Dylan O’Brien: What happened to actor Dylan O’Brien and what is he doing now, explained

He was tipped to be the next big thing to hit the action scene, but a near-death experience completely changed Dylan O’Brien‘s leading man trajectory – and made him question everything.

The Teen Wolf actor was cast as Stiles Stilinski on the MTV supernatural drama in 2011, and had been playing the character for less than a year when he was plucked by the movers of Hollywood‘s biggest studios for greater things.

More than decade later, however, he’s shirked his former action hero status for low-budget thrillers and the odd comedy – and where his path has wound up could have been predicted by what got him discovered by a Californian producer in the first place.

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It started out with a 14-year-old O’Brien sharing short comedy videos to YouTube – including one memorable lip-sync to the Spice Girls‘ Wannabe – and before he knew it, he was connected to a manager and had changed his original plans from pursuing sports broadcasting to acting.

Then came Teen Wolf, and shortly after, he was cast opposite (his future ex-girlfriend of six years) Britt Robertson in rom-com The First Time, and in 2013, he starred in Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson‘s The Internship.

By 2014, O’Brien had been cast as the lead – Thomas – of The Maze Runner‘s film franchise. It would completely change his life.

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When he wasn’t filming Teen Wolf, he was filming back-to-back action films – 2014’s The Maze Runner, 2015’s Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, 2016’s Deepwater Horizon – until an on-set accident in March 2016 stopped him in his tracks.

What happened to Dylan O’Brien on the Maze Runner: The Death Cure set?

While filming a stunt for Maze Runner: The Death Cure, O’Brien – who had been in a harness on top of a moving vehicle – was pulled off the vehicle unexpectedly, and, per reports, struck by another after sliding under the car that had been behind him.

In a statement at the time, WorkSafeBC said O’Brien’s injuries included “concussion, facial fracture, and lacerations.”

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It was later revealed the accident had left him with brain trauma, with O’Brien – who rarely speaks about the accident – saying it “broke most of the right side” of his face, and required him to undergo reconstructive facial surgery.

Another big trauma for O’Brien, however, was psychological.

”I had lost a lot of function, just in my daily routine,” O’Brien said in September 2017 during his first big interview – while doing press for American Assassin with Vulture – since the accident.

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O’Brien took six months to recover in private, before emerging to film American Assassin, which he had been cast in beforehand.

“I wasn’t even at a point where I felt like I could handle social situations, let alone showing up and being responsible for work every day,” O’Brien told the outlet.

“Long hours on set, delivering a performance and carrying a movie … it just makes your palms sweat.”

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O’Brien also said he was frustrated at the pressure he’d allegedly been facing from Maze Runner: The Death Cure producers to get back to filming the movie, which had halted production while he recovered.

“There was a part of me, too, that was feeling pressured and stressed out by the mere fact that I had all of these people still emailing me, checking in,” he said.

“I would get so f—ing mad. Like if ever I heard from a producer [who was] seeing when I’d be able to get back on set, I’d f—ing go nuts. It would really, really piss me off.”

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O’Brien did previously tell The Associated Press in a brief July 2017 press conference for American Assassin that “going through any sort of trauma like that, funny enough, I felt like I was more informed about the aftermath of an incident like the one my character goes through than I ever could’ve been.”

At the time, he didn’t go into his detail about his accident and recovery, but he did say returning to work for American Assassin, he felt, aided his recovery.

“It really helped a lot, actually. It sort of became in a way that step that I needed in recovery to know I could [act] again,” he said.

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“I could still be on a set and things could be done in the right way, too, and things could be done safely in the way that they’re supposed to be done,” he said.

Maze Runner: The Death Cure was released in 2018. That same year, he voiced Bumblebee in the eponymous film – then he deliberately stepped back from public life for a time.

In 2020, he opened up to Variety about the toll his accident still took on him four years later.

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”Whenever I’m putting on a rig, I’m vetting every piece of that rig and much more,” O’Brien said at the time.

He noted that, no matter how safe he felt, “If I’m on set and I’m doing a stunt, if I’m in a rig, if there’s some action going on, I am slightly irritable. There is a degree of anxiety in me that I don’t think there’s ever not going to be.”

O’Brien also said that, in the aftermath of the accident, his priorities in his personal life had shifted too.

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”I had friends that were so dear to me that I had felt that I had neglected for years,” he told the outlet.

“All of a sudden, it was very important to me to nurture those relationships and not lose them. I think that it absolutely completely rewires and restructures the way you see your life and what you deem important.”

In 2022, O’Brien opened up to Bustle about how he spent five years post-accident “reintroducing myself to myself.”

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“I was really struggling,” O’Brien said of the accident’s aftermath. “I never stopped working until that accident. It’s a really strange thing to have so much of my identity be my career and then have this thing happen to me where I was convinced that I couldn’t do it anymore. I was just like, ‘I can’t ever imagine being on another set’.”

O’Brien did return to acting, though notably, once his Maze Runner obligations had been fulfilled, it was largely for smaller-scale films – including Love and Monsters (2020) and Not Okay (2022) – or brief cameos in television shows.

One big project that saw O’Brien do more publicity than usual was 2021’s All Too Well: The Short Film, in which O’Brien played the male lead opposite Sadie Sink in the Taylor Swift-written and directed music video.

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One move that did surprise fans was the fact O’Brien refused to return for 2023’s Teen Wolf movie, which he’d previously been open to.

“I would jump at the chance to do any kind of thing,” he told Variety in 2020, three years after the show ended and four years after his accident. “We’ll come back together for something at some point.”

But when the cast list was released, fans immediately noticed O’Brien’s glaring absence – and that of Arden Cho, who played Kira Yukimura in the series.

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It was rumoured at the time that O’Brien’s absence was linked to the fact Cho – the only non-white female main castmember – had been offered less pay than her co-stars, and while O’Brien never directly spoke to those rumours, he did somewhat explain his absence in a few interviews.

“It was a difficult decision. A lot went into it. The show couldn’t be more dear to me. It was the first thing I ever did and so many people there are extremely dear to me. It was something I was trying to make work but it all happened very fast,” O’Brien told Variety in 2022 of his decision not to return.

“We didn’t really know that it was happening and they kind of just threw it at us a little bit, which is fine because we all love the show. We were trying to figure it out.”

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“Ultimately, I just decided it was left in a really good place for me and I still want to leave it there,” he added.

“I wish them well and I’m going to watch it the first night it comes out. I hope it f—ing kicks ass, but I’m not going to be in it.”

He also explained to The Hollywood Reporter that he “immediately tried to make it work” when the film came up, but he felt like his return would be because others wanted him to, rather than wanting to do it of his own accord.

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“I just realised that I was going against my gut feeling the whole time,” he told the outlet.

“I think I was doing all of those things for other people and not myself. I was like: ‘Oh, I actually don’t feel like I want to open that door back up, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I should just listen to that instinct and go with it’.

“So that’s ultimately what I decided, and I think I kind of knew it in my heart the whole time. It was already left in a really nice place, you know? So I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t want to f— with it.”

O’Brien will next be on the big screen playing Dan Aykroyd in Saturday Night, which premieres in Australian cinemas on October 31.

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