10 More Genius Ways Movies Fixed Their Own Mistakes
8. Viggo Mortensen Was Filmed In Profile To Cover His Black Eye - The Lord Of The Rings
Much has been written about how Viggo Mortensen broke his toe while filming The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but he also suffered another injury which very nearly threw the shoot into a tailspin.
During one of his days off, Mortensen decided to go surfing with his co-stars Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, resulting in an inexperienced Mortensen being hit in the face with his board, giving him, according to Boyd, "the biggest black eye you've ever seen."
Naturally a facial injury to the star of a movie trilogy being filmed back-to-back set alarm bells ringing with New Line Cinema, though director Peter Jackson devised an elegantly simple solution to conceal Mortensen's heavily bruised face.
For an entire month, Mortensen's scenes were shot in profile, showing only the unaffected side of his face while the swelling on the other side went down.
Mortensen said, "The scenes where we are in the Mines of Moria there are all these reaction shots, and you can see I do most of the scene like this [turning his head]."