Stunt crews had to check on actor Bruce Willis after his first “Die Hard” scene — to make sure that he had survived it.

The film’s screenwriter, Steve de Souza, recounted the tale to author Nick de Semlyen in his new book, titled “The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood’s Kings of Carnage.”

De Souza said that casting Willis was a long, drawn-out affair — and it almost didn’t happen. Initially, no one even wanted the script. “James Caan told me directly, ‘I read the script, and this guy’s running away for the first twenty-five pages,'” de Souza explained that the action stars of the day couldn’t wrap their minds around an action movie hero who didn’t charge in, guns blazing, from the start.

“In the context of these ’roid-rage, superhuman heroes we had at the time, this character seemed like a p***y,” de Souza said of John McClane.

Clint Eastwood reportedly nixed the role because he didn’t get the sarcastic humor, and Richard Gere’s recent conversion to Buddhism had led him to seek more “spiritual” projects. Other reports have named a number of actors who declined the role, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charles Bronson, Harrison Ford, and Al Pacino.

Willis turned it down at first, citing a conflict with his hit show “Moonlighting” — but when Cybill Shepherd announced her pregnancy, his schedule changed. Still, he wasn’t a shoo-in. His agent demanded a $5 million payday — and said that Willis as prepared to walk if they didn’t come through. Desperate producers, afraid that the whole project would be shelved otherwise, forked over the cash.

But according to de Semlyen, getting Willis onboard was only half the battle — then he had to survive shooting one of his first scenes.

The scene, in which an explosion sends the actor flying, was dangerous enough that it was scheduled early in the filming in order to leave time to recast Willis’ role if something went wrong.

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“As he waited, rubbing his hands together and wearing only a pair of black trousers, a white firehose was looped around his bare midriff, a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun hung via a strap from his neck, and a viscous gel slathered over his exposed skin,” de Semlyen wrote, explaining that the gel was to prevent Willis from catching on fire himself as he jumped from a ledge, landing on an airbag that was positioned below the frame.

“As he did, large plastic bags of gasoline were detonated, unleashing a fireball that blew Willis, he claimed, right to the edge of the bag,” de Semlyen continued. “When I landed, everyone came running over to me and I thought they were going to say, ‘Great job! Attaboy!’ And what they were doing is seeing if I’m alive because I almost missed the bag.”

Actor Julian Sands eerily foreshadowed his own death, while hiking in the treacherous mountains near Los Angeles, during the last interview he gave prior to his disappearance in mid-January.

The 65-year-old actor, an experienced climber, went missing on January 13 after telling friends and family that he would be climbing at Mt. Baldy in Southern California. He was confirmed dead last week after human remains discovered in the area a few days earlier were positively identified.

In his last interview, published in the latest issue of the U.K.’s Radio Times, Sands described climbing as sort of a life-affirming challenge. Calling it “solace and a sort of existentialist self-negation, but equally a self-affirmation,” he went on to say, “If you can deal with dangerous mountains, you can certainly deal with life as an actor — the two are quite complementary.”

Sands went on to say that, over the years, some of his friends had given up on the pastime — some blaming climate change for the terrain changing over time and becoming more treacherous, and others simply saying that the complications that came with age made it impossible for them to keep up.

“Pals I used to climb with have stopped going to the mountains, partly because they find, with climate change, the rock faces have become much more unstable, partly, it’s age,” Sands explained. “If you don’t really have the desire, the focus for climbing a route, if you’re not absolutely committed, it becomes much more dangerous and it’s a much more deflating experience.”

The “Room With a View” actor concluded with the acknowledgment that every time he went out, he was embarking on an adventure that could potentially claim his life.

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“I’ve found spooky things on mountains, when you know you’re in a place where many people have lost their lives, whether it be on the Eiger or in the Andes. You may be confronted with human remains and that can be chilling,” he said. “It’s not necessarily supernatural, it’s possibly all too natural — what I would call hypernatural. You’re in the presence of big nature and big nature is revealing itself in all its power. It can take us over a threshold of hypersensitivity into a realm of natural forces.”