Stephen Baldwin injured in bull-riding fall

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Stephen Baldwin, nursing a broken shoulder and rib from a reality-TV rodeo accident, said on Friday the bull that threw him to the ground in four seconds was more fierce than he had expected.

The 41-year-old performer, youngest of the acting brothers that include William, Daniel and Alec Baldwin, injured himself on Thursday while working on cable network CMT's upcoming series "Ty Murray's Celebrity Bull Riding Challenge."

"I held on for about four jumps, and then I just ate a bunch of dirt," Baldwin told Reuters in a telephone interview, adding the whole bumpy ride was over in four seconds.

He and fellow celebrity contestants, including rapper-musician Vanilla Ice and actor Leif Garrett, had just started training on live bulls when he got thrown.

"We were supposed to be on these kind of dainty versions of (bulls) that weren't supposed to get too excited," he recalled. "But you never can tell what a bull's gonna do. So this particular one that I had kind of rose to the occasion.

"I don't know if he knew it because he had a Baldwin on his back," the actor joked. "He did a whole lot more bucking than anyone could have anticipated."

Baldwin said he was wearing a safety helmet but "landed hard" and "got stepped on a little bit, too."

He ended up with a broken left scapula and a broken rib, and was outfitted with a special brace and sling he has to wear for the next four to six weeks.

He was supposed to travel to Russia next week for a movie shoot, but his doctor told him, "I have to give the whole performance with my thumb in my pocket."

As for the TV show, featuring rodeo superstar Ty Murray teaching nine celebrities the finer points of bull riding, Baldwin will sit out the rest of the production.

Despite his accident, Baldwin is no rodeo neophyte. He performed his own stunts in the 1994 movie "8 Seconds," about the legendary bull-riding champion Lane Frost, co-starring as his friend and fellow rodeo star Tuff Hedeman.

Reuters/Nielsen