Russell Crowe said he fractured his legs doing his own stunts on the set of “Robin Hood” in 2010 and didn’t even realize it.
The 59-year-old Academy Award winner discussed how extensive the injuries were a decade later.
“I jumped off a castle portcullis onto rock-hard uneven ground,” Crowe told People Magazine during an interview. “We should have prepped the ground and buried a pad but we were in a rush to get the shot done in the fading light.”
“With hundreds of extras around, arrows flying and burn pots setting the castle on fire, there was no pulling out,” the Australian star continued. “As I jumped, I remember thinking, ‘This is going to hurt.’”
Crowe went on to explain how he tried to land on the balls of his feet but wound up making contact with heels first instead.
“It was like an electric shock bursting up through my body,” he told the outlet. “We were shooting a big movie, so you just struggle through, but the last month of that job was very tricky. There was a number of weeks where even walking was a challenge.”
Crowe also revealed that he “never discussed the injury with production, never took a day off because of it, I just kept going to work.”
All was fine until ten years later when the actor started getting “very strange pains” in his legs.
“I thought it was nothing serious,” the “Land of Bad” star explained. “After working through a long New York winter, my body was just missing exercise and sunshine.”
Crowe said his doctor asked him when he broke his legs.
“Apparently he could see the remnants of fractures in both shin bones,” he said. “To jog my memory he said, ‘Would have been maybe 10 years ago?’”
That’s when Crowe figured out that the injuries he sustained while filming “Robin Hood” were more extensive than he initially realized.
“Apparently I finished that movie with two broken legs,” he told People. “All for art. No cast, no splints, no painkillers, just kept going to work and over time they healed themselves.”
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Looking back, he said it now makes sense why he took an extended break between films after shooting “Robin Hood.” His next movie was “Man of Steel” in 2013.
“In retrospect I obviously knew something was wrong,” Crowe concluded. “To be the Kryptonian father of Superman was six months of incredibly intense physical training. Between the time off and that training, things fixed themselves.”
