Miles Teller has truly emerged as a standout talent in Hollywood! His remarkable performances in films like Rabbit Hole (2010), The Spectacular Now (2013), and Whiplash (2014) have captured audiences and critics alike.
While movies such as Divergent (2014) and Fantastic Four (2015) had mixed reviews, Teller showcased his incredible versatility in War Dogs (2016), Bleed for This (2016), and Thank You for Your Service (2017). He firmly established himself as a leading man with his unforgettable role in Top Gun: Maverick (2022).
Teller's career faced a major setback when he sustained facial scars from a car accident at the age of 20, as he was constantly rejected for roles because of it.
Miles said in an interview with W: "When I was 20, I was in a car accident. Some friends and I had been at the Gathering of the Vibes, a Deadhead festival in Connecticut, and we were driving back to my hometown in Florida. My buddy lost control of the car, jumped three lanes of traffic, and the car flipped eight times. I went out the window before the car started to roll. Everyone was yelling, ‘Where’s Miles?!’ I was covered in blood by the side of the road.”
Miles Teller was rejected for roles following his face injuries
In 2007, Miles Teller was involved in a near-fatal accident and was told he was lucky to have survived.
"I got ejected from a car that was going 80 miles an hour that flipped eight times when I was 20 years old, and the EMT told me 99.9 percent of the time the car rolls over, you get paralyzed, so I was very fortunate," Teller told CBS News in November. "I was 50 feet away from the car; the cops saw me covered in blood and thought I was dead."
.jpeg "Miles Teller in Bleed For This")
Miles Teller thankfully escaped major injuries after being ejected from the car window and landing 50 feet away. However, he did experience some facial scarring. Per The Guardian, he said,
“The guy driving, he was fine, my buddy he was sleeping in the back,” Teller recalls. “I even had a bag of tomatoes that were fine. Everything was fine except for my face.”
The actor faced significant challenges after the accident, as the scars on his face led to him losing out on several roles. He recalled,
“When I first started auditioning, people were straight up just like, ‘Yeah, Miles is a good actor, [but it] doesn’t make sense for this character to have scars,'” Teller said. “They [the scars] used to be really bad.”
Fortunately, the scars that once hindered him from securing various roles ultimately proved advantageous for his first major role in Rabbit Hole. The director recognized that these scars added a compelling sense of mystery to his character.
Working on Rabbit Hole was not a pleasant experience for Miles Teller
.jpeg "Miles Teller and Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole")
While Rabbit Hole, starring Nicole Kidman, helped put Miles Teller on the map, the actor didn’t have an enticing experience in his first feature film.
According to Teller, Kidman refused to speak to him on set, as their characters hated each other and Kidman wanted to reflect the fractured on-screen relationship of their characters off-set also.
It all worked out in the end, but Teller still remembers the process as a "horrible" experience.
Recounting the horrible experience, Teller told The Daily Telegraph Australia.
“Nicole had an idea that she wanted us to develop a kind of relationship as our characters did. So at the beginning she didn’t talk to me at all, then as we did our first scene, then she talked to me a little more and then by the end of it we would talk in between. She said ‘Oh Miles, you did such a wonderful job and I am sorry I had to do that to you, especially seeing as it was your first movie, but I thought it was important to go through that on camera’.”
Teller has successfully removed most of his scars through laser surgeries over time. However, he reportedly still has two pieces of gravel embedded in his face, as their removal would likely cause even greater scarring.