Daniel Radcliffe, the protagonist of the Harry Potter saga, has stood out in recent days after presenting the documentary David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived. As we have already told you, the documentary tells the tragic story of David, his double during the filming of the famous series of films based on the work of J.K. Rowling, who was left with a spinal injury that will keep him paralyzed for life. Following the announcement of its premiere on HBO, new details about the accident have come to light.
How and when did the tragic accident happen?
David Holmes, very similar in build to actor Daniel Radcliffe, was the perfect candidate to perform double duty during the most complicated scenes. The young athlete, with a promising future, proved to be the most suitable for performing all types of dangerous scenes, during the filming of the latest films of the famous Howards magician.
However, during the filming of Deathly Hallows, part 1, the stuntman had to do a scene in which he was thrown by an explosion, and during filming, David ended up hitting a wall at high speed, which resulted in a terrible fracture of neck, and a spinal cord injury, which paralyzed him instantly, all due to a failure in safety equipment.
“I had to simulate an act in which an explosion threw me backward, but the cable that was pulling me did so with such force that my body ended up hitting a wall that was behind,” David Holmes shared in an interview conducted by the medium, The Mirror, in 2014.
The unfortunate incident occurred at the Warner Bros. studios in Leavesden, and since then he has remained bedridden, paralyzed from the waist down. The scene in which David was paralyzed was one in which Harry Potter was flying on his broom, and when he suffered an attack, the character flew away. The accident changed everything from one moment to the next. The force with which the young stuntman hit a wall, which had not been properly protected by production, ended up ending the boy’s career.
It is uncertain whether the scene by which David was permanently crippled made it into the final cut of the film. It is unknown if the double had any accident insurance or if the company covered the expenses, but the truth is that the actor Daniel Radcliffe dedicated himself to obtaining donations to pay for the expensive surgical operations that his friend David required during the first months of treatment.
Radcliffe produced the documentary The Boy Who Lived, as a way to make Holmes’ accident public and tell his story to the world. In the film, the actor tells us about his years of experience with David, who served as his double during many of the filming of previous films, and also about all of his wonderful and reckless work. “The documentary is a story of adolescence, about a talented athlete from Essex England, who was selected to become Daniel Radcliffe’s double, for the first Harry Potter film, when the protagonist was only 11 years old,” Writes HBO, in the synopsis of the film.
During the ten years of relationship that Radcliffe and Holmes lived on the filming of Harry Potter, the boys became very good friends. In the filming of the penultimate film, everything changed after the accident, leaving David with a debilitating broken spine, but the nobility of his friend Daniel helped him overcome this difficult situation.
“Being a stuntman was my calling and playing Harry was the best job in the world. In January 2009, I had an accident at a rehearsal that changed my life forever. “This film tells the story not only of my achievements in front of the cameras but also of the challenges I face every day and my general attitude towards life after suffering a broken neck,” Holmes said on Instagram.
Our respect to Daniel Radcliffe! What an apt title for the documentary! And what a good way to make a complaint!
This story was written in Spanish by Carmen Guerrero in Cultura Colectiva
