The bizarre injury Brad Pitt suffered when filming 'Troy'

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Brad Pitt has been a prominent fixture in the movie industry for over 30 years, with the actor committing to various genres, including arthouse cinema and the big-budget blockbuster. Se7en, The Tree of Life, and Burn After Reading are just three titles that aptly convey the variety found in his oeuvre, with the first an intense mystery, the second an experimental coming-of-age film, and the third an absurd spy romp from the Coen brothers.

One film that helped crystallise Brad Pitt’s status as a leading man was 2004’s historical epic, Troy. Directed by German director Wolfgang Petersen, Pitt played the Greek hero Achilles, with his acting praised for its intensity and emotional depth in a film widely believed to lack the latter. Despite the evident criticisms directed at the movie, at face value, it remains an entertaining – if not lengthy – watch.

Speaking to the New York Times in 2019, Pitt looked back on the film and revealed his complicated thoughts towards Troy. He noted that whilst he made mistakes in it, from the outset, the commercial aspect of the project made him uncomfortable. He recalled: “I had to do Troy because […] I pulled out of another movie and then had to do something for the studio. So I was put in Troy. It wasn’t painful, but I realised that the way that movie was being told was not how I wanted it to be. I made my own mistakes in it.”

The actor continued: “What am I trying to say about Troy? I could not get out of the middle of the frame. It was driving me crazy. I’d become spoiled working with David Fincher. It’s no slight on Wolfgang Petersen. Das Boot is one of the all-time great films. But somewhere in it, Troy became a commercial kind of thing. Every shot was like, ‘Here’s the hero!’ There was no mystery.”

Notably, in Homer’s epic The Iliad, which tells the story of the Trojan War, Achilles is killed after being shot through what is now known as the Achilles tendon with an arrow. This is a result of his mother, Thetis, dipping him in the river Styx as a child to make him immortal. However, as she held him by his ankle, she missed a spot; hence the term “Achilles heel” to describe a weakness or vulnerable point.

Ironically, Brad Pitt injured his own Achilles tendon when filming Troy. He spent over six months working out in a routine explicitly configured for the role. After bulking up enough and not long after filming began, the actor ruptured his Achilles tendon during one of the movie’s many stunts. Frustratingly for everyone involved, production shut down for several weeks until he recovered. Seeing the funny side in an interview after Troy‘s release, he commented: “In a bout of stupid irony, I tweaked my Achilles’ tendon”.

Allegedly, Petersen struggled to see the funny side, as he was already under enough pressure. The delay caused by Pitt’s injury followed another pause caused by a hurricane that had ripped through the million-dollar set and destroyed a host of props.