
4. Broken Toe
Viggo Mortensen went to extreme lengths to ensure that audiences believed his depiction of Aragorn in ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ The Danish actor slept in stables and carried his sword everywhere because he wanted to capture a weather-beaten look (via Den of Geek).
In one scene, he kicks an orc’s helmet and yells in agonized frustration. However, viewers didn’t realize that his pain was genuine. Mortensen thought that it was a foam helmet but it was metal. He broke his toe in the process but the director kept the shot because of his sacrifice.