10 celebrities who cheated death & how it happened (+Photos)

3. Charlize Theron

Whilst shooting ‘Aeon Flux’ Charlize Theron attempted a lot of her own stunts as opposed to using a body double in some scenes, which is common practice in Hollywood – for the precise reason of avoiding injuries. Much to her own detriment, Charlize found out the hard way that sometimes doing your own stunts doesn’t pay, when she broke her neck doing a back-flip for a scene in the film. She spoke about her injury saying “I did a back handspring, gymnastics back handspring, had done 18 of them back to back and I just slipped and landed on my neck with my body straight out so with all my weight onto my neck and herniated the disk between my third and fourth vertebrae. I had some nerve damage, it was numb and on the right side of my body.”