Gerard Butler shot action-packed ‘Den of Thieves 2’ on ‘a freshly torn ACL’: ‘It was a nightmare’

Lionsgate Films / Courtesy Everett Collection Gerard Butler in 'Den of Thieves 2: Pantera'

Lionsgate Films/Courtesy Everett Collection

Gerard Butler in ‘Den of Thieves 2: Pantera’

If Gerard ButlerThe pain on the screen looks particularly convincing Den of Thieves 2: Panterathere is good reason. It turns out the Scottish actor, 55, essentially shot the entire action-packed heist sequel on one leg.

“This was a weird time for me at the beginning of this movie because I had been through a pretty intense surgery and then I completely tore my ACL a month later and then started this movie,” Butler tells Weekly entertainment along with his returning co-star, O’Shea Jackson Jr.

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

“But yeah… I wanted to put a ‘but’ in 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!”

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Lionsgate Films/Courtesy Everett Collection O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Gerard Butler in 'Den of Thieves 2: Pantera'Lionsgate Films/Courtesy Everett Collection O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Gerard Butler in 'Den of Thieves 2: Pantera'

Lionsgate Films/Courtesy Everett Collection

O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Gerard Butler in ‘Den of Thieves 2: Pantera’

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

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

Going to the cinema a whole seven years after the dormant, original, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (out Friday) takes place immediately after the events of the first film, with Butler’s Sheriff “Big Nick” O’Brien hunting down Jackson Jr.’s master thief Donnie Wilson, who fled to Europe and is already busy planning another heist.

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Butler’s surgery and torn ACL are just the latest health issues that have plagued the actor in recent years. In an interview in 2020 with The courier mail, he went so far as to say that his medical problems caused him to “rethink my entire career.”

“I had one surgery that went wrong, which turned into seven surgeries. I had a motorcycle accident that almost killed me, and I suddenly thought, ‘There’s got to be something more,'” he told the broadcast, which reported that his injuries from a 2017 motorcycle accident “included five broken bones in his right foot, a microfracture in each foot, a pinched nerve and a bruised bone, and damage to his ankle and both knees.”

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Hopefully Butler will be at full strength when the time comes Den of Thieves 3. Speaking about the possibility of reshooting a third film, Jackson Jr. teases, “As long as (fans) have more demand, we’ll deliver.”

Read the original article about Weekly entertainment