“We all heard it pop”: when Robert Downey Jr broke Halle Berry’s arm
There are no guarantees that any production is going to go off without a hitch, as Halle Berry discovered to her detriment when co-star Robert Downey Jr ended up accidentally breaking her arm.
In the grand scheme of things, Mathieu Kassovitz’s psychological horror thriller Gothika was an incredibly forgettable movie, albeit one that earned north of $140million at the box office. It was a by-the-numbers genre flick that faded from memory the second the credits started rolling, but in hindsight it was pivotal for one of its cast members above all others.
When he signed onto the film, Downey Jr was still on the comeback trail after his self-destructive wilderness years, to the point that 40% of his salary was withheld until after the end of principal photography as a safeguard against any potential incidents.
However, Gothika may well have been the film that put him on the path to where he is today. It was the first time the actor encountered producer Joel Silver’s assistant, Susan Levin, the woman he ended up marrying. Not only that, but it knocked over the first domino that led him directly to Iron Man.
Silver was a friend and colleague of Shane Black, who introduced the writer and filmmaker to Downey Jr., who then played the lead role in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which captured the attention of Jon Favreau, who instantly saw the star as his ideal Tony Stark in a picture he was developing for Marvel Studios.
In the short term, though, Downey Jr’s involvement in Gothika forced the crew to shoot around Berry’s absence for three weeks after things got a little too intense between them when they were sparring in one of its most heated sequences.
“Yeah, he broke my arm,” the Academy Award winner admitted to the BBC. “We were doing a pretty emotional scene where my character is freaking out because she’s locked up, and he comes in to try and sedate me and grabs my arm in just the exact wrong way. We all heard it pop. It was one of those freak moments. He knew it was broken as soon as he did it, and I knew it was broken as soon as he did it.”
Berry’s psychiatrist, Miranda Grey, mysteriously wakes up in a psychiatric institution one day under the care of Downey’s friend and colleague, Pete Graham. She’s got no clue how she ended up there or why she’s been accused of murdering her husband, which is why the fight-or-flight instinct takes over.
It wasn’t a scene either of them could phone in without undercutting the drama, but the Oppenheimer star got a touch too carried away with his physicality, not that Berry was left harbouring any ill will or resentment.
