Mel Gibson’s 1995 epic Braveheart is often praised for its sweeping and brutal battle scenes, and Gibson’s portrayal of Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace. However it was also the movie that saw Gibson believe that he was about to meet his maker in order to deliver the most realistic movie possible, all thanks to a stunt involving a horse.
By the mid-1990s, Gibson was already an established Hollywood star, but Braveheart marked a significant leap from a regular action hero to a respected director as well as actor. Filming large-scale battle sequences required plenty of planning, especially when the stunt work involved many live horses being used on set.
During a chaotic battle sequence, Gibson performed one stunt that required him to fall off his horse, but in the moment, he almost ended up falling under the beast and had to be saved by his stunt double. As he explained during an appearance at MegaCon Orlando (via ScreenRant):
“We had this push-button horse, and it was a horse where if you pull back on the reins and then you dig your heels into it, how do you know [if] you’ll rear on up? So I was doing this thing with the horse, and this guy comes and stabs me with a spear in the chest and I do this whole thing with the horse. The horse kept going, and it’s in the film, because I fall off the damn horse. But they didn’t cut to the next part because the next part was the horse, a 2,000 pound horse, coming right down on me.
I see this and think, “I’m dead.” My stunt double, this guy called Mic Rogers, I don’t know where he came from, but his arms come into the shot all of a sudden, and he yanked me out from under this horse which hit the ground with such force that I would’ve been dead.”
Braveheart Has an Impressive Legacy
Gibson’s work on Braveheart still stands as some of the best of his career, even with the inadvertent inclusion of his near-death experience in the movie. Braveheart went on to win five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, so it could be said that everything paid off in the end.
Braveheart is certainly a movie that continues to attract an audience, making frequent appearances on streaming charts, and unlike Gibson’s recent work, was released at a time when he was still sought after for multiple movies a year. After many years being a pariah in Hollywood, Gibson has been gradually picking up some big gigs, such as in John Wick series The Continental, and as director of his new hit movie, Flight Risk. In recent interviews, Gibson has suggested that he is ready to start filming a sequel to his controversial religious movie, The Passion of the Christ, and that he could be considering another Lethal Weapon sequel.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
