DANIEL RADCLIFFE & STUNTMAN DAVID HOLMES A LifeChanging Accident, a Lasting Bond

DANIEL RADCLIFFE'S STUNT DOUBLE DAVID HOLMES WAS PARALYZED ON THE SET OF HARRY POTTER. NOW THE PAIR HAVE MADE A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT FRIENDSHIP, HEALING AND HOPE

-  JACK SMART

It was a typical day on the set of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 in January 2009 when David Holmes’s film career was cut tragically short. Then 28, the stunt performer—Daniel Radcliffe’s double—was in rehearsals at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in England, perfecting a moment that would send the boy wizard smashing backward into a wall. In the franchise’s first six films, Holmes had safely performed precipitous drops from broomsticks and dodged explosions from dragon fire. This stunt should have been no different. Instead, too much weight on the pulley-system wires caused his neck to break, paralyzing Holmes from the chest down.

“I remember hitting the wall, my chest folding into my nose,” he recalls in the new HBO documentary David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived. “I was fully conscious throughout the whole thing.”