The scene that almost ruined Sharlto Copley’s life: “This will be easy for me”
Action movies don’t just look dangerous, they are dangerous.
Stunt coordinators do their best to make things as safe as possible, but actors and stunt performers routinely find themselves suffering for their art. Hollywood has seen its fair share of on-set fatalities in its times, but even if somebody isn’t killed, they can still put themselves through a lot of pain. Just ask Sharlto Copley.
The South African-born star of District 9 has done his fair share of time in the action world. From Spike Lee’s remake of Oldboy to his many collaborations with Neil Blomkamp to Hardcore Henry, a bizarre shoot ‘em up shot entirely in first person, he’s taken quite a few on-screen licks in the pursuit of high-octane entertainment. An oft-overlooked entry in his filmography is Free Fire from 2016. Copley will never forget this film, though, as it almost cost him his hearing.
Speaking to Cinema Blend, the star shared a story from the set of Ben Wheatley’s most grounded picture. He was filming a shootout scene during which a large number of guns and explosives would be going off. He’d been wearing earplugs for most of the shoot, so falsely assumed he’d be alright.
“I was like, ‘This will be easy for me in relation to other action I’ve done,’” he said. “The one shot where I fired down the side of the van, I had left out the earplug in my left ear for some reason. Because you’re taking them in and out between takes, you can’t hear, you take them out. And I shot down the van, and my ear was right next to the van, next to the metal as I fired. And it just went ‘BANG’, man, and I was down. I was in so much pain. I was actually worried that I had done something to my ear.”
Copley makes it sound like he forgot his earplugs just once at the exact wrong time. However, if Wheatley is to be believed, this was a regular occurrence. According to the director, who was also interviewed for the piece, his star would routinely go without ear protection because it didn’t fit his character. It was only after his accident that he took things more seriously.
Free Fire is an action comedy set in the world of 1970s gun-smuggling. Copley plays Vernon, an arms dealer who instigates a mass shout-out between his gang and a rival group. According to the actor, Vernon wasn’t the kind of guy who wore protection around loud guns.
Unfortunately, he forgot that he wasn’t Vernon – he was an actor playing him. Many of the guns and explosives used on film sets are real and are just as loud as their deadlier cousins. Bruce Willis suffered permanent hearing loss after filming Die Hard, while Linda Hamilton caused herself similar damage when she fired a gun without earplugs on the set of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Considering how much worse this could have been, Copley got off pretty lightly here. Don’t play with guns, kids, even if you think your character would.
