Scrapes, scratches, falls, and punches. As an unruly child, I certainly experienced my fair share of them, and so did many others. But very few of us went on to become professional stuntsmen/women.
But David Holmes did. He was the stuntman of Daniel Radcliffe on the Harry Potter sets. But in a turn of tragedy, while doing something that should have been routine for him, he lost everything.
David Holmes, a stunt double of Daniel Radcliffe from the first Harry Potter film, broke his neck and was left paralyzed from the chest down while filming a jerk-back explosion scene for The Deathly Hallows: Part 1. It occurred at Warner Bros Studios in Leavesden in January 2009.
How Did David Holmes, Daniel Radcliffe’s Stunt Double Become Paralyzed?
David Holmes, 42, once worked as the stuntman of Daniel Radcliffe on the sets of Harry Potter from the very first film. Everything was going well in his life till January 2009. When The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was being filmed at Warner Bros Studios in Leavesden, Holmes broke his neck when an action scene went wrong.
David said that the incident occurred when he got pulled back at high speed by a high-strength wire during a ‘jerk-back’ stunt. This specific stunt mimics an explosion’s after-effects.
So it’s meant to literally jerk back a person as if the explosion had thrown them back. What went wrong with David Holmes’ stunt was that he got jerked into a wall that instantaneously broke his neck.
In a 2014 interview with The Mirror, Holmes explained his feelings immediately after the injury. He explained:
“I hit the wall and then landed on the crash mat underneath. My stunt coordinator grabbed my hand and said, ‘Squeeze my fingers.’ I could move my arm to grab his hand, but I couldn’t squeeze his fingers. I looked into his eyes, and that’s when I realized what happened was major.”
He also revealed that the pain was so high immediately after the accident that he kept slipping in and out of consciousness. The stuntman knew then that something severe had happened. Holmes said:
“I’d broken a bone before, so recognizing that weird feeling across my whole body from my fingertips right down to my toes, I knew I had really done some damage.”
David was first taken to Watford General Hospital and later transferred to Stanmore, northwest London’s Royal Orthopaedic Hospital. There, he found out that he was paralyzed from his chest down and could only move his arms and hands in a limited range.
How Did Daniel Radcliffe Help David Holmes?
Thankfully, David Holmes wasn’t alone in this life-changing predicament. Daniel Radcliffe and Tom Felton visited him regularly at the hospital. Radcliffe was a rock beside him. He even held a charity auction to raise money for his bills. But that’s not all.
Daniel Radcliffe and David Holmes have teamed up for an HBO documentary, directed by Dan Hartley, on Holmes’s life, attitude, mentality, and the accident that almost ended him. It’s called David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived.
David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived will premiere on 15 November in the US on HBO and Max. It will be available from 18 November in the UK on Now and Sky Documentaries.
Are you planning on watching the documentary? What do you think of David Holmes and his story?
Let us know in the comments below.
Source: The Mirror
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