Jason Statham nearly died filming movie but survived thanks to his former career

Jason Statham ‘faced death’ during the filming of one of his movies and was only saved thanks to his diving skills.

The 56-year-old Hollywood star was a member of Britain's National Swimming Squad for 12 years and he even competed for England at the 1990 Commonwealth Games, where he competed in the 1m, 3m and 10m diving events.

And these skills turned out to come in very handy during filming of the 2014 action sequel The Expendables 3.

According to his co-star Sylvester Stallone, the Snatch star would most likely have died had it not been for his skills in the water.

Speaking to the Mirror in 2014, Stallone shared: “He faced death. He was test-driving a three-ton truck and the brakes run out. It went down 60ft into the Black Sea and became impaled. Luckily we had taken the doors off before.

"If anyone else had been in that truck we would have been dead because we were all wearing heavy boots and gun belts. We would have drowned. But because Jason is an Olympic-quality diver he got out of it."

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Statham also spilled the beans on the incident, during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2014, where he revealed: “This was serious. We were filming on the dock, on the edge of the Black Sea, in Bulgaria and I’m driving a big, flatbed, three-ton truck and everyone is supposed to get on the back.

“And so before they get on, I think ‘let’s do a little test drive’, so I’m in the truck and I slam on the brakes where I’m supposed to stop and nothing happens. Next thing you know I’ve hit two cameramen - I literally thought I’d killed them - a split-second later I’m going nine-feet over this concrete jetty and I’m going down towards the Black Sea.

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“I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got to get out of this. This is ridiculous.’ I’m trying to prise myself from behind the wheel to get out of the window - the windows are down.

“The truck hits the water, the water slams me back and we’re just sinking fast - straight to the bottom.

“So, sixty-feet at the bottom of the Black Sea, stuck in the mud, I’m thinking, ‘hang on a minute, how am I going to get out of this? This is how it ends.’”

Statham went on to say that at this point he composed himself as ‘survival kicked in’ and was able to pull himself out of the window and make his way to the surface.