Gerard Butler nearly quit acting after freak accident – ‘I went 33 feet through the air’

The Scottish actor, is perhaps most famous for his role as the legendary Spartan king, Leonidas I in the film 300. He’s also starred as the hard-man One Two in the Guy Ritchie film RockNRolla.

But the star’s career was nearly cut short after a horrific motorcycle accident that according to Butler saw him fly 33 feet through the air. The accident made him have doubts about his chosen career, he recently shared.

Talking on the CBS talk show, The Talk, Butler described the ordeal in detail and concluded that he was “lucky” to be alive.

“I went 33 feet through the air,” he said.

The action star, who claimed he “did a somersault” also said he remembers an onlooking saying: “Wow, you really are an action movie star.”

In the past, he told AFP that he sustained some major injuries, including five fractured bones in his right foot, a microfracture in each foot, a pinched nerve, a bruised bone, and injuries in his ankle and both knees.

The injury was one out of a “bunch” of health problems the star had gone through in a small period of time that caused him to doubt his career, he explained.

“During this last three years I’ve had a bunch of stuff going on health-wise, that at one point made me reconsider my whole career,” he told News.com in 2020.

The actor was treated at a hospital in the Dominican Republic in 2018 for Diverticulitis – a digestive condition that causes small bulges to develop in the large intestine lining.

He also had a “surgery that went wrong” which turned into “seven surgeries”, he told News.com