Celebs Who Cheated Death More Than Once

Anyone who's ever seen Final Destination knows that you can't cheat death — that and the fact that walking beneath fire escapes is permanently canceled unless you'd like to be gently impaled directly through your noggin. Sorry, there are just some things from the early aughts we can't unsee. The good news is, though, that it looks like some celebrities have found a workaround. That, or they're supremely hashtag blessed.

Whether it's surviving an almost shark attack, a potential drowning, or a deadly infection — these celebrities have all managed to stand at death's door and say, "Not today." And they did it twice. In fact, some of them even continuously test it. We're looking at you, Ozzy Osbourne. Did you really need to bite the head off of a bat? Rabies doesn't sound like a good time. Neither does any of the various zoonotic diseases you could've contracted. Either way, these celebrity near-death experiences prove that the human body is resilient — at least until it's not. Does anyone have a number for a good guardian angel? That stuff isn't exactly on Yelp.

Leonardo DiCaprio may have met his match as Jack in Titanic when Rose pushed his frozen body into the depths of the ocean after proclaiming, "I'll never let go." In real life, a shipwreck would be no match for whatever guardian angels Leo's enlisted. The star has been through so many near-death experiences that he told Wired, "My friends have named me the person they least want to do extreme adventures with ... if a cat has nine lives, I think I've used a few." This includes both an unlikely incident with a shark, a flight, and a parachute.

Per Wired, the shark incident occurred when the Revenant actor was cage diving in South Africa. A great white managed to launch itself into the top of DiCaprio's cage and snap at him like he was Sunday brunch. "I sort of fell down to the bottom and tried to lie flat," he said. "The great white took about five or six snaps an arm's length away from my head. The guys there said that has never happened in the 30 years they'd been doing it."

The Delta episode occurred when DiCaprio was flying to Russia, and the "entire wing exploded in a fireball" right in front of his face. They made a successful emergency landing. Then there was a skydiving snafu where two of Leo's parachutes got tangled, and the instructor managed to shake one loose before they hit the ground.

Gary Busey seems like a guy who's lived numerous lives, and in some ways, he has. The actor should've died twice but managed to use his near-death experiences to turn his life around. The first incident occurred in 1988 when the actor was in a harrowing motorcycle accident that left him with "severe brain damage." According to People, he fishtailed trying to maneuver around a bus, flew over his windshield, and landed on his head — but he wasn't wearing a helmet. In an interview with The Guardian, Busey revealed that he actually died after emergency brain surgery and "went to the other side."

"I was surrounded by angels. Balls of light floating all around me. And I felt trust, love, protection and happiness like you cannot feel on earth. It's the feeling the angels live in," he said. " ... I was a quarter of an inch wide and 1ft long. That is your soul, and your soul is housed in the column of your spine. And three balls of light came up to me and talked to me ... Then a light said: 'You may come to us now or return to your body and continue your destiny.'"

Busey did return to his body, but only to overdose on cocaine in 1995. In an interview on Oprah: Where Are They Now? (via HuffPost), Busey revealed that he never touched the drug again after that.

Biting the head of a potentially disease-ridden bat proves that Ozzy Osbourne is virtually immune to the things that take down most mortals — but that's not all. The star has experienced a veritable crazy train of near-death scenarios, including a bizarre incident when he was almost taken out by a manicure. Yes, the Prince of Darkness enjoys the occasional mani. What of it?

According to the Daily Star, Black Sabbath was forced to cancel a string of tour dates in 2018 after the singer contracted a deadly infection in his thumb that required emergency surgery. He believes he contracted the infection, which swelled his thumb to "the size of a f***ing lightbulb," at the salon. It eventually traveled to Ozzy's bloodstream and almost killed him. 

This isn't the only time Ozzy nearly met his maker. The star also had a terrifying ATV Crash in December 2003. According to the Sunday Mirror (via The Daily Mail), Ozzy was in a coma for eight days after suffering eight broken ribs, a punctured lung, a smashed collarbone, and a crushed vertebra in his neck following a four-wheeler accident at his Buckinghamshire mansion. He was not wearing a helmet and stopped breathing twice as his bodyguard Sam Ruston gave him mouth-to-mouth. "If it wasn't for Sam, I probably wouldn't be here. He had to bring me back to life twice," he said.

Post Malone messed with the wrong haunted dybbuk box because the man seems absolutely cursed. In one year, the "Wow." singer almost died twice. First, his private airplane had to make an emergency landing after the tires exploded. According to TMZ, they were "overdue for maintenance," and Posty's plane had to circle "for several hours to burn off fuel" in order to make the landing safer. Beyond that, the plane was "way too heavy," and the flight crew reportedly ignored safety procedures, which didn't allow enough time for the plane's brakes to cool down. As soon as the rapper landed, he shared a message for his Twitter haters. "Can't believe how many people wished death on me on this website. f**k you. but not today," he wrote.

