From freak accidents to near misses we take a look inside some of the most heartwrenching moments where celebrities escaped death. Many famous faces have defied the odds surviving medical emergencies, and accidents, proving no one is exempt from life-threatening situations.
Several stars have spoken of their near brushes with death from Harrison Ford, to David Arquette and the late Elizabeth Taylor. Express.co.uk counts down the near fatal incidents celebrities lived to tell the tale.
British actress Elizabeth Taylor came close to death after a severe bout of pneumonia. In the 2024 documentary, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, the actress was rushed to a London hospital, where doctors performed an 18-hour emergency tracheotomy, but during the procedure was declared dead.
"Actually four times I was called dead, and stopped breathing," the actress said. Fortunately, pulled through and a month and a half later won her first Oscar for Best Actress, where she showed off her tracheotomy scar. However, she would later suggest her win was down to public sympathy, saying, "Butterfield 8 was my fourth nomination in a row, and I won the award for my tracheotomy."
The actress died from congestive heart failure on March 23, 2011, at the age of 79 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, surrounded by her four children.
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The Scream actor survived a near-fatal wrestling accident — including one from the brutal fight that nearly cost him his life in 2018.
David Arquette, 54, was accidentally stabbed in the neck with a cylindrical light bulb during a so-called "death match" while in the wrestling ring. "I thought I was dying," the actor told People in 2020. "I got out of the ring and I was totally lost. I couldn't see and I couldn't hear."
Following the incident, he was rushed to hospital where he received stitches and had to undergo surgery. His brush with death served as a wake-up call for the Hollywood actor.
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Chicago born rapper Kanye West survived a near-fatal head-on car collision in California when he fell asleep at the wheel. The crash left him with severe facial trauma, including a jaw that was shattered into three pieces.
The horrific accident in 2002 ended up becoming a pivotal moment in his career. Just two weeks after the incident, while his jaw was wired shut, he recorded his debut single Through the Wire, which catapulted his music career.
During a 2014 conversation with Steve McQueen for Interview Magazine, the director asked the entrepreneur about who he was before and after the accident.
He explained, “Before, I was more willing to give my time to people and things that I wasn’t as interested in because somehow I allowed myself to be brainwashed into being forced to work with other people or on other projects that I had no interest in.
So simply, the accident gave me the opportunity to do what I really wanted to do. I was a music producer, and everyone was telling me that I had no business becoming a rapper, so it gave me the opportunity to tell everyone, ‘Hey, I need some time to recover.’”
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The Britain's Got Talent judge broke his back in multiple places after crashing an electric bike at his home in Malibu in 2020.
The music mogul, 66, said he was "lucky to be alive" after doctors said he narrowly avoided severing his spinal cord, which could have left him paralysed.
He underwent a six-hour surgery to repair the damage, during which metal rods were inserted into his back.
Addressing the accident, Simon said, "it was worse than people thought."
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