I Am Legend stunt actor’s face was ‘shredded up’ in scene gone wrong

A prolific stunt performer scored her worst ever injury while working on Will Smith's post-apocalyptic movie I Am Legend.

If you've been to movies with any sort of action you've likely seen Kimberly Shannon Murphy, even if you didn't recognise her at the time.

She's been a stunt double in the likes of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Marvel's Most Wanted, and of course, I Am Legend among many others.

She's done plenty of stunt doubling for Cameron Diaz and Uma Thurman, and during her career has suffered a few bumps and scrapes of the painful variety.

"My worst injury was on I Am Legend," Kimberly told LADbible. "I was doing a descender out of a window."

Kimberly explained that a 'descender' involves being attached to a wire then jumping as part of an action scene and being caught a few feet before the ground, so you don't actually hit it.

But on the set of I Am Legend, which is now available for Brits to watch on Netflix, things didn't quite go to plan.

She said: "My wire didn't catch me, I fell probably 20 feet.

"We went out the window, so the glass had already hit the ground. And when I fell, I fell in to the glass. And so my legs kind of came up over my head. I kind of just face-planted into the glass.

"My body was fine. It was my face that just got completely shredded up. So I had probably 60 stitches in my face at hospital, but I stayed at work and finished most of my day first."

And it turns out Will is exactly like you'd expect him to be.

"He's exactly the same person," Kimberly said. "And he's super nice. He's one of my favourite actors that I've worked with.

"He's just so kind and so great to everybody and appreciative of the crew."

But, does he really do his own stunts?

"Um, you know, it's always interesting. So my husband doubled Tom Cruise for 11 years. So it's really interesting when actors say that, because some of them do, you know, some of them do as much as they can do, some are more physical than others, for sure.

"Some just don't do any at all. And they don't care and don't want to, but others want to be more involved.

"Like Cameron [Diaz] always wants to be more involved. Like she would want to throw a punch if she could.

"But when it comes to falling through stuff, and doing the bigger things, honestly, Tom is the only one that I've actually seen do that."

Murphy became a stunt woman after working as an acrobat at a Cirque du Soleil style company, before getting her break on My Super Ex-Girlfriend as a double for Uma Thurman.

Although she has worked on some huge films, Kimberly finds the smaller ones can be more dangerous because of the amount of rehearsal time that goes into ones with a larger budget.

You'll have seen her in the ending fight scene of Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, where Katie (the one with the red hair, played by Madisen Beaty) gets her face smashed into a phone.

Only when it came to having her face smashed in that was Kimberly too.

The scene itself took about three weeks to shoot, including the interior and outside sections, and a whopping four months to rehearse, including learning how to fight a huge pit bull.

Kimberly said: "I did all of the face smashing.

"We did that for real. It was a breakaway phone. So, it was like an old phone where you kind of hang up and has those two things coming out an old kind of payphone type thing.

"So those two bits coming out were [made from] foam, but the phone was actually a phone. They kind of, change the insides. And then they score it. So they kind of pre-cut it. And then we just did it for real."

She says the movie was a 'dream come true' to be a part of.

"Just being on set was so different than anything I've ever experienced.

"Quentin just works in a certain way. He keeps the crew that's shooting really small. He hand writes all of his shot lists. So that was really cool.

"We would get that in the beginning of the day and see what we were going to be shooting.

"And it was just really cool to see him work as a filmmaker. I just had never worked with a director like him before."