Near-Death Experience #2
Mortensen’s other brush with death on Lord of the Rings was much more serious.
For a scene in The Two Towers, Aragorn’s unconscious body floats down a river before washing ashore. They filmed in an actual river, and a tide sucked Mortensen below the water. He was trapped underwater for long enough that a rescue team sprang into action to try and find him. By a stroke of luck, he managed to find a hard rock on the bottom of the river and spring back up to the surface for the rescue team to snag him.
(Also, we’re not going to spend a whole section on the “Aragorn breaks his toe in that one shot in The Two Towers.” You know the story, I know the story. Let’s move on.)