Eddie Redmayne and Aeronauts co-star Felicity Jones endured a near-death experience during a daring scene that almost left them severely injured.

Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones’s collaboration in the Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory of Everything, was met with critical success in 2014. They teamed up again in the historical drama The Aeronauts, bringing the true story of pioneering meteorologist James Glaisher to the screen, but the 2019 adventure film was almost the actors’ final production after Redmayne recalled he “very nearly died.”

Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones’ brush with death during balloon scene gone wrong

The Aeronauts follows Glaisher and Amelia Wren as they embark on an expedition in a gas balloon in the 1860s. Of course, the original gas air balloon utilized the technology of the 19th century, but the 2019 production surprisingly used the same machinery – and it could’ve gone terribly wrong.

Recalling the traumatizing episode to Deadline, Redmayne explained he and Jones were filming a scene in “an extraordinary helium balloon”. A balloon pilot hid in the basket as the actors read their lines while drones and helicopters captured the scene.

After the filming wrapped up, the balloon came close to hitting a forest so the pilot instructed Redmayne and Jones to throw the sandbags out of the basket to raise the balloon. The two actors, however, threw out all the sandbags, meaning they had “lost any capacity now to rise again” and had a crash landing on the ground from about 30 meters in the air.

“Felicity’s head smacks and hits this bar and there’s this silence,” the celebrity said. “I just remember total shock and hearing Felicity go, ‘I’m not sure I can move my neck’. Horrifying moment.”

“He goes, ‘You’ve thrown out all the bags!’ We said, ‘I know we’ve thrown out all the bags. You f****** told us to throw out all the bags’. He’s like, ‘I didn’t mean all the bags’.”

Luckily, she was “totally fine” but that was his scariest near-death experience yet.

Eddie Redmayne’s simple lie nearly had him killed

The balloon incident was pretty scarring but during his early career, Redmayne told a simple fib that could’ve cost him his life.

When asked by director Tom Hooper during his Elizabeth I audition if he had ever been on a horse, Eddie responded yes, despite having only one experience as a four-year-old and no competent riding skills. Fast forward two weeks later, the actor was filming on a “gigantic stallion” for a battle scene and had 14 horses stomping behind him.

Nevertheless, he was still too embarrassed to admit his lie and the show went on.

“(Hooper) calls, ‘Action!’ And I gave the horse a gentle nudge and it went off 100 miles an hour and I’m just holding on for dear life!” he recalled. “I just heard, ‘Cut!’ And Tom Hooper arrived and said, ‘You’re a f****** liar!”

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