Olivia Wilde has openly revealed that she almost died from a runaway horse on the set of the 2011 Western movie Cowboys and Aliens before being rescued by Walton Goggins.
“I had a bad horse accident and he saved me,” the actress said on Monday’s episode of the Armchair Expert podcast.
“I’ve been riding horses all my life. I’m confident in certain styles of riding, like British style, but this was Western style and different.”
Wilde, 42, explained that he and co-stars Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford had only been working on the film with Goggins for two months, and admitted he was “getting really cocky” about riding.
“And we were pretty competitive,” she said. “And there we were, me, Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, galloping through the desert at full speed with about 40 horses behind us.”
“We were at the forefront of fighting the aliens,” the “Don’t Worry Darling” star continued. “I got to the point where I could see a big ditch in front of me, like a six-foot ditch, and I thought, ‘This horse is going to jump over that ditch.’
Wilde recalled that he was riding in a Western saddle without a helmet when the accident occurred, adding, “Sure enough, this horse jumped up and knocked me off in the craziest way and I fell off.”
“I hit my head and back,” she said. “I was on the other side of something like this lip of dirt, so the 40 horses behind me couldn’t see me. And there was a lot of dust. I remember listening to that group, and I could hear it, and it sounded like thunder.”
Recalling the incident, the director recalled thinking her death would be “quick.”
“It must be like shattered applesauce,” she thought at the time. “And I was waiting for it to happen, and Wal Goggins saw it right in front of me and I thought for a second that he was going to turn the horse sideways right in front of me and we were all going to run into him.”
“And he’s a great rider, so he was able to cope with that,” Wilde continued. “And even though we all thought he was insane, he protected me on the ground.”
The “Tron: Legacy” star concluded, “So I owe him my life. It’s crazy. He’s a real-life hero.”
Wilde played Ella Swenson and Goggins played Hunt in the Jon Favreau-directed film.
Elsewhere in the interview, Wilde described co-star Paul Dano as “the nicest guy” when he worked as a casting intern long before filming “Cowboys and Aliens.”
“Everyone else treated me like a junior employee, except for Paul Dano, who was the nicest guy in the world,” she said. “And I had the best time working with him on Cowboys and Aliens.”
