Celebrities Who Survived Terrifying Brushes With Death

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Seth MacFarlane narrowly avoided dying on 9/11 when he missed his scheduled flight — American Airlines Flight 11 — after arriving late to the airport due to a hangover. That same plane was later hijacked and crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
In 2009, MacFarlane told Howard Stern that while it did rattle him for a few weeks after, he doesn't think of it much because he isn't "much of a fate guy."
Like MacFarlane, Mark Wahlberg had also originally been booked on American Airlines Flight 11 (which was a Boston to Los Angeles flight). However, he changed his plans last minute, opting to fly to Toronto for a film festival instead. In 2012, he faced backlash for saying in an interview with Men's Journal that, "If I were on that plane with my kids, it wouldn't have went down like it did." Wahlberg later apologized for the statement.
In 1961, Elizabeth Taylor came dangerously close to death after a severe bout of pneumonia. In the 2024 documentary, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, Taylor said that after being rushed to a London hospital, doctors performed an 18-hour emergency tracheotomy, but that during the procedure, she was declared dead, saying, "Actually four times I was called dead, and stopped breathing."
Taylor, of course, pulled through and a month and a half later won her first Oscar for Best Actress. She attended the Academy Awards and proudly displayed her tracheotomy scar. Though she felt the win was because of sympathy, saying, "Butterfield 8 was my fourth nomination in a row, and I won the award for my tracheotomy."
Isla Fisher had a terrifying near-death experience while filming Now You See Me when a stunt went wrong. While performing an underwater escape scene, she became trapped after her feet got caught, and she was unable to surface. The crew initially thought she was acting, as she was supposed to be struggling, unaware that she was genuinely struggling. She was freed after a stunt coordinator realized her feet were stuck, and he pulled the water quick-release switch from the tank.
The moment that it happened is in the final cut of the movie.
After giving birth in 2017, Serena Williams faced life-threatening complications that put her health in serious jeopardy. She developed a pulmonary embolism — a dangerous blood clot in her lung. The coughing from the embolism caused her C-section wound to pop open, which led her into surgery, where the doctors discovered she had a hematoma (a localized swelling of blood outside blood vessels) in her abdomen. Williams ended up having to stay six weeks in bed as part of her recovery.
While filming Cast Away, Tom Hanks suffered a cut to his leg that led to a serious staph infection. In 2009, Hanks told the BBC that he didn't know he had an infection and just thought his leg was sore. He went to the doctor, who told him, "I have to put you in the hospital because we have to get this infection out of you before it poisons your blood and you die." He ended up staying three days in the hospital, while production shut down for three weeks to allow for his skin to heal.
In 2021, Brooke Shields experienced a serious accident when she fell and broke her femur while exercising at the gym. The injury led her to have two surgeries (with rods and a metal plate inserted into her). During her recovery, she developed a very serious staph infection at the site of the injury. Her doctors feared that the infection was caused by a type of bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics, which could have put her at risk of sepsis, a life-threatening response to an infection that can cause organ failure. Luckily for Shields, it turned out not to be that type of bacteria.
While riding his motorcycle to the set of his Hulu series Catch-22 in Sardinia, Italy, in 2018, George Clooney was involved in a serious accident that sent him flying through the air after colliding with a car. According to the local paper, La Nuova Sardegna, he was taken to the hospital with a "slight trauma to the pelvis and bruises to one leg and an arm." He later revealed that doctors told him it was a miracle he wasn't paralyzed or killed.
In a 2021 interview with the Sunday Times, Clooney said he thought he was going to die, saying, "I was waiting for my switch to turn off."
In 2020, Simon Cowell broke his back in multiple places after crashing an electric bike at his home in Malibu. Doctors said he narrowly avoided severing his spinal cord, which could have left him paralyzed. He underwent a six-hour surgery to repair the damage, during which metal rods were inserted into his back. Cowell said of the accident, "That it was worse than people thought," and that he was "Lucky to be alive."
When she was 5 years old, Jennifer Aniston accidentally fell into the pool while riding her tricycle, which she didn't let go of, and sank her to the bottom of the pool. Her brother saw it happen and dove in to save her. The incident left her with a lifelong phobia of being submerged underwater. While filming her movie Cake, she was forced to confront it while filming a pool scene.
During the filming of the 1981 movie Modern Problems, Chevy Chase was accidentally electrocuted on set when he was filming a dream sequence where he was wearing a suit made of lights. The shock caused him to lose consciousness temporarily, and reportedly, he has experienced lingering health issues as a result.
In 2010, Pink narrowly avoided a catastrophic injury when a harness malfunctioned during an aerial stunt during a concert in Nuremberg, Germany. She was dragged violently off the stage and slammed into a stage barrier. Luckily, she wasn't seriously injured, and she later tweeted, "Nothing's broken, no fluid in the lungs, just seriously sore."
And lastly, in 2008, Travis Barker survived a devastating plane crash that claimed the lives of four people. He suffered third-degree burns over much of his body and struggled with PTSD in the years that followed. Traumatized by the experience, he avoided flying for over a decade, only stepping onto a plane again in 2021 because of the support of his wife, Kourtney Kardashian Barker.