Post's bad luck continued with a serious car wreck just 17 days after his near plane crash. According to TMZ, in the early hours of the morning, the driver's side of the rapper's Rolls Royce was T-boned in West Hollywood. The impact spun his car out of control, and the damage to the vehicle was serious. Posty miraculously escaped unscathed, tweeting, "god must hate me lol." Let's just hope he's not stuck in a real-life cosplay of Final Destination because that's not going to bode well for him in the long term.

Eminem almost succumbed to his drug addiction twice before he scared himself enough to get clean for good. In an interview with Access Hollywood, the rapper admitted that he hit a personal rock bottom in 2007 as his prescription drug addiction was spiraling out of control, which led to a methadone overdose where he took "the equivalent of four bags of heroin" (via The Sun). He told The New York Times Magazine that he was previously taking Vicodin, Valium, and Ambien. As The Sun reports, he took as many as 30 pills a day.

"Had I got to the hospital about two hours later, I would have died," he said in an interview for the documentary How To Make Money Selling Drugs (via Access Hollywood). "My organs were shutting down. My liver, kidneys, everything. They were gonna have to put me on dialysis, they didn't think I was gonna make it. My bottom was gonna be death."

Though Eminem attempted to get clean, he relapsed a month later when he took the same dangerous amount of medication that sent him to the hospital the first time. "I remember just walking around my house and thinking every single day, like, I'm gonna f**king die," he said in the documentary. Today, Eminem credits Elton John for his sobriety. The Sun reports that the legendary singer, who beat cocaine addiction in the '80s, reportedly took the rapper under his wing.

The Real Housewives of New York got super real for Bethenny Frankel when she almost lost her life because of a bowl of soup. The starlet has a rare — and extremely serious — fish allergy. In the past, she's shown us how something as seemingly innocuous as getting a goodbye kiss from a friend can cause a flare-up if they've eaten seafood.

In December 2018, she almost paid for that allergy with her life when she accidentally ate a bowl of soup that contained fish. In a tweet, the star revealed that she was unconscious for 15 minutes and spent two days in the ICU with a blood pressure of 60/40. "I couldn't talk, see, thought I had a stroke & dying & told if 5 mins later I'd be dead. 911 & EPI saved me. I'll never not carry an #epipen." she wrote.

Mere weeks later, Frankel faced another harrowing — and kind of fishy — scenario when she boarded an airplane that was serving fish during mealtime. In a tweet, Frankel admitted that she called the airline multiple times to tell them she had a fish allergy, but when she boarded, they were still serving bass. The crew reportedly claimed "they couldn't not serve it" and were forced to turn around. "Some allergens are transmitted by touch & air," Frankel tweeted. "Fish is one & is fatal. The more exposure to them, the more susceptible."

Amy Schumer did not have an easy pregnancy — and there's nothing funny about being sent to the hospital with severe morning sickness. According to the BBC, the comedian suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum during her pregnancy. This can cause "severe nausea and vomiting up to 50 times a day," and extreme dehydration is very dangerous and can be potentially fatal. Schumer, however, made it to the hospital before it got to that point. She recovered but was forced to cancel her show in Dallas.

Clearly, Schumer is one tough woman, and enduring months of grueling morning sickness isn't the only thing that proves it. In an interview with Vanity Fair, the comedian revealed that she had a near-death experience while surfing alone as a teenager. "Forty-one stitches, three layers. I skegged myself. My whole fin went into my leg, and I had to yank it out," she said. A stranger ultimately came to her rescue and held her leg closed "with his bare hands" while blood poured out of her wound as they waited for the ambulance.

 "I thought, 'Well, I'm going to die. I can't believe I'm going to die like this,'" she said. "Then I'm like, 'Oh, no [I'm not going to die] — but I'm going to lose my leg. And now I'm going to have to go and be a speaker at high schools and, like, motivate people.'" Schumer now has a "pretty bad" scar on her leg.

Han Solo may have epically maneuvered the Millennium Falcon, but it doesn't seem like Harrison Ford has the same skill set. Over the years, the Star Wars actor has had various brushes with death thanks to his hobby flying airplanes, but it's true to form when you consider his roles. How many times did Indiana Jones and Han Solo almost die?

