16. Pushing a Middle-Aged and Overweight Actor Beyond His Physical Limits Backfires
1989 saw the release of The Return of the Musketeers, a film loosely based on Alexandre Dumas’ Twenty Years, depicting events two decades after the original Three Musketeers story. The movie was middling. It opened to mixed reviews, which remain mixed to this day, with a current Rotten Tomatoes rating in the 60% ballpark. Filming was marred by the tragicomic demise of character actor Roy Kinnear (1934 – 1988), who played the role of Planchet, the servant of the Musketeer D’Artagnan.
On September 19th, 1988, on a film set in Spain, a scene called for Planchet to gallop on horseback at speed across a wooden bridge. Kinnear, who was 54-years-old and considerably overweight, had not expected to perform such a strenuous stunt. He also had little to no experience in horseback riding. Indeed, he was described by fellow actors and the filming set’s stunt coordinator as a “nervous” and “incompetent” horseman. That did not stop the film’s director, Richard Lester, from instructing the aging and obese actor to “thunder” at high speed across the Alcantara Bridge near Toledo.