Euphoria star Angus Cloud told the story behind the curved scar that runs along the left side of his scalp, an injury that almost killed him before his career even began. The 24-year-old actor opened up about the harrowing injury in the 2022 Power of Young Hollywood issue of VARIETY.
"It's real," he told the outlet. "I broke my skull on Friday the 13th."
In 2013, Cloud was walking down a darkly lit street in his hometown of downtown Oakland when he fell into a construction pit below.
"I woke up 12 hours later at the bottom," he said. "I was trapped. I eventually climbed out after -- I don't know how long. It was hella hard to climb out, because my skull was broken, but my skin wasn't, so all the bleeding was internal, pressing up against my brain. But they wasn't gonna find me down there. I found myself. Or God found me, whatever you want to call it."
He pulled himself out of the hole -- at least 10 feet by his estimation -- with broken fingers, blurry vision, and internal bleeding around his skull. "But I didn’t feel no pain," he said. "I was in survival mode, you feel me?"
Upon his escape, Cloud took the bus to his mom's house. "Because I was a kid!" he said. "I was 14 or 15. She thought I was on drugs, 'cause my pupils was hella dilated. I was trying to tell her what happened, but I could only start a sentence -- I couldn't finish it. So I was like, 'I'm just gonna go sleep in my bed.'"
His mom, worried for his safety, refused to allow him to sleep and took him to the hospital where the medical team ultimately saved his life.
"That's what the scar's from," Cloud explained. "They cut my head open, they put some screws and a plate over where I broke my skull and -- sh**, sealed me back up, and that was that."
Cloud was intensely lucky. These days, the accident is merely a memory, the only noticeable damage being a minor change in his voice's cadence.
"I mix the front of one word with the back of the next," he explained. "I'll scribble-scrabble two words together. Mix-match."
Though mainly known for his role as Fezco in Euphoria, Cloud is also starring in Ethan Berger's upcoming thriller, The Line. The film, co-written by Berger and Alex Russek, was described by Deadline as "a coming-of-age thriller at a university that encapsulates the wild excitement of being young and the dangers of living without fear of consequences."
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While Angus Cloud brings a lot of his own self to his acting, he's not exactly the same person as his lovable "Euphoria" character, Fez. But there are plenty of striking similarities, and both he and Fez have definitely been through a lot, as Cloud described in a recent interview with Variety. "I broke my skull on Friday the 13th," he said, finally clearing up the mystery surrounding the curved scar on the left side of his scalp. The legitimacy of this injury has been debated by fans of the show since Cloud's debut, but he confirms that it is, in fact, real — and the events leading up to it were nearly fatal.
One night in 2013, as he walked through his hometown in downtown Oakland, CA, the actor accidentally fell into a construction pit at least 10 feet deep — and he didn't wake up until 12 hours later. "I was trapped," he told Variety. Astonishingly, Cloud managed to out of the pit himself despite being seriously injured, including having broken his fingers, because "they wasn't gonna find me down there," he said in his interview. "I found myself. Or God found me, whatever you want to call it."
"I found myself. Or God found me, whatever you want to call it."
The story gets more jaw-dropping from there. After hauling himself out of the construction pit, Cloud took a bus back home to his mom's house (and not a hospital — classic teen move). "She thought I was on drugs, 'cause my pupils was hella dilated. I was trying to tell her what happened, but I could only start a sentence — I couldn't finish it. So I was like, 'I'm just gonna go sleep in my bed,'" he said.
Luckily, his mother stopped him, giving Cloud some water and quickly realizing the urgency of the situation when he started vomiting blood. Cloud's mom brought him to a hospital, where doctors cut open and repaired his fractured skull with screws and a plate.
He spent the next five days in the ICU "loaded off morphine" and then bounced between a few other nonintensive care units before he was officially discharged. "The brain is so fragile," he said. But looking back on the experience now, he feels lucky that things didn't turn out worse. "It was damn near like nothing really happened. I'm so blessed to just have minor brain damage. You know, it's so minor it ain't even really worth speaking about," Cloud said.