In 2015, Ford was injured in Los Angeles when the engines on his vintage airplane failed, and he crash-landed into a golf course in Venice. According to the BBC, he was in "fair to moderate" condition when he was brought to the hospital. TMZ claimed he had numerous head wounds, but he did recover. 

This was just one of multiple airplane incidents for the hobbyist aviator. Two years later, the star almost collided with a commercial jet at John Wayne Airport in Orange County. According to NBC News, he mistakenly landed his single-engine plane on a taxiway instead of a runway, but not before passing closely over an American Airlines 737 that had 110 passengers. Ford's landing violated Federal Aviation Administration safety rules and prompted an investigation. According to The New York Times, Ford was investigated again in 2020 when he failed to listen to instructions from an air traffic controller.

Sometimes a change of plans saves your life. According to New York Magazine, Mark Wahlberg was meant to be on one of the planes that crashed during 9/11. Instead, he caught a flight a week earlier to see his friend's movie at the Toronto Film Festival. While he narrowly avoided a tragic fate, it's pretty clear that the Happening star has seen way too many action movies. The former rapper actually went on-record claiming he'd have pulled a Liam Neeson, stopped 9/11, and became a national hero if only he hadn't changed his plans.

"If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn't have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, 'Okay, we're going to land somewhere safely, don't worry,'" he told Men's Journal.

According to HuffPost, Wahlberg promptly apologized for his comments, which clearly offended the masses. This made it all the more ironic when the actor had a second near-miss while facing a pretend Taliban attack in Lone Survivor. According to Parade, he was filming a scene with a mortar, but director Peter Berg told the crew to fire it earlier than Wahlberg expected. "I couldn't get out of the way and it exploded in my face and I was not happy about that," he told Parade. "It was the first time I ever lost my cool on set and broke things and threw things."

The world is a lot more dangerous outside of the Disney Channel. In his short 32 years, Zac Efron had two brushes with death, both of which happened on-location for work. If only he stuck with projects like High School Musical. The most he could expect was a strained vocal cord or a jammed finger from dancing around with a basketball.

In 2017, Efron opened up about a near-death experience he endured while filming The Greatest Showman with Hugh Jackman. The pair were riding their bikes around London, but Efron wasn't experienced riding in traffic. "I followed Hugh around a few cars and suddenly there was a double-decker bus right in front of me," he said during an appearance on the Graham Norton Show (via People). "I slammed on the brakes, went under the front tire and narrowly missed death."

Two years later, Efron found himself in an even graver situation. According to The Sunday Telegraph, the actor was filming the TV series Killing Zac Efron when he was, ironically, almost killed by an illness "believed to be a form of typhoid or similar bacterial infection." He had to be airlifted from Papua New Guinea to a hospital in Australia, where he spent several days recovering. The New Zealand Herald reports that it was a "life-or-death flight," and he landed in Brisbane on an emergency visa. Fortunately, Efron said he "bounced back quick."

Daenerys eventually met her match in the finale of Game of Thrones, but actress Emilia Clarke hasn't finished her journey yet. The star has managed to survive two life-threatening brain aneurysms, the first of which happened while filming Season 1 of the HBO hit. In an essay for The New Yorker, Clarke described how she was working out with a trainer when she "started to feel a bad headache coming on" and was hit with major fatigue.

"I tried to ignore the pain and push through it, but I just couldn't," she wrote. "I told my trainer I had to take a break. Somehow, almost crawling, I made it to the locker room. I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill. Meanwhile, the pain — shooting, stabbing, constricting pain — was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged."

Clarke was rushed to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) and underwent brain surgery, but her problems persisted. After filming Season 3, the actress discovered that a second growth on her brain had doubled in size. It required two surgeries, and the star emerged looking "as though I had been through a war more gruesome than any that Daenerys experienced." Today, the actress claims she's "at a hundred per cent" and "cheated death twice."

In a 2016 interview with Stylist (via Daily Mail), Ellie Goulding revealed that she canceled a string of tour dates after being diagnosed with clinical exhaustion. In her words, her body was "giving up" and she continuously experienced panic attacks that made her feel like she was "dying of a heart attack." 

"It's a very hot, burning feeling, like your heart is racing uncontrollably which is extra scary for me because I actually have a heart defect," she admitted. 

This isn't the only time Goulding had to push through something terrifying. That same year, the singer nearly drowned with her tour photographer in Norway when their belt wagon sunk into a frozen lake. According to BBC's Newsbeat, the ice cracked below their all-terrain vehicle, and they were forced to evacuate through the roof in the pitch black of night. It was a frigid -25°C ( -13°F). Of course, they managed to escape with enough time to snap a pic for Instagram.