13 Actors Almost Killed While Making Movies

4. Tom Hanks - Cast Away

Tom Hanks gave a masterful, Oscar-nominated performance in Robert Zemeckis' wonderful survival drama, gaining 50 pounds of weight before shooting started to make his subsequent "starved" look appear more convincing later on.

But Hanks very nearly died in relatively benign fashion after suffering a cut to his leg on the Fiji set. Hanks didn't bother to seek medical attention for the cut, which became infected, and after it began to swell up two weeks later, he finally decided to visit the doctor.

The doctor diagnosed Hanks with a staph infection and reportedly told him, "you're about an hour away from having blood poisoning that will kill you."

Hanks spent three days in the hospital and production was shut down for three weeks while he convalesced.