Viggo Mortensen Deflects Real Knife

While filming the fight between Aragorn and Lurtz in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), the stunt called for the Uruk-hai to throw a knife straight at Viggo Mortensen. Instead of sailing past him as planned, a very real knife flew directly at his face. Mortensen instinctively swung his sword and smacked the blade out of the air, and Peter Jackson said he did it on the first take, so the moment you see on screen is his genuine, split-second reaction.

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