Dyan O’Brien is sharing his story of struggle and recovery with the world.
The “Teen Wolf” actor starred as the protagonist of the “Maze Runner” franchise across three films, but a stunt on the third film “Maze Runner: The Death Cure” in 2016 left him seriously incapacitated.
“I was really struggling,” he told Bustle in an interview on March 16. “I never stopped working until that accident. It’s a really strange thing to have so much of my identity be my career and then have this thing happen to me where I was convinced that I couldn’t do it anymore. I was just like, ‘I can’t ever imagine being on another set.'”
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The star was filming a stunt involving a motorcycle when it slipped into a slide and the star fell off of the speeding vehicle. He suffered a concussion, brain trauma, and a facial fracture which resulted in surgery and left the production suspended until his recovery.
The experience left the star shaken and he decided to keep out of the public eye after the film, going on a hiatus for five years.
“I was reintroducing myself to myself,” he explained.
Now O’Brien is back and busier than ever with roles in “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” short film, and the recently released mystery film “The Outfit”.
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While the 30-year-old may be putting himself out there again, he still can’t quite shake his memory of his near-fatal accident.
“Even to this day, if I’m on set and I’m doing a stunt, if I’m in a rig, if there’s some action going on, I am slightly irritable,” O’Brien told Variety in 2020. “There is a degree of anxiety in me that I don’t think there’s ever not going to be.”
