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The new HBO documentary, David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived, tells a story that many Harry Potter fans haven’t heard before. While the world was eagerly anticipating the release of Deathly Hallows Part 1, 25-year-old stunt actor David Holmes—who had worked as Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double since the first Potter film—was reconciling with the reality that he would never walk again. He’d broken his neck while rehearsing a stunt for the seventh movie, and was left paralyzed for life.
“I never told my story. I never really wanted to,” Holmes says in the documentary, which began streaming on Max on Wednesday. “Harry Potter’s a big thing for a lot of people, and nobody knows what happened to me.”
Fourteen years after his accident, Holmes is finally ready to tell his story, with the help of his friend and former coworker, Radcliffe, who serves as an executive producer on the film. The documentary, directed by Dan Hartley (who also worked on the Potter films as a video assist operator), establishes that Radcliffe and Holmes were close friends—so much so that Holmes and another Potter stunt performer, Marc Mailley, came to visit Radcliffe in New York to see his Broadway debut, just weeks before Holmes was injured.
How did David Holmes get paralyzed?
Holmes walks viewers through the accident: He’d been rehearsing a stunt for the scene in Deathly Hallows Part 1 in which Harry is attacked by the snake Nagini and thrown through a wall. Holmes was hooked up to a cable pulley system that yanked him backward into a mat, via weights added to the other end of the cable. On the day of the accident, in January 2009, too much weight was added to the end of the cable, and Holmes was yanked back at frightening speed. “I remember hitting the wall, my chest folded into my nose, and I was fully conscious throughout the whole thing,” Holmes says in the film.
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Holmes’s neck was broken, and he was completely paralyzed from his chest down. Though he originally was able to retain motor functions in both his arms, neck, and head, complications with the surgery have led to the paralysis spreading over the years. These days, Holmes can only move his left arm. He lives in fear of the paralysis spreading further—possibly someday rendering him unable to speak.
Holmes, and his family and friends, recall the difficult months following the accident, as it sunk in just how life-altering the injury was. Radcliffe recalls flying out to visit his friend in the hospital as soon as possible and feeling unsure of what to say to Holmes at first. Then the Harry Potter star gets emotional as he recalls adjusting to his friend’s new reality and learning the best way to support him.
“I think I learned a lot of lessons from that, in terms of just like—when life is just about being there for people, and not about– not about fixing anything,” Radcliffe said, his eyes filling with tears. Then, after taking a moment to compose himself, he added, “I think we tried to like—and also, Dave, bless him, makes it a fucking party atmosphere anywhere he goes.”
For Holmes’s part, he says he tried to accept his new reality from the beginning and encourage everyone who loved him to do the same. “I told all my friends and family straight away, ‘Try and hope for me to be happy like I am, not happy like you want me to be. Because there’s a good chance that won’t be achievable. Don’t make me feel like I’m constantly failing you for not trying to fix all the problems.”
