In her role as Kim Bauer in counter-terrorist drama 24, Elisha Cuthbert is used to facing life or death situations. Recently the Calgary-born actress revealed she’s had her fair share of brushes with danger in real life, too.

Appearing on Letterman, the blonde star told the TV host how she had “a Kim Bauer reaction” when she was hit by a car in New York.

“I said, ‘I have three options here’,” remembers the actress. “I can try and outrun it… I can freeze like a deer in the headlights and break both my knees, or I can jump onto the vehicle and propel myself through the entire intersection and land with my purse still in tact. And that’s exactly what happened.”
Luckily Elisha escaped without injury. But that wasn’t the only hairy experience she recounted. “I was in Austin, Texas, in an elevator and it fell four floors,” she revealed. “The emergency brakes came on and I was holding on for dear life. Then it dropped another four floors.”

The experiences, she says, made her consider her own mortality. “You realise it doesn’t matter if you’re about to film a movie or whatnot, life can be over in an instant,” says the star, who rejoins the cast of 24 for the show’s seventh season

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