Sacha Baron Cohen Says He Was Attacked by Shark—'Started Hyperventilating'

Sacha Baron Cohen was once entangled in a "shark attack" that left him hyperventilating.

Welcoming the Borat actor onto the latest edition of the SmartLess podcast, hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett asked Cohen about his travels around the globe, but they got more than they bargained for when their guest regaled them with an encounter straight out of Jaws.

He was holidaying on the French Polynesian island of Moorea at the time and decided to go shark diving, only for his instructor to swim off.

Cohen, who separated from Isla Fisher after almost 14 years of marriage back in April, told the podcasting trio: "I was in a shark attack [in French Polynesia] once, kind of a feeding frenzy. In those days—I think it's illegal now—they used to do something called shark feeding where I was doing my [scuba diving license]."

Ahead of the excursion, his diving instructor put on a chainmail glove before breaking open a sardine to attract the ocean predators. He'd asked Cohen to stick by him the entire time they were underwater.

"I remember seeing droplets of blood and within literally two minutes there were 12 sharks around us," the star continued. "Then [the instructor] pulls out of this bag this tuna head and they start eating the thing! Then they get carried away and there's a feeding frenzy and you can't see anything."

What really traumatized Cohen was the fact his instructor fled the scene after losing not just his protective glove, but also his breathing regulator in the maelstrom.

"I basically started hyperventilating. I mean, this was my second time diving," he said. Thankfully, after sorting himself out at the surface, the professional diver returned to the depths and performed an emergency procedure to provide Cohen with extra oxygen.

Bateman, who was viciously attacked by a monkey whilst hosting his first Saturday Night Live back in 2005, weighed in on the universal fear factor pertaining to sharks.

"You can see in their eyes that they're not interested in you," he said, speaking from diving experience. "Sharks are always scary when your head's just kind of above the water and you don't know what's going on below.

"Once you get under and you can look at a shark look at you and then kind of swim away, your fear of sharks goes away instantly. I highly recommend it."

And yet, when Cohen asked his instructor whether anyone had ever gotten hurt on a dive, he revealed that two people had in fact died.