Actor Jason Statham has narrowly avoided death during filming for new action film ‘The Expendables 3’, after a stunt went wrong. Statham had to jump out of a truck before it plunged 60ft into the sea, fellow star and the film’s writer Sylvester Stallone has revealed.

Statham had been filming a scene for the movie when the brakes of the truck he was driving failed and it careered into the Black Sea in Bulgaria. Talking before the London premiere of the film, 68-year-old Stallone said that former Commonwealth diver Statham’s skills in the water had saved his life as he plummeted into the sea.

Stallone told the Mirror: "He faced death. He was test-driving a three-tonne truck and the brakes run out. It went down 60ft into the Black Sea and became impaled.”

If anyone else had been in that truck we would have been dead because we were all wearing heavy boots and gun belts. We would have drowned. But because Jason is an Olympic-quality diver he got out of it.

He continued: “Luckily we had taken the doors off before. If anyone else had been in that truck we would have been dead because we were all wearing heavy boots and gun belts. We would have drowned. But because Jason is an Olympic-quality diver he got out of it."

Statham, now 47, represented England in diving at the Auckland Commonwealth Games in 1990, before beginning his acting career and starring in films such as ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ and ‘Snatch’.

He played down the dangers after filming, the Mirror reports: “I snapped a shoelace in the very first scene,” Statham joked when asked about the threats on set. Stallone, though, was injured while filming and had to have a metal plate inserted into his back following a big fall.

Another actor in the film, Terry Crews, told Jay Leno last year: “[Statham] literally is supposed to stop the truck, we get out, we shoot, the whole thing. [But] the truck doesn’t stop. The truck goes into the Black Sea with Jason Statham driving.”

Crews added: “He’s in the water, in the truck, everyone’s freaking out. He gets out, swims to the top. The truck is gone. We were supposed to be on the back of it. Let me tell you something: Jason Statham is a true bad, bad dude.”

Picture: Jason Statham – Facebook