The three stunts Jason Statham regrets the most: “They’ve taken their toll”
At this point, Jason Statham has been kicking ass and taking names onscreen for nearly three decades. During that time, he’s probably forgotten more about performing stunts than most actors will ever learn.
These days, when any conversation about actors doing their own stunts is brought up, one name tends to suck up all the air in the room: Tom Cruise. This makes perfect sense, of course, given Cruise’s insane commitment to defying death with the Mission: Impossible series’ succession of increasingly perilous stunts. However, the Top Gun icon is far from the only action star in the business who gets his hands dirty.
Over the years, the lean, mean, fighting machine that is Statham, affectionately known as ‘The Stath’, has starred in countless action flicks. From The Transporter to The Expendables, Hobbs & Shaw to A Working Man, and The Meg to The Beekeeper, the actor has no shortage of adrenaline-soaked action-fests lining his CV. That’s before even diving into the seemingly endless parade of mid-budget thrillers with one-word titles that he’s always pumping out.
Of course, what has always set Statham apart from other action stars isn’t his dramatic range or ability to deliver a great monologue. Instead, it’s his authenticity. The man was an athlete before he became an actor and grew up practising martial arts, karate, and kickboxing. Hence, when audiences see him onscreen, they immediately buy him as a tough guy.
Statham has always known that this legitimacy is key to his success, so throughout his career, he has been keen to perform as many of his own stunts as possible. By and large, this policy has worked out fine for him, but in 2023, he admitted to diving headlong into three stunts that, given the benefit of hindsight, weren’t the smartest ideas he’s ever had.
“They’ve taken their toll,” he ominously warned.
“When we shot Crank,” Statham began, referring to the batshit 2006 movie in which his character must keep his adrenaline sky high at all times, “we were hanging out of a real helicopter. A lot of the things we do now…anytime you’re on a helicopter, it’s usually on a green screen. But with Crank, we were actually in a helicopter. We’re shooting a fight scene where I was standing on the skids… That one was pretty tricky.”
Next up, Statham pointed to a “silly” stunt in The Transporter 2 that wasn’t anywhere near as safe as it should have been. The scene required him to jump from a jet ski onto the back of a bus, and for some ungodly reason, the production didn’t enlist the aid of a safety wire. At that time, though, Statham was young, hungry, and itching to prove his mettle, so he made the jump anyway.
Only afterwards did he think, “If I’d missed the back of the bus, it would have been a faceplant at 30 miles per hour into the concrete”.
Finally, the grizzled star pointed to a stunt in 2011’s The Mechanic that actually did lasting damage to his body. He jumped from a high platform on the back of a boat to a small dinghy in the water below, and “really screwed up” his neck. Once again, he regretted performing that stunt because there was no real need for him to do it, as he had stuntmen on standby who would have gladly accomplished it for him.
It also added to the litany of niggling injuries he’d accumulated throughout his career; simple wear and tear problems from repeated onscreen badassery. “I’m nursing a lot of bad injuries,” he admitted, adding, “I’ve had a torn bicep, [but] you have to try and finish the movie. Most of the things are just real niggles and problems with your soft tissue and your joints.”
In truth, Statham confessed that most of these injuries stem from his “ego”, which tells him he must do a stunt himself so it’s “authentic” for his fans.
“We want people to see that that’s us doing it,” he noted, “We want the audience to go for the ride”.
