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Sean Astin didn’t just carry Frodo to Mount Doom — the man literally bled for Middle-earth. While filming The Fellowship of the Ring, Astin suffered a gruesome foot injury that left him gashed, bloody, and airborne in a helicopter. A real-life emergency straight out of a fantasy epic.
It all went down during a scene shot at Lake Mavora, New Zealand, when Sam and Frodo were bolting through the water. Astin had been wearing prosthetic hobbit feet, but one wrong step turned deadly serious. A sharp object hidden in the riverbed stabbed straight through the fake foot, and deep into his real one.
“As my right foot lands about two feet in the water… just this huge sharp pain. I grabbed onto the side of the boat. It hurt so bad,” he recalled in the DVD extras (via Cheat Sheet). Director Peter Jackson later revealed it was a shard of glass that left “a large gash.” Elijah Wood remembered seeing a “globular thing” oozing out of Astin’s foot. Not exactly your average fantasy shoot day.
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They were filming deep in the wild, more than an hour from any hospital. So production made the call — a helicopter flew in to airlift Astin out. He later joked the one cool part of the ordeal was the chopper pilot: the same guy who once flew Jacques Cousteau. Samwise wouldn’t have been impressed, but Sean kind of was.
Accidents weren’t new for the cast, but Astin had more than his fair share. During scenes in the Elven city of Rivendell, a strong gust of wind knocked over a harp that clocked him right in the head. It sent him straight to the clinic for a CAT scan.
Ironically, he’d been the one worrying the most about safety on set. Like his character Samwise, he looked out for everyone and took precautions seriously. Still, a shard in the foot and a harp to the head said otherwise.
Adding to the legend, Astin hadn’t even read The Lord of the Rings before joining the trilogy. He tried to tackle The Fellowship of the Ring, but gave up after 100 pages. Elijah Wood did the same. They may have skipped the homework, but they brought Tolkien’s world to life just fine.
Despite the chaos, blood, and hospital runs, Astin never backed down. He adored Samwise Gamgee and everything the character stood for. And frankly, if Sam hadn’t stuck by Frodo’s side, there would’ve been no story to tell.
So yeah, Sean Astin took one for the Fellowship. Literally.
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