# Films where actors died during filming. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 17, 2007, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495 "2007-04-17T17:22:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![RumMunkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@RumMunkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RumMunkey)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/61 "2007-04-18T12:14:00Z")
[QUOTE=alphaboi867] I know it’s morbid, but does anyone else wonder how long it took them to turn the cameras off? [/QUOTE] Re: John Ritter, I don’t think he collapsed on stage during a taping. I’m pretty sure he “felt ill” during a rehearsal and went to his dressing room to lie down. After a while, he was taken to Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, across the street from the studio where he died. [QUOTE=IMDB Bio] That same year, he first felt ill while rehearsing on set, and was rushed across the street to Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, where he was diagnosed with an aorta dissection, which meant in layman’s terms, an unrecognized flaw of the heart. He underwent surgery and died on September 11, 2003, just days shy of his 55th birthday. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Wiki] On September 11, 2003, Ritter became ill during rehearsals for 8 Simple Rules, which was starting its second season. He was taken across the street from the studio to Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, where he died hours later, just days before his 55th birthday, in the same hospital in which he was born. [/QUOTE] In fact, his family sued the hospital alleging they wasted time mis-diagnosing him and could have saved him had they given him immediate serious attention. According to People magazine he spent a fair amount of time at the hospital, so he certainly didn’t die “on set”. [QUOTE=People Magazine] Ritter, who was then starring on 8 Simple Rules, collapsed on the set of the ABC show on Sept. 11, 2003. The 54-year-old actor was admitted to the hospital complaining of chest pain, nausea, vomiting and dizziness. He died later that night. His family claims Ritter was misdiagnosed “at least twice and underwent improper and unnecessary procedures” during his hospital stay. Doctors said Ritter was killed by an aortic aneurysm, though a physician retained by the defense said Ritter’s death was already “a reasonable medical probability” at the time he went into the hospital, reports the Los Angeles Times. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Sonia\_Montdore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@Sonia\_Montdore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sonia_Montdore)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/62 "2007-04-18T13:50:30Z")
[QUOTE=Wile E] How is it he has two film credits years after his death? [/QUOTE] The year you see in parentheses following a movie title is the release date, not the filming date. The IMDb is full of examples of movies that were released after actors who appeared in them died. Movies are often released long after after filming finishes. It can take months or longer to complete special effects, editing, music, dubbing and other post-production work. Next, deals for distribution have to be worked out. This is a complicated business. Contracts stipulating royalties, TV broadcasts and DVDs have to be worked out for each country where the movie will be shown. In world-wide distribution, that’s a lot of contracts. Sometimes the release of a movie will be delayed because the studio fears it will do poorly against another movie with a similar theme, or the lead actor has been involved in a scandal and the studio wants to wait until the bad publicity subsides. Sometimes the studio delays the release because of current events - there were a couple of movies with terrorism themes whose releases were delayed following 9/11. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/63 "2007-04-18T14:05:40Z")
[QUOTE=Fiver] …If so, then he’s not _entirely_ dead, even today. [/QUOTE] He’s only _mostly_ dead. ---
**Author:** ![cbawlmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@cbawlmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cbawlmer)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/64 "2007-04-18T18:23:59Z")
[QUOTE=cmkeller] Didn’t Richard Harris die during the early stages of filming of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? [/QUOTE] No, he died between movies and a replacement was found before shooting ever started. ---
