If Gerard ButlerThe pain on screen seems particularly convincing in Den of Thieves 2: Panterathere is a good reason. Turns out the 55-year-old Scottish actor essentially filmed the entire action-packed heist sequel on one leg.
“It was a strange time for me going into this movie because I had had some pretty intense surgery and then I completely tore my ACL about a month later and then I started this movie,” he said. Butler said. Weekly Entertainment alongside his returning teammate, O’Shea Jackson Jr..
“So I wasn’t in the best shape, and it was a pretty physical movie, and I wasn’t lucky enough to have ACL surgery, so I made this movie with a freshly ripped, and it was pretty hard,” he reveals.
“But yeah… I wanted to put a ‘but’ 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!”
Lionsgate Films / Courtesy Everett Collection
Laughing with his costar, Jackson Jr. said, “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, ‘Really, we have to put this whole movie on a hill?’ So it was intense, but it definitely made the action scenes…I had to act less.”
Coming to theaters seven years after the release of the original Sleeper, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (released Friday) takes place immediately after the events of the first film, with Butler’s sheriff “Big Nick” O’Brien tracking down Jackson Jr.’s master thief, Donnie Wilson, who has fled to Europe and is already busy plan another heist.
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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 went so far as to say that his medical issues had caused him to “reconsider my entire career.”
“I had an operation that went wrong, which then turned into seven surgeries. I had a motorcycle accident that almost killed me and I suddenly thought, ‘There must be have something more,'” he told the outlet, which reported that his injuries from a 2017 motorcycle accident “include a fracture of five bones in his right foot, a microfracture of each foot, a nerve pinched and a bone bruised, as well as injuries to his ankle and both knees.
Hopefully Butler will be at full strength when it comes time to Den of Thieves 3. Speaking about the possibility of reforming for a third film, Jackson Jr. teases, “As long as (fans) have more demand, we’ll supply.”