When Gerard Butler’s pain looks particularly convincing on screen Den of Thieves 2: Panterathere is a good reason. It turns out that the 55-year-old Scottish actor essentially filmed the entire action-packed heist sequel on one leg.

“It was a strange time for me at the beginning of this film because I had a pretty serious operation and then about a month later I completely tore my ACL and then I started the film,” Butler says Weekly entertainment alongside his returning co-star O’Shea Jackson Jr.

“So I wasn’t in the best shape and it was a pretty physical film and I didn’t get a chance to have surgery on my ACL, so I shot this film with a freshly torn ACL and it was pretty tough. “,” he reveals.

“But yeah… I wanted to put a ‘but’ in there to make it sound positive, but it wasn’t positive; it was a nightmare!” He continues, before joking: “And I was a whiny little bitch!”

Related: Gerard Butler Says Freak Accident ‘Nearly Killed’ Hilary Swank on July 17 PS: I love you Sentence

Jackson Jr. laughs along with his co-star: “Oh my God, there were so many stairs in that movie too!”

“There was So “There are a lot of stairs,” Butler agrees. “I’m like, ‘We really have to set this whole movie on a hill?'” So it was intense, but the action scenes definitely nailed it… I had to do less acting.”

Coming into cinemas a full seven years after the original hit The Sleeper, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (out Friday) takes place immediately after the events of the first film, in which Butler’s sheriff “Big Nick” O’Brien hunts down Jackson Jr.’s master thief Donnie Wilson, who has fled to Europe and is already busy planning another heist is.

Sign in Weekly entertainmentis the free daily newsletter to get breaking news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite celebrities and more.

Butler’s surgery and torn ACL are just the latest health issues to plague the actor in recent years. In a 2020 interview with The courier mail, He even went so far as to say his medical issues made him “rethink my entire career.”

“I had one operation go wrong, which then turned into seven operations. “I was in a motorcycle accident that almost killed me, and all of a sudden I thought, ‘There’s got to be something more,'” he told the outlet, which reported his injuries. In a motorcycle accident in 2017, “he included a fracture of five Bones in the right foot, a microfracture in each foot, a pinched nerve and a bone bruise, and injuries to the ankle and both knees.”

Related: Gerard Butler plays his How to train your dragon Character again in a live-action remake

Hopefully Butler will be at full strength when the time comes Den of Thieves 3. On the possibility of a new cast for a third film, Jackson Jr. teases: “As long as (fans) have more demand, we will deliver.”

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly