Gerard Butler must be a cat because the Hollywood star clearly has nine lives.
The 53-year-old Scottish actor’s list of credits includes gritty action dramas, historical epics and tearjerker romance tales – and his on-set injuries are truly mind-blowing.
The actor plays a pilot in the thriller Plane released earlier this month. During an interview with Seth Meyers on Late Night with Seth Meyers, he said he accidentally burned his face with with phosphoric acid while filming.
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“No matter what I’m doing, I manage to hurt myself,” he admitted.
The terrifying accident happened in a scene in which his character Brodie Torrance is trying to repair a brake before takeoff.
“Now I’m sticking my hand in between these two wheels, kind of pretending that I know what I’m doing," he shared.
"Every time I bring my hands out, they’re covered in blood and green fluid, right? And I’m like, ‘I don’t know what this green fluid is.'"
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Filming took place in Puerto Rico, so it was blisteringly hot at the time.
“I’m rubbing my face and, suddenly, it’s in my throat. It’s in my mouth. It’s up my nose. It’s in my eyes,” the Hollywood star told Meyers. “It’s burning my face, and I mean burning.”
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“It turns out this is essentially phosphoric acid,” he continued. “And the airline pilots that were there watching go, ‘No!’
“I’m just, like, burning alive… So it was intense. It actually burned for hours, but it was great for the sequence.”
Butler’s fans hadn’t previously realised just how dangerous it is to be Gerard Butler until he revealed he nearly killed his on-screen widow Hilary Swank in a freak accident on the set of P.S. I Love You.
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Earlier this week, the Olympus Has Fallen star sat down with Drew Barrymore on The Drew Barrymore Show, where he admitted to sending Swank to the hospital.
The pair played the game 'Behind the Scenes' which involves guests being shown scenes from their movies and sharing the first thought, anecdote or 'naughty detail' that comes to mind.
The scene in question involved Butler's Gerry performing a dance for Swank's Holly, which goes awry when one of the clips from his braces whacks him in the face. You can watch it below:
Butler recalled: "And then at one point, the clip, which was a crocodile clip, got stuck in the television as I’m crawling towards her, and she’s right in front of me and she's laughing hysterically.
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“The camera people had these plastic fronts to protect themselves from this crocodile [clip] – it was so dangerous – because I had to ping it, and it would go past my face.
"And this time I’m crawling towards the bed, it gets stuck, it releases, flies over my head, hits her in the head, slashes her head.
"I cut her – you could even see the teeth [marks of the clip] and she had to get taken to hospital."
Swank survived and Butler was left on set in his boxer shorts in tears.
In 2021, Butler confessed to injuring three different people in separate accidents in one day while filming his movie Copshop.
We know movie sets can be dangerous places, but this is wild.
The first accident involved a fight with a ‘stunt guy’ who ended up covered in blood.
“I was fighting one stunt guy and he smacked his head on the lockers and his head split open, just because of where it was,” the actor told Movieweb.
“He’s a friend of mine, by the way, and I’ve worked with him before, and he was totally cool about it but it was just so much blood coming out.”
Later that same day, Butler was working on a similar fight scene with another stunt guy who dodged an attack and knocked his head on a pillar.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Butler’s co-star Ryan O’Nan was shot in the stomach with a stun gun unintentionally.
"Christ he's like a Final Destination protagonist," one fan quipped.
Another fan joked: "Accidental method actor."
While a third person tweeted: "Has Fallen. Apparently multiple times."
Whoever's working with Butler on his next project, good luck!
Topics: Film and TV, Celebrity
Gregory Robinson