Johnny Knoxvilleknows he’s lucky to be alive right now.
“it’s possible for you to only take so many chances before one forever catches up with you.
I realized that and it’s amazing that I’m still walking around.
Illustration by Kyle Hilton for EW
I think I pushed my luck far enough.”
But he’s not bitter about how it all turned out.
“And honestly, I feel pretty good.
“You do silly things, you get silly injuries,” he says with his signature laugh.
Just don’t ask him about all the hospital bills.
“I have so many doctors in my phone,” Knoxville says with another laugh.
Here, Knoxville takes EW through his wildest career injuries, Operation-style.
16 (maybe 17 he’s not exactly sure) concussions
One concussion can be debilitating.
Yet Knoxville has lost count of how many he’s had.
He thinks his concussion count is at 16 afterJackass Forever… although itmaybe 17.
What he does know for sure: “I can’t get any more concussions.
I have kids and I want to be there for them when they get older.
Hopefully I won’t be sucking soup through a straw in 10 years.”
Knoxville remembers one particularly nasty side effect of a concussion he got during the firstJackassmovie.
“I got vertigo with the concussion when I fought Butterbean,” he says.
“Well, it wasn’t much of a fight.
It was as one-sided as a train wreck.
But yeah, I got vertigo, and that lasted for a few weeks.
That was pretty crazy.”
“Sometimes after a concussion you get a little down,” he says.
“But it kind of works itself out.
I feel like I’m very strong physically and mentally.
Orbital blowout fracture
Queasy fans may want to avert their eyes for this one.
Yeah, it was as bad as it sounds.
“My orbital lamina bone, they said it didn’t break, it just powdered.
But for a scripted movie likeAction Point, the evidence of hisunscripted facial crash presented a problem.
“And I couldn’t sneeze for six weeks.
Then a couple of nights later, I was walking around with Pontius and he said something hilarious.
And for whatever insane reason, I grabbed my nose when I laughed and my eye popped out again.
I was like, ‘Well s—.’
Why I grabbed my nose and held my nose and laughed?
I just must secretly hate myself.
Or not so secretly.”
Torn urethra
Knoxville will always be the first to laugh about how he sustained this cringe-inducing injury.
“Breaking my jim-dog was pretty funny,” he says.
“I did it three times and each time I got worse,” he adds.
“About 40 minutes later, I could tell, ‘Oh man, I’m X-ing right now.’
Like, any other production they would have ground to a halt, ‘What?
Someone dosed you?!'”
But Knoxville just leaned in and treated the now drug-fueled night like any other opportunity for an outrageous stunt.
“They had a basketball hoop there so I jumped up and grabbed the net,” he says.
It was just useless.
I didn’t know it happened until the next day when I came down off the booze and Ecstasy.
“The herniated discs are my least favorite because you never really see them happening,” he says.
“It’s just kind of a totality of all the injuries.
That one’s always going to be with me.
That was debilitating.”
Sprained ankles
Knoxville has David Letterman to thank for this one.
“Instead of walking out, I dropped from the rafters,” he says.
That wasn’t the first or last time Knoxville injured his ankles.
“I busted my ankles, each ankle three times a piece,” he says.
“No, no, no.
I do not want to know.
Don’t ruin my career,” Knoxville says in a rare serious moment.
I revere the stuntmen.
They’re so talented and gnarly and athletically gifted.
And I’m none of those things.
I just let gravity take hold.
Gravity and Newton’s third law of motion, those two things gave me my career.”
Broken wrist and rib (along with a concussion and brain hemorrhage)
Knoxville loves bulls.
He will always call them his favorite costar, no matter how hard he gets wrecked by them.
“Every time they destroy me, I love it.
God help me, I love it,” he says with a dreamy smile.
“They’ve been so good to me, bulls.
They’ve been so good to our franchise.
They’re really selfless they just want to get you good footage, no matter the cost.
They’re not thinking about themselves, they’re just thinking about that idiot standing in front of them.
They just hate anything that moves.
If it’s moving, they want to make it stop moving forever.
So for that, we bless them.”
But it wasn’t on the first try.
“But after the bull, I could no longer do those.
I wanted to go as big as I did for this one as I did the others.
I wanted to go out on my sword as opposed to just limping away.
I was the only one willing to do those [stunts] so those went away.
There may come along someone one day that I’ll let them do it.
But I don’t know.”
“It just falls down and I slam and bust my collarbone, all while dressed as Santa Claus.
It was just so stupid.”
