An actor rehearsing a fight on a movie set in the Drakensberg plunged to his death when he fell 40m into a river and was washed over a waterfall on Thursday.

It is understood that the 39-year-old man‚ from Centurion in Gauteng‚ had fallen from a cliff at the Sterkspruit Waterfall near Monks Cowl in the southern Drakensberg.

His body was recovered from the pool below on Friday morning.