**Author:** ![Kokopilau](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Kokopilau](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kokopilau)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/65 "2007-04-18T19:29:58Z")
[QUOTE=Justin\_Bailey] Orson Welles - Transformers: The Movie (original 80s cartoon obviously) Leonard Nimoy (who also played Galvatron) overdubbed many of his uncompleted lines with the help of some audio tricks and the filmmakers admit they don’t know which lines belong to Welles and which belong to Nimoy. [/QUOTE] This is completely untrue. The writer, director, and one of the voice actors for Transformers: The Movie bring up this rumor on the commentary track on the 20th Anniversary DVD, and debunk it, saying that all of Unicron’s lines of dialogue as heard in the movie are Welles and Welles alone, and not Nimoy (albeit enhanced with audio tricks, since Welles was so sick at the time that his voice was weak and shaky). Tragic trivia about the aforementioned Jon-Erik Hexum: his fiancee at the time was Elizabeth G. Daily, the voice actress for Tommy on Rugrats and Buttercup on Powerpuff Girls. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/66 "2007-04-18T19:50:19Z")
[QUOTE=Kokopilau] Tragic trivia about the aforementioned Jon-Erik Hexum: his fiancee at the time was Elizabeth G. Daily, the voice actress for Tommy on Rugrats and Buttercup on Powerpuff Girls. [/QUOTE] Daily is probably best known as Dottie in **Pee Wee’s Big Adventure**. Tim Burton & Paul Reubens talk about her and Hexum on the DVD commentary as well. ---
**Author:** ![mamboman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecb155/32.png) [@mamboman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mamboman)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/67 "2007-04-18T20:31:41Z")
Was Jerry Orbach still working on “_Law & Order: Trial By Jury_” when he succumbed to cancer? mm ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/68 "2007-04-18T20:39:44Z")
[QUOTE=ArchiveGuy] Daily is probably best known as Dottie in **Pee Wee’s Big Adventure**. Tim Burton & Paul Reubens talk about her and Hexum on the DVD commentary as well. [/QUOTE] If you were a 13 year old male with HBO in the 80’s, she was much more famous for her partially clothed role in _Valley Girl_. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/69 "2007-04-18T21:11:33Z")
[QUOTE=Wile E] How is it he has two film credits years after his death? [/QUOTE] The observations by **drm** and **Sonia Montdore** are no doubt sufficient to explain how Kinnear turned up as a voice artist in _The Princess and the Goblin_ in 1993, five years after his death. The [circumstances surrounding _Return of the Ewok_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_of_the_Ewok) are somewhat more unusual, but since it was filmed in 1983 there’s little mystery about how he managed to be in it. [QUOTE=drm] I don’t know anything about this guy though. [/QUOTE] Kinnear was very well-known as a comic actor in Britain, though he’d probably be most recognised in the US as Mr Salt in _Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory_. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/70 "2007-04-18T22:13:32Z")
[QUOTE=Kokopilau] This is completely untrue. The writer, director, and one of the voice actors for Transformers: The Movie bring up this rumor on the commentary track on the 20th Anniversary DVD, and debunk it, saying that all of Unicron’s lines of dialogue as heard in the movie are Welles and Welles alone, and not Nimoy (albeit enhanced with audio tricks, since Welles was so sick at the time that his voice was weak and shaky). [/QUOTE] You’re kidding! I’ve seen that little bit in so many different places that I just assumed it was true. I think I even ran across it in an Orson Welles biography once. Wow. My world is shaken. ---
**Author:** ![zyzzyva](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@zyzzyva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zyzzyva)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/71 "2007-04-18T22:16:09Z")
Snopes has a pretty good list of [people who died onstage](http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/onstage.asp) . ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/72 "2007-04-18T22:29:11Z")
[QUOTE=Wile E] How is it he has two film credits years after his death? [/QUOTE] I think one was a pre-recorded voice. The other was a Star Wars fan film that seems to have been filmed while ROtJ was being produced. _Return of the Musketeers_ was not released for years, and even then it was as a TV movie. The movie has the look of being finished by the bonding company and not the original production crew. One (actually a few, but this one is very obvious) scene uses an obvious body double for Kinnear and the actors look very, very unhappy to be in the scene (nobody likes an unpaid callback for a movie crew that killed cast members). Technical errors plague the movie: A scene with a blacksmith has him hitting the metal, but with no foley to match. ---
**Author:** ![Kokopilau](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Kokopilau](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kokopilau)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/73 "2007-04-18T23:59:02Z")
[QUOTE=Justin\_Bailey] You’re kidding! I’ve seen that little bit in so many different places that I just assumed it was true. I think I even ran across it in an Orson Welles biography once. Wow. My world is shaken. [/QUOTE] Yeah, I’d heard and believed the same thing, too! That’s why it stuck out in my memory so much after hearing them talk about it on the commentary track, then seeing your post here. But Nelson Shin, the director, was rather firm in his assertion that all the Unicron dialogue was 100% Orson Welles. The 20th Anniversary DVD is well worth picking up for anyone who recalls seeing that film as a kid with any sense of nostalgia at all. ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/74 "2007-04-19T01:04:56Z")
I don’t know if we’re counting stunt men, but stunt man [A. J. Bakunas](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Bakunas) died jumping from a tall building (as a double for George Kennedy) during filming of the movie [Steel](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081558/). According to IMDb, he did the jump properly, but the airbag split open when he landed and he died. And there was the [Eiffel Birdman](http://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/2006/05/26/the-eiffel-bird-man/). Well, he wasn’t technically an actor, but in 1911 he was making a film about his new flying device, which would enable him to jump safely from the Eiffel Tower. It didn’t work. There’s video (not gory, but still kinda disturbing) at that link. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/75 "2016-02-17T23:57:10Z")
Bumped. It’s happened in two recent plays: [http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/16/asia/japan-actor-sword-death/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/16/asia/japan-actor-sword-death/index.html) ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/76 "2016-02-18T03:28:35Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > Not a movie, but Jon-Eric Hexum (sp?) died on the set of the television series _Close-Up_ of a self-inflicted point-blank gunshot wound. Hexum had mistakedly though blanks ejected no material from the barrel. He put a prop gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Something I don’t think anyone has ever commented on: This occurred not long after Howard Hunter tried to commit suicide in the same manner on _ **Hill Street Blues** _. Howard, of course, “survived” with only “powder burns.” I can’t help but wonder if this contributed to Hexum’s attempt at “humor” on the set: “Hey! Let’s see if there’s one in here for me!”\* \*This is actually what he was reported as saying, just before he pulled the trigger. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/77 "2016-02-18T05:05:48Z")
Heath Ledger died during the filming of _The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus_. They couldn’t just work around it because he was playing a main character and less than half his scenes had been filmed. Normally, they would have had to scrap his footage and refilm with it with a new actor. But this was a fantasy film, so they rewrote the script and said that his character was a shape-shifter and cast Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law in the role with all four of them delivering part of the performance. ---
**Author:** ![irritant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@irritant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/irritant)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/78 "2016-02-18T08:51:46Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Dick Shawn is dead? My brother and I were watching _It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World_ on TV last month and trying to figure out how many of the actors in it were still alive. The only ones I was sure about were Mickey Rooney and Charles Lane (which shocked my brother incidentally). But Shawn was one of the ones I was guessing might still be alive. > > As you are no doubt now wondering: Edie Adams, Sid Caesar, Barrie Chase, Peter Falk, Stan Freberg, Marvin Kaplan, Charles Lane, Dorothy Provine, Carl Reiner, Mickey Rooney, Arnold Stang, and Jonathan Winters are the twelve credited cast members still alive. And of that group, now only Chase, Kaplan, and Reiner are still with us. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/79 "2016-02-18T10:02:34Z")
[Al Mulock](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0612468/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm), _Once Upon a Time in the West_ A Canadian actor who committed suicide by jumping out the window of the hotel where the crew was staying. His most prominent role was as a member of the trio that tried to kill Tuco at the beginning of _The Good the Bad and the Ugly_ — the first face you see and the one who shows up later with his arm shot off. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495/80 "2016-02-18T11:51:54Z")
If animated films count, Chris Farley was originally cast to do the voice of Shrek and completed recording 80-90% of his lines before his death in 1997. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-where-actors-died-during-filming/400495.md?page=5)