The Tragic Truth About How Miles Teller Got His Face Scars

To movie buffs, Miles Teller's facial scars are just another trait that makes him easily identifiable. But to him, they are a powerful reminder that he is alive. The "Whiplash" actor survived a serious car accident that nearly killed him. Teller was about to start his junior year at New York University and was getting more serious about his acting aspirations. However, he feared the scars would hinder his career prospects. They almost did, but one director saw them as a strength.

When he auditioned to play alongside Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart in the 2010 drama "Rabbit Hole," he impressed director John Cameron Mitchell not only with his talents but also with his looks. "I played a guy who is the catalyst for a deadly accident," Teller told W magazine in 2014. "The director thought it helped that I had scars." Teller is forever grateful, as he knew it was a long shot. "He convinced himself. I had no film credits," he told Variety in 2014 of the risk Mitchell took.

It also helped that he had an impact on Kidman, who might have had a hand in convincing Mitchell to bet on the newcomer. "Nicole Kidman will tell you she saw me blush, and she really liked that. When I auditioned, my character blushed. She thought it was so honest and real," he said. Regardless of whose idea it was, he got the part. And a fruitful career was born partly thanks to a tragic event in Teller's life.

In 2007, Miles Teller was a 20-year-old fan of the Grateful Dead who made the 1,000-plus miles drive from his hometown in Florida to Connecticut to participate in the four-day festival inspired by the band. He and his friends made it there safely, but the drive back was a different story. The driver lost control at 80 mph, causing the car to flip eight times. "I went out the window before the car started to roll," he said in the W interview. "Everyone was yelling, 'Where's Miles?!'"

Teller broke his wrist and needed 20 staples on his shoulder. "I was just laying like 50 feet from the car, unconscious, covered in blood. My buddy thought I was dead," he said in a 2016 interview on ABC News' "Popcorn With Peter Travers." The deep cuts on his neck and face proved permanent. "I still have two rocks in my face," he told Travers. Doctors advised him that the pieces of gravel would be less noticeable than the scars that removing them would cause.

He underwent painful laser procedures to smooth the scars knowing they could be a problem. He was right. Teller was turned down after auditions because of them. "When I first started auditioning, people were straight up just like, 'Yeah, Miles is a good actor, [but it] doesn't make sense for this character to have scars," he explained. Thankfully, not everyone agreed, and movie fans have watched Teller's transformation into a star.

Miles Teller believes he went out of his way to prevent the driver from feeling guilty. But he also felt the friend should at least have shown a bit more interest in his recovery, as the months that followed were filled with doctor appointments and treatments that left his face burning for days. "I never wanted him to feel bad, so I never made anything out of it, ever," he told Esquire in 2015. "If I was in his position, I'd be like, 'Hey, man, do you need a Gatorade or anything? I'm just running out. You need any meds?'"

The friction became more intense when Teller's parents filed legal action against his friend's insurance company. "I was racking up all these medical bills ... It's not like we're suing him; we're suing his insurance," he said. But the guy, who was also Teller's roommate at the time, didn't take it lightly. "He's like, 'Miles, I don't know if we can be friends when my parents' insurance premiums are going to go up,'" he recalled. After that, Teller lost touch with all of his college friends.

He still had his friends from back home in Florida, but those months continued to prove heartbreaking. The following year, Teller lost two of them to accidents. "At my 21st birthday, seven of my buddies are there, five months later, two of them are gone," he said in a 2016 interview with The Guardian.