10 On-Set Injuries That Forever Changed Actors

10. Heidi Von Beltz – The Cannonball Run

Budding actress, former champion skier, and stuntwoman in training Heidi von Beltz’s life was forever changed following a devastating injury she sustained during the filming of the 1981 comedy The Cannonball Run on which she was acting as a stunt double for star Farrah Fawcett.

Von Beltz’s task that fateful day was to sit in the passenger side of an Aston-Martin and help operate a smoke machine that would give the effect of the car being on fire as it sped along weaving between oncoming vehicles. The only problem was that the car didn’t have seatbelts so when it accidentally crashed into a van, von Beltz was launched through the windshield which broke her neck and left her quadriplegic.

After a lengthy court battle, von Beltz was awarded a rather paltry $3.2 million most of which went towards paying off a mountain of legal and medical bills. One good thing that arose from von Beltz’s accident though was that the film industry established new safety guidelines that made seatbelts mandatory on all car-related stunt work – a fact von Beltz was very proud of before her death in 2015 at the age of 59.