7 months ago
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Russell Crowe is promoting his newest movie, Land of Bad, an action thriller co-starring Liam Hemsworth, Luke Hemsworth, and Milo Ventimiglia. The movie came out this past weekend. During his press tour, Russell sat down with People and shared an unbelievable story from when he was filming Robin Hood in 2010, when he was 46 years old. You know that time when Tom Cruise broke his ankle while filming Mission: Impossible Fallout and it halted production for six weeks? The one where he shattered it doing a stunt and you can still see that take in the final cut of the film? Yeah, well, Russell has a similar story. It’s similar, only you have to replace “ankle” with “both legs” and “halted filming for six weeks” with “didn’t know about it until 10 years later.” It’s a lot of yikes, y’all!
“I jumped off a castle portcullis onto rock-hard uneven ground,” the Oscar winner, 59, tells PEOPLE for One Last Thing in this week’s issue. “We should have prepped the ground and buried a pad but we were in a rush to get the shot done in the fading light.”
Crowe, who is currently starring in the new action thriller Land of Bad, didn’t realize the precarious situation until he was about to jump.
“With hundreds of extras around, arrows flying and burn pots setting the castle on fire, there was no pulling out,” he recalls. “As I jumped, I remember thinking, ‘This is going to hurt.’ ”
Aiming to land on the balls of his feet to help with the impact, the actor felt his heels hit the uneven ground first. “It was like an electric shock bursting up through my body,” he says. “We were shooting a big movie, so you just struggle through, but the last month of that job was very tricky. There was a number of weeks where even walking was a challenge.”
Crowe “never discussed the injury with production, never took a day off because of it, I just kept going to work,” he adds.
A decade later, Crowe began having what he calls “very strange pains” in his lower legs so he went to a doctor for an MRI and X-rays.
“I thought it was nothing serious,” he says. “After working through a long New York winter, my body was just missing exercise and sunshine.”
The star was shocked when the doctor looked at the X-rays and asked him, “When did you break your legs?” “Apparently he could see the remnants of fractures in both shin bones,” says Crowe. “To jog my memory he said, ‘Would have been maybe 10 years ago?'”
Crowe immediately remembered jumping off the portcullis on the Robin Hood set. “Apparently I finished that movie with two broken legs,” he adds. “All for art. No cast, no splints, no painkillers, just kept going to work and over time they healed themselves.”
Looking back, the actor realized after the shoot wrapped in 2009, he took a year off and didn’t work until signing on for 2013’s Man of Steel.
“In retrospect I obviously knew something was wrong,” he says. “To be the Kryptonian father of Superman was six months of incredibly intense physical training. Between the time off and that training, things fixed themselves.”
That is f–cking WILD. Like, I find it absolutely bonkers that he broke not one but BOTH legs, kept going, and then had no idea for another 10 years! I know Russell said that they were on a tight schedule on the day of the shoot itself but I cannot believe that he never stopped to have someone from the production’s medical staff take a look at his legs. He even said he had trouble walking for weeks! Men, #amirite?! I have a decent tolerance for pain and have worked or gone throughout my day ignoring some pretty uncomfortable injuries, but if something persists, I’m going to get it checked out. Russell is so lucky that he didn’t have permanent damage.
Photos credit: Ferrari – Look/Look Press / Avalon, Dimitris Legakis / Avalon, Maria Laura Antonelli / AGF Foto / Avalon
