Ed Harris has been eligible for a senior citizen discount for years, but for our money, he still ranks high on the list of film actors you wouldn't want to mess with — and he would have ranked even higher in the late '80s, when Harris worked with director James Cameron on 1989's The Abyss. As countless filmmakers have learned the hard way (and Cameron would learn all over again with Titanic in the '90s), making movies in or around water can be incredibly difficult — and this sci-fi story, about a crew that finds more than they bargained for when they try to recover a sunken submarine, was particularly tough on Cameron's cast. In fact, Harris nearly drowned while filming one sequence when he waited until the last minute to ask for air — and then had to wait an extra couple of white-knuckle seconds while an upside-down regulator was refitted.

"The worst moments for me were being towed with fluid rushing up my nose and my eyes swelling up," Harris told the New York Times. "Once, the regulator was put in upside down so that one-half of what was going into my lungs was water. For a brief second, I thought, 'This is it'... then I was mad at myself for feeling that panic."

Harris should have taken it a little easier on himself — it's hard to imagine anyone not panicking when they're seconds away from drowning. As for Cameron, he clearly didn't learn his lesson: Titanic fell prey to all manner of water-related issues, not the least of which was the mishap that nearly killed Kate Winslet.