20 Iconic Movie Scenes That Nearly Killed Their Stars
8. Ed Harris: The Abyss
While “The Abyss” is probably the most underrated film on James Cameron’s CV, being a brilliant and tense thriller that will really get you thinking and make you feel genuinely scared, this movie also made its lead star fear for his own life.
Well, not the movie, of course, but its insanely committed director, James Cameron.
Now, since the movie is about a civilian diving team searching for a lost nuclear submarine and face danger while encountering an alien aquatic species, one would naturally assume the actors simply had to deal with insane amounts of water and be soaking wet 90% of the time. But for Ed, this wasn’t the worst part.
James Cameron had this brilliant but ridiculously insane idea. Ed Harris was underwater filming one really tough scene in which he was supposed to run out of air and closely encounter his demise. Naturally, he didn’t worry about the air supply, since that was supposed to be taken care of by the film crew and he thought he had enough air for the whole scene. But that’s when Cameron resorted to his underhanded ways.
Harris wasn’t too worried about running out of air supply and thought the whole scene was going to be fake, and boy was he wrong. Cameron wanted this scene to look as realistic as possible, so he purposely made sure Harris didn’t have enough air supply for the whole scene.
Commitment or madness on Cameron’s part? You decide.
