Joseph Fiennes has detailed a shocking accident that saw him comfort a woman as she lay dying.
The English actor, 55, is best known for playing William Shakespeare in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, Monsignor Timothy Howard in American Horror Story, and Commander Fred Waterford in The Handmaid’s Tale.
However, this week he recalled witnessing a distressing incident while on holiday in Costa Rica.
Joseph was a guest on the Travel Secrets podcast, in which he spoke about his passion for horse riding, but how a ride during a past holiday took a tragic turn.
‘I was staying at this wonderful hacienda at the foot of an old volcano,’ he told host Tanya Rose.
‘I love horse riding, and I got on to a horse early in the morning to go with a fellow traveller who was staying at the hacienda.
‘She had just gotten married, and I remember getting up on the horse. It was getting quite hot, going into the shade, looking back, seeing this lovely woman kiss her husband goodbye, and then the horse reared up, and she sadly pulled on the reins and the weight of the horse came over and the whole horse landed on her and she fell back and really broke her head on the gravel and died.’
The actor shared the story after being asked about one of his ‘most unexpected’ travel experiences.
He went on to share it was ‘the most unexpected, horrific accident, and in a moment of absolute beauty and joy and the sun and Costa Rica and horses’.
‘In an instant you’re reminded that anything can happen. I held her for a while; her poor husband was in such shock that he couldn’t comprehend or communicate. And she slipped away. And I couldn’t sleep for, God, I think a month.’
Although Joseph did get back on a horse again during that holiday, he said he ‘galloped and went hell for leather to get it out of my system’.
‘But when I got back my dad did say, “You can never be entirely sure how horses are trained”. Maybe it saw a snake, I don’t know. Maybe it got scared of something. But it could be the way certain horses are trained, it can get beaten into submission a bit, they can be very temperamental so you have to be super careful.’
Earlier this week, The Cosby Show star Malcolm-Jamal Warner tragically died while on a family holiday to the country in Central America.
The 54-year-old actor began his career playing Theo Huxtable, the son of Bill Cosby’s character Heathcliff Huxtable, on the sitcom from 1984 until 1992.
On Sunday he was swimming with his family at a beach in Limon when he got into trouble while swimming and drowned.
In a statement obtained by People, the Judicial Investigation Agency said: ‘The victim appears to have entered the sea and was apparently swept away by a current. The man was rescued by bystanders and taken to shore, where he received treatment from the Costa Rican Red Cross. However, he was declared lifeless at the scene.’
According to the outlet, his autopsy has now been completed, and the actor died from ‘accidental asphyxiation by submersion’.
He is survived by a wife and daughter, who he had chosen to keep out of the public eye.
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