Hollywood is the land of make-believe, but the very real specter of death can hover over television and movie sets.
The death of 42-year-old director of photography Halyna Hutchins while working on the movie “Rust” in New Mexico after actor Alec Baldwin discharged a prop gun is just the latest on-set tragedy.
There have been multiple other cases of deaths of cast and crew from accidents during production, including:
Brandon Lee
In 1993, Brandon Lee was filming the final scenes of the movie “The Crow” when he died after being shot with a prop gun.
Actor Michael Massee fired at Lee during a scene with a gun that was later found to have been be improperly loaded. Dummy bullets had been replaced with cardboard wadding, but a portion from one of the dummy bullets had broken off and remained in the gun.
That metal tip from the dummy bullet hit Lee’s abdomen. The son of the renowned martial-arts master and actor Bruce Lee was 28.
Jon-Erik Hexum
Hexum was cast to play Mac Harper, a CIA operative posing as a male model in the TV series “Cover Up.”
While filming in 1984, Hexum reportedly was playing around with a prop gun from a scene and shot himself in the head.
The blank drove a piece of his skull into his brain, and he was taken off of life support a week later.
Vic Morrow
The actor and two child actors were being filmed fleeing from a village during the Vietnam War while a US Army helicopter hovered over them in 1982’s “Twilight Zone: The Movie.”
The copter crashed following a pyrotechnic explosion, landing on Morrow, 53, and the children, who were killed.
Director John Landis, the pilot and three others were charged with involuntary manslaughter. They were all acquitted following a high-profile trial that lasted almost nine months.
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Source: www.cnn.com