“I’m a bit of a Mr Bump,” says John Hannah with a laugh, gesturing towards his black eye. “I’m probably the only actor who can injure himself while lying down, pretending to be unconscious. I was doing a Channel 5 drama I can’t tell you about yet, but I was on the ground while another actor yanked me out of his way and I just sort of banged my face on the floor. Ouch!”
The 64-year-old Scot – probably best known and loved for his emotional recitation of Auden’s “Funeral Blues” in Four Weddings and a Funeral – has always been accident-prone on sets. “I don’t have good eyesight on my left-hand side, so I’m always falling that way, banging into things, coming off my bike. Peter Mensa” – his co-star in the 2010 swords and sandals drama Spartacus – “said I could injure myself doing anything.”
His worst on-set injury occurred while filming the first in The Mummy trilogy, in which he brings chaotic, comedic charm to the action as Jonathan Carnahan, brother to Rachel Weisz’s character Evelyn. “Zombies were chasing us into some bushes,” he says. “Brendan [Fraser] was meant to lift a drain cover so we could disappear down a hole. But they’d wet the street. The soles of my shoes were really slippy. I fell. I got up but as I did I felt I was going to faint – I do faint quite a bit – so I grabbed Rachel’s hand so if I fell she would come with me.” A grin. “That’s the take that’s in the film too.”
