Actor Russell Crowe has always been willing to undertake many of his stunts. However, there was one "small mishap" on the set of his 2010 Robin Hood, which later became a much bigger matter, reported People. "I jumped off a castle portcullis onto rock-hard uneven ground," the Oscar winner, 59, tells PEOPLE for One Last Thing in this week's issue. "We should have prepped the ground and buried a pad, but we were in a rush to get the shot done in the fading light." Crowe, who is presently appearing in the upcoming action film Land of Bad, was unaware of his hazardous condition until he was about to jump. "With hundreds of extras around, arrows flying and burn pots setting the castle on fire, there was no pulling out," he recalls. "As I jumped, I remember thinking, 'This is going to hurt.' " Gladiator 2: Russell Crowe Is ‘Slightly Jealous’ About Not Being Part of the Sequel – Here’s Why!.

According to People, aiming to land on the balls of his feet to help with the impact, the actor felt his heels hit the uneven ground first. "It was like an electric shock bursting up through my body," he said. "We were shooting a big movie, so you just struggle through, but the last month of that job was very tricky. There was a number of weeks where even walking was a challenge." Crowe "never discussed the injury with production, never took a day off because of it, I just kept going to work," he added. A decade later, Crowe began having what he called "very strange pains" in his lower legs, so he went to a doctor for an MRI and X-rays. "I thought it was nothing serious," he said. "After working through a long New York winter, my body was just missing exercise and sunshine." The actor was taken aback when the doctor looked at the X-rays and asked him, "When did you break your legs?" "Apparently, he could see the remnants of fractures in both shin bones," says Crowe. "To jog my memory, he said, 'Would have been maybe 10 years ago?'" Russell Crowe Reveals the Reason Why He's 'Slightly Jealous' of the Gladiator Sequel.

Russell Crowe Recalls How He Fractured His Both Legs During Shoot of Robin Hood

 

Crowe immediately remembered jumping off the portcullis on the Robin Hood set. "Apparently, I finished that movie with two broken legs," he adds. "All for art. No cast, no splints, no painkillers, just kept going to work, and over time, they healed themselves." Looking back, the actor realised that following the filming in 2009, he took a year off and did not work again until 2013, when he signed on for Man of Steel. "In retrospect, I obviously knew something was wrong," he says. "To be the Kryptonian father of Superman was six months of incredibly intense physical training. Between the time off and that training, things fixed themselves." Land of Bad is now in theatres, reported People.