Russell Crowe broke both legs during Robin Hood stunt but didn’t find out until a decade later

I’ve never broken a bone in my life. That said, it always struck me as something you would know when it happened, but apparently not. Russell Crowe revealed to People that he actually broke both his legs during a stunt on the set of Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, but didn’t discover the extent of his injuries until a decade later.

“I jumped off a castle portcullis onto rock-hard uneven ground,” Crowe said. “We should have prepped the ground and buried a pad but we were in a rush to get the shot done in the fading light.” As he jumped, Crowe said that he knew it was going to hurt before he landed heel-first on the ground below. “It was like an electric shock bursting up through my body,” he said. “We were shooting a big movie, so you just struggle through, but the last month of that job was very tricky. There was a number of weeks where even walking was a challenge.“

Despite the pain, Russell Crowe didn’t tell anyone and just kept working on Robin Hood. It wasn’t until he began having some strange pains in his legs a decade later that he realized what had happened. After getting an MRI and X-rays, the doctor asked him when he had broken his legs. “Apparently he could see the remnants of fractures in both shin bones,” Crowe said. “To jog my memory he said, ‘Would have been maybe 10 years ago?’” Crowe added, “Apparently I finished that movie with two broken legs. All for art. No cast, no splints, no painkillers, just kept going to work and over time they healed themselves.“

Russell Crowe can currently be seen starring alongside Liam Hemsworth in Land of Bad. When an Army ODA team is ambushed, their only hope lies with an Air Force JTAC (Hemsworth) and a drone pilot (Crowe) to guide them through a brutal 48-hour battle for survival. You can check out a review from our own Tyler Nichols right here, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Crowe seems to be the only highlight of the movie.