KateR wrote:bftlovesRDA wrote:Ok - I'll check back to see what you find out. I was just wondering if this was a legitimate (real) cut over his left eye or not. I don't doubt that it was a legitimate (real) cut.
Jack had a number of cuts to his face and eyebrows in early episodes of Stargate. Eventually, one day, he mentioned to the makeup lady that in real life a cut like that would leave a permanent scar. And so together the two of them decided to "create" an eyebrow scar for Jack, which RDA then had to maintain for the rest of the series.
He talks about it in an interview from September 11, 2003 in the Archives here (near the end):
http://rdanderson.com/archives/2003-09-11.htm
Kate
Thanks, Kate for that clarification and that link to the September 11 2003 interview. Here is a snippet from that interview as it relates to the cuts/scars:
It’s part of what we established in the character. We have to maintain it because it will grow over, and believe me, it’s a pain in the butt to be walking around with this bareness there. It was one of those elements of movies and television that has always driven me crazy. Like MacGyver, for instance, if we showed him naked at any point, he would be nothing but one big scar, because he was always getting cut or ripped or shot or whatever, beat up, bruised, and yet by the end of the series, he didn’t have a mark on him. It was one of those things. So, I can’t remember the episode, but I got hit in the eye or slugged or something, and we established a big bandage and the whole thing, and I told Jan [Newman, make-up artist], you know, this would leave a mark. Let’s run with this. Let’s keep it in there as part of what defines O’Neill. And so that’s all it is. It’s just a character thing. In fact what I try to do is to suggest that any time O’Neill has to be beat up, that he always holds his left eye. He always takes the first shot, and every monster that he fights is right handed, so he takes the shot to the left eye. [laughing]
[Asked if the scar might have originated from a genuine injury from hockey, for example, he continued:]
Richard Dean Anderson:
No, I’ve got those on the top of my head, and one down here [indicating the bottom of his chin]. I’ve had that since I was a kid. I took the rear end of a skate blade right up through the bottom of my chin, and bled! Wylie and I were trying to count how many scars Daddy had at one point. I think it was 70 or something like that. She started wanting to see them all. She’s got two already. Like I say that with pride! [laughing]
So, the cut/scar was not a genuine injury.
Thanks again, Kate, for the info.
