Mel Gibson Shares Story About How He Almost Died On The Set Of 'Braveheart'
Actor and director Mel Gibson recently shared a story about how he almost died on the set of Braveheart, but was saved by his stunt double Mickey Rodgers before a horse trampled him.
During a spotlight panel at MegaCon Orlando, Gibson was asked, “You’ve played so many tough and intense characters, what’s the most physically demanding role you’ve ever taken on?”
Gibson replied, “I think it was on Braveheart because I was in front of the camera and behind the camera. And you have to get up before everybody and it was just, ah, the makeup and … just all the logistics. And then the physicality of the part itself, you know. Like the horses, all kinds of stuff.
He then shared his near-death encounter, “One day we had this push button horse. And it was the horse handler who said, ‘Well, if you pull back on the reins and then you dig your heels in, you’ll go [flying]. You’ll rear up and this kind of stuff.’ I thought, ‘Okay.’”
“So I was doing this thing with the horse and then the guy comes and stabs him with the spear in the chest and I do the whole thing with the horse. He rears up, right? And actually the horse kept going. And it’s in the film because I fall off, because I fall off the damn horse, right. But they didn’t cut to the next part because the next part was the horse, the 2,000 lb. horse was coming right down on me. Really. I could see this and I’m like, ‘I’m dead!’”
“And my stunt double, this guy called Mickey Rodgers — I don’t know where he came from, but just his arms come into the shot and all of a sudden he yanked me out from under this horse, which hit the ground with such force I would have been dead. So stuff like that happens,” he concluded.
Gibson then praised Rodgers saying, “This guy was amazing. He pulled off another stunt that only one other guy did and got away with it. And the stunt man that did it was an old timer called Yakima Canutt, who was in a film called Stage Coach with John Wayne. Yakima Canutt did the thing where he jumped from the stage on three different sets of horses and he pulled the horses up and he survived. Everybody else that tried that stunt they got trampled, they got killed even Terry Leonard sort of went under the axles, it was a mess.”
“So it was like Mickey did it,” he continued. “And Mickey did it pretty well and he did it and everyone’s like, ‘Whoa! He’s the only guy since Yakima Canutt to do that.’ And then the director said, ‘We didn’t quite get it. We have to do it again.’ I’m like, ‘No, don’t do it again. Don’t do it again.’ And then so Mickey gets up and says, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it again.’ ‘Cause he’s Mickey, you know. So he gets on there and he does it again and this time the horses start to go down. It’s not okay and their noses are in the dirt. And he grabs the collars and he did what he did to me. He yanked the horses. It was just enough for theses horses to get their feet under them again and that’s the take that in the film in Maverick.”
What do you make of Gibson revealing that Mickey Rodgers saved his life on the set of Braveheart?