Updated April 12, 2021 4.9k votes 1.1k voters 53.6k views
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Vote up the scenes you can't believe they nailed in one take.
Ask anyone who’s been an onscreen actor - in everything from Hollywood films to TV shows and commercials - and they'll tell you repetition is a big part of the process. Filming a scene using only one take is rare.
But sometimes, with a little bit of luck, skill, and occasionally a dash of method acting, an actor gets everything right on the first take and gets to return to their trailer early. These are the times actors (and stunt people) totally nailed it.
Gregory Peck won an Oscar for best actor for his portrayal of the lawyer Atticus Finch in the 1962 film version of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Perhaps his most remarkable feat during filming was needing only one take to make his moving final speech to the jury before it was committed to cinematic history.
Legendary stuntman Loren "Bumps" Willard needed only a single run to execute a spinning jump with an AMC Hornet X, but that isn't the only impressive part of this scene from the James Bond flick The Man with the Golden Gun.
It was also, as reported by Jalopnik, the first time a computer was used to model the physics of the airborne automotive maneuver. The stunt was so amazing, the movie studio patented it.
Making an entire hospital explode is no small endeavor, whether you're a supervillain or a big-budget movie director. In The Dark Knight, the building you see the Joker walking away from really did get demolished, so there were no second chances.
Veteran actor Tommy Lee Jones wraps up No Country for Old Men with a powerful soliloquy about his character's father, and Sheriff Bell's own place in a rapidly changing and terrifying world. But you might be a little surprised he managed to exude all that pathos and gravitas in one take.
