Alec Baldwin Shooting: Which Hollywood Films Have Claimed Real Lives?
11:27 GMT 22.10.2021 (Updated: 19:49 GMT 31.10.2022)
© REUTERS / Stephanie Keith
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The US film industry is reeling from the shocking death of Halyna Hutchins, who was shot dead by actor Alec Baldwin on set. It is the latest in a long line of accidents which have hit Hollywood over the years.
An investigation is under way into how Halyna Hutchins, the director of photography on Alec Baldwin’s latest movie, the western Rust, was killed by a bullet from a prop gun.
Hutchins, 42, was fatally wounded and the film’s director, Joel Souza, was also injured in what appears to be a terrible accident at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in New Mexico.
Hutchins, who was born in the Soviet Union, was airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital, where she died.
Rest in peace, Halyna Hutchins. pic.twitter.com/XxaHIzrGva
— Screen Queens (@screenqueenz) October 22, 2021
Baldwin, 63, was said to be “distraught and in tears” and his spokesman said there had been an "accident" involving the "misfire of a prop gun with blanks."
Ironically Baldwin’s character in the film is the grandfather of a 13-year-old boy convicted of an accidental killing.
Alec Baldwin just lost the privilege to lecture Americans about guns or the Second Amendment ever again.
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) October 22, 2021
How Hutchins came to die may not be known for several days or weeks but the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents cinematographers and other film workers, has been pressing recently for better pay and less hours for film crews.
Her death is not the first and will certainly not be the last death on a film set.
Deadpool 2 (Joi Harris) - 2017
In August 2017 stuntwoman Joi Harris, known as SJ, was killed during the filming of the Ryan Reynolds caper Deadpool 2.
The movie was shot in Reynolds’ home town of Vancouver, Canada but Harris died when her motorbike went out of control and she was thrown through a glass window in a downtown building.
Witnesses said Harris, who was working on her first movie, had been riding the bike down a set of stairs when she lost control, jumped a curb and crashed into the Shaw Tower.
Actor Ryan Reynolds poses on the red carpet during the premiere of "Deadpool 2" in Manhattan, New York, U.S., May 14, 2018.
© REUTERS / Shannon Stapleton
"People were running on the sidewalk, the motorcycle comes flying across the street, looks like from a ramp because it was in the air. The rider was standing on the bike, slams into that building, clearly hit and out of control and clearly not planned," said one eyewitness.
Harris, 40, was the stunt double for actress Zazie Beetz, whose character, Domino, is a sexy mutant mercenary who teams up with Reynolds' character, Deadpool, a wisecracking bionic superhero.
She was not wearing a helmet but was wearing an afro wig, to make her look like Beetz.
Harris’s death came a month after stuntman John Bernecker died after falling 25 feet from a balcony, narrowly missing a safety cushion, while filming the US TV series The Walking Dead.
The Crow (Brandon Lee) - 1993
The son of legendary martial arts king Bruce Lee met a tragic death on a film set.
In 1993 Brandon Lee died on the set of The Crow when he was shot with a gun which was supposed to be firing blanks.
Brandon, 28, was rushed to hospital in Wilmington, North Carolina, but died after six hours of surgery.
A month later the North Carolina District Attorney Jerry Spivey ruled the death was a result of negligence, not foul play, and exonerated Michael Massee, the actor who fired the gun.
Brandon had started opposite Dolph Lundgren in Showdown In Little Tokyo and was beginning to carve out a career in the movies which would take him out of the shadow of his father.
Brandon Lee’s death at only 28 was so tragic and it’s horrifying that Hollywood didn’t learn from it. pic.twitter.com/vlTbramskZ
— BOOlena (@aheavytruth) October 22, 2021
In The Crow he was cast as Eric Draven, a rock star who returns from the dead to avenge his own death.
The scene in which Brandon died was when thugs, led by Michael Massee's character Funboy, entered Draven's apartment and shot him before raping his girlfriend.
The footage from that scene was handed over to the police and was replaced by a digitally remastered scene in which Draven is stabbed and then shot.
The film was unfinished at the time of Brandon’s death but it was completed with the help of digital technology and made US$50 million at the box office.
Brandon’s sister Shannon tweeted, after hearing of Hutchins’ death: “No one should ever be killed by a gun on a film set. Period.”
Top Gun (Art Scholl) - 1985
Tom Cruise’s breakthrough role was as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a US Navy pilot in Top Gun.
The film was a blockbuster success at the box office but behind the scenes there was heartbreak.
Art Scholl, 53, was a stunt pilot and aerial cameraman who had worked on the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and the hit TV series The A-Team.
But while working on the set of Top Gun his plane failed to come out of a spin and crashed into the Pacific Ocean.
His last words, over the radio, were: "I have a problem. I have a real problem."
A long-awaited sequel to Top Gun is due in cinemas this year.
Comes A Horseman (Jim Sheppard) - 1978
Westerns - films set in the US Wild West - were hugely popular in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1978 James Caan, Jane Fonda and Jason Robards starred in Comes A Horseman, in which Fonda's character Ella Connors comes under pressure to sell her cattle farm.
In one scene in the films Jason Robards’ character was supposed to be dragged to his death by a horse.
Sadly the action was all too realistic and stuntman Jim Sheppard was killed after the horse switched directions. Sheppard hit his head on a fence post and suffered fatal injuries.
