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American Assassin star Dylan O'Brien talks serious injuries after stunt went wrong 

Filming had to be paused for a year as he recovered

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Emmy Griffiths
TV & Film Editor
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Dylan O'Brien is one of the most popular faces on Netflix right now thanks to his roles in American Assassin and Love and Monsters, but the star almost didn't return to acting following a terrible accident on the set of the final Maze Runner film. 

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While shooting a scene and strapped into a harness back in 2016, Dylan was on top of a moving vehicle when he was pulled off it unexpectedly and hit by another car, suffering facial fractures, brain trauma and a concussion as a result.

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Previously speaking about the incident to Deadline Hollywood, he said: "I had a rough and long road back from that, probably more than people realise. It was a very private and personal thing for me. I was going through that [expletive] for a long time. A lot of things in my life were changing and were difficult at that time. A lot of things in my career were changing too. I was fighting it for a while, and freaking out that I felt so [expletive] broken. I had to accept that and sink into it." 

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Speaking about how the experience has changed him, he told Variety's The Big Ticket with Marc Malkin: "I loved what I did. I loved being on set, it was my favourite place in the world. I loved my crew. My crews are my families, my life, my worlds. I put my trust into them and I think that was a piece of what made it so hard, having that so viciously and scarily broken one time.

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"Whenever I’m putting on a rig [now], I’m vetting every piece of that rig and much more. Even to this day, if I’m on set and I’m doing a stunt, if I’m in a rig, if there’s some action going on, I am slightly irritable. There is a degree of anxiety in me that I don’t think there’s ever not going to be." 

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