Seven actors who died in bizarre ways while on TV or movie film sets listed in no particular order.

1. Steve Irwin

   

   Image via Wikipedia

   Steve Irwin was known as The Crocodile Hunter and starred in his own TV show with the same name. Famous for getting really close to dangerous creatures like crocodiles, poisonous snakes and sharks, Irwin was killed in 2006 while filming an episode for his daughter Bindi’s TV show by a stingray. Stingray’s have a spine in their tail which they will force upward and release to sting and ward off threats. Rarely do stingrays kill people but on September 4, 2006, Irwin was swimming right above a stingray while the cameraman was filming directly in front. The stingray felt boxed in and forced the spine in its tail upwards and it went right into Irwin’s heart. Irwin instinctively grabbed the spine and removed it from his chest and promptly died. A month later a Florida man had the same thing happen to him and he left the spine in his chest to be removed by doctors and survived. If Irwin had left the spine in his chest he may have survived as the removal apparently tore arteries and blood vessels causing a fatal heart attack.

2. Gareth Jones

   
   Source (Underground the play was about nuclear holocaust survivors living underground)

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   While acting in the live UK television broadcast of the Armchair Theatre play Underground in 1958, Gareth Jones suffered a massive heart attack between scenes while in makeup and died. The Director of the play, William Kotchoff, who would go on to direct 18 feature films including Rambo: First Blood starring Sylvestor Stallone, was forced to improvise with the cast to continue and finish the live broadcast. In a strange twist of fate, the character Gareth Jones was playing was to suffer a heart attack during the play. Some might say Jones took character acting to a different level.

3. Jon-Erik Hexum

   

   Hexum was one of the lead actors of the television series, Cover Up. In 1984 during a break in filming a scene which called for Hexum’s character to replace a loaded gun with blanks, Hexum was fooling around and put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. The gun was loaded with blanks but Hexum did not realize that blanks use paper or plastic wadding to seal gun powder into the shell and that this wadding is propelled out of the barrel of the gun with enough force to cause severe injury or death if the weapon is fired within a few inches of the body. The paper wadding from the blank did not penetrate Hexum’s skull but struck his forehead with enough force to shatter a quarter-sized piece of his skull and propel the pieces into his brain causing massive hemorrhaging. Hexum was rushed to the hospital and underwent immediate surgery but the damage was too severe and six days later he was declared brain dead and taken off life support once his vital organs were removed for transplants by order of his mother. His heart saved the life of a Las Vegas escort agency owner.

4. Martha Mansfield

   

   Martha Mansfield was a an actress in silent films. In 1923 she was on the set of the Civil War film The Warrens of Virginia when a fellow cast member flicked away a lit cigarette and it hit Mansfield’s elaborate costume of hoopskirts and flimsy ruffles causing it to burst into flames. Cast members tried desperately to put out the fire and leading man Wilfred Lytell saved Mansfield’s face from being burned by throwing his heavy overcoat over her but Mansfield suffered severe burns on the rest of her body and died shortly after in the hospital.

5. Boris Sagal

   

   Image via Wikipedia (Timberline Lodge where Sagal was nearly decapitated)

   Boris Sagal was a television and film director best known for directing the cult film The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston. In 1981 while directing the made-for-TV movie World War III that aired on NBC, Sagal was killed and nearly decapitated after walking into the tail rotor blades of a helicopter in the parking lot of the Timberline Lodge in Oregon (the Timberline Lodge is where exterior shots were filmed for the Jack Nicholson film The Shining). In another strange twist of fate, Sagal was the director of the pilot episode of the TV series Combat!. Combat! starred Vic Morrow who was also killed by a helicopter blade while filming Twilight Zone: The Movie (see below). Boris Sagal had also directed a number of The Twilight Zone TV episodes.

   

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   Boris Sagal was the father of Katey Sagal who starred in the Fox TV series Married With Children for 11 seasons.

6. Vic Morrow

   

   In 1982 while working on the set of the film Twilight Zone: The Movie, Vic Morrow was decapitated by a helicopter blade while shooting a scene. Two child actors also died in the accident. The accident was the result of pyrotechnic explosions causing the low flying helicopter pilot to lose control of the bird and it crashed on top of Morrow and the two children. Morrow is the father of actress Jennifer Jason Leigh who starred in one of my all time favorite movies, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

7. John Ritter

   

   Ritter is best known for playing Jack Tripper in the TV Sitcom Three’s Company. He was born into show business as his mother was actress Dorothy Fay and his father was country singer and actor Tex Ritter. In 2003 while filming an episode of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, Ritter suffered an aortic dissection which is a tear in the wall of the aorta that causes blood to flow between the layers of the wall of the aorta and force the layers apart causing massive and rapid blood loss if not detected early. He was rushed to the hospital but died soon after.

For more see: Nine Weird Wacky Historical Deaths of Famous People, 12 Bizarre and Wacky Deaths and  Inventors Who Died From Their Own Inventions.