Butler ‘could barely walk’ after ‘Fallen’
In London Has Fallen, the action sequel to Olympus Has Fall
en, Secret Service agent Matt Banning shoots, punches, stabs, crash-lands, slides, escapes fires and dodges bullets — and somehow emerges with little more than a scrape. Actor (and producer) Gerard Butler, on the other hand, had to have a week of physical therapy after performing a good deal of his character’s stunts.
“I do a lot of stunts, and I really go for it,” Butler said at the
London Has Fallen premiere. “I find that when I make these movies, you get hurt. But I think most people get hurt. ... Maybe I just talk about it more.”
Considering Butler almost drowned while shooting Chasing
Mavericks, we tend to think the 46-year-old gets a bit more beat up than the average action star.
And there was the time he broke bones on the first Fallen movie, but didn’t find out about the injury until later.
“Olympus Has Fallen was a lot of fistfighting, a lot of smashing, falling. (After the movie shot), I went to get an MRI, and they thought I had a growth in my throat. And then they said, ‘Nope, it’s two bones sticking out of your throat.’ So, it was interesting.”
So it comes as no surprise that when Butler finished with Lon
don, he “could barely walk.” “The day after I finished this movie, I went straight to Bulgaria and spent a week with a doctor, recovering,” he says.
How did he come to find a physiologist in Bulgaria? Well, he got a tip from a reliable source.
“I was actually with the German soccer team the night they won World Cup, and Bastian Schweinsteiger was telling me about their amazing physio for the German team, and I said, ‘I need to meet this guy.’ ”
So, Butler did. And now he’s feeling great!
“I find that when I make these movies, you get hurt. But I think most people get hurt. ... Maybe I just talk about it more.”