2014’s The Expendables 3 nearly became Jason Statham’s final acting credit.
For one chase sequence filmed in Bulgaria, Statham opted to drive a truck himself instead of letting a stunt driver do it for him. At the time, it didn’t seem like a huge deal since the actor was a fairly experienced truck driver. However, during a run-through of the scene without his fellow cast members, the vehicle’s brakes failed, and Statham plunged into the Black Sea.
“Oh my God, I just watched a person die,” co-star Terry Crews remembered thinking afterward. “It went down 60 feet into the Black Sea and became impaled,” Sylvester Stallone, who wrote the movie, told The Mirror in 2014.
“Luckily, we had taken the doors off before,” he continued. “If anyone else had been in that truck, we would have been dead because we were all wearing heavy boots and gun belts.”
Jason Statham’s Diving Experience May Have Saved His Life on ‘The Expendables 3’
Stallone went on to explain that Statham’s history as an Olympic-quality diver ultimately saved his life that day. “I’ve done a lot of scuba diving … I’ve done free diving,” Statham revealed during an interview on The Today Show that same year.
“No matter how much of that you’ve done, it doesn’t teach you how to breathe underwater,” he added. “I came very close to drowning. It was a very harrowing experience.”
Despite his brush with death, Statham appeared unfazed by the incident on set, at least as far as his co-stars were concerned. Crews, for one, expressed disbelief with how quickly Statham was ready to get back to work. According to him, Statham simply changed out of his wet clothes and hopped right back into the truck for the next take.
“Let me tell you something, Jason Statham, he is a true bad, bad, bada**,” said Crews, while recounting the story to Jay Leno.
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