and it was snapping at me,“ he told Wired. The shark took five or six snaps while Leonardo lay flat on the floor and tried to remain still. Apparently the guys working for the diving company said this “has never happened in the 30 years they‘d been doing it“.

It’s clear that the Killers of The Flower Moon actor has three lives (at least) as his final brush with death was on a skydive when his parachute failed to open. The first parachute was knotted and had to be cut free by the expert. Then the second parachute ended up knotted and Leonardo said he felt “we were just plummeting to our death“. Luckily, they didn’t crash land but the pair did have some bruises.

The Big Bang Theory icon almost lost her leg in a horse riding session gone wrong. The actress ended up severely injured as after she fell, the horse then stepped on her leg leading to her having several fractures.

Kaley, 38, told Apple‘s Smartless podcast about the “bad accident“ which happened around 12 to 13 years ago. She remembered the moment when the horse stepped on her: “I heard all the cracking. It took me like five or 10 seconds to actually realise it wasn’t just 400 leaves, it was my bones“.

Fortunately, the Young Sheldon actress didn’t lose her leg but she did suffer a compound fracture of her tibia and fibula. Although, before undergoing surgery she did have to sign a release in case her leg needed to be amputated. At the time, she was filming The Big Bang Theory and she was reportedly back to work within two weeks in a boot – a true acting professional.

Best known for her breakthrough role in Mad Men, Alison Brie had a head injury which nearly left her permanently blind.

On the HypochondriActor podcast, Alison, 41, spoke to the hosts about her freak accident when she was seven that led her to hit her head on concrete. “I was a really petite kid (and) I was running across the playground and not looking. I bumped into another little girl in my class, who was four times bigger than me“. Thankfully, her older sister was on the scene and took her to the nurses office straight away as Alison had a slight concussion.

After being told to lie down by the nurses, Alison recalled a scary moment when she thought she had gone blind. Her parents drove her to the hospital and the star recounted she couldn‘t “see a thing“ in the car. She was “hysterically crying“ at the realisation that she may have lost her vision.

Compounding her hysteria, en route they had a small collision which threw Alison onto the floor of the vehicle. The Promising Young Woman actress was driven to the hospital by a family friend in a different car where they performed a CAT scan. The doctors told her parents if Alison’s vision didn‘t come back in 12 hours she would likely be “blind for the rest of her life“. After 10 hours, her vision returned to normal and fortunately has remained that way ever since.

The Lord of the Rings actor almost didn‘t survive and severely damaged his spinal cord. In an Instagram video for UNICEF, the actor said when he was in hospital he was told for the first four days that he may never walk again, describing the accident as being one of the “darkest times” of his life.

After surgery, he was put into a back brace and was discharged on crutches 12 days later.
While he recovered physically relatively quickly, the mental wounds took far longer to heal. “I would say the months after the fall were quite a dark time,“ he told UNICEF. “As somebody who‘d sort of always been very active in my life, it felt very restrictive all of a sudden and I was in a lot of pain.“

There was an unanticipated health benefit, however… Orlando told GQ in 2005 that he stopped partying while in the back brace since he realised that he could “mess up“ his life. Nowadays, the star chooses a more chilled lifestyle and tries to stay away from a life on the edge.

She was 16 years old and in a car with friends driving down Pacific Coast Highway when they had a head-on collision with a truck. The O.C. star told Stylist: “I don‘t remember anything. I was in a coma for three days, but I don’t remember the accident.“

As with Orlando Bloom, there was an upside to Rachel‘s accident as it led her to break up with her then boyfriend who was in the fateful car with her. She described their parting at the time as being “a good thing“. Definitely a strange call from fate to get out of a bad situation!