Gerard Butler says he’s no stranger to getting hurt on movie sets — but what went down on the set of Plane might be his worst injury to date.
“No matter what I’m doing, I manage to hurt myself,” Butler admitted on a recent episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers.
While working on Plane in Puerto Rico, Gerard revealed that he ended up with burns from phosphoric acid all over his face!
It all happened while Gerard was filming a scene where he had to pretend to fix his character’s plane and was working with the wheels.
“Now I’m sticking my hand in between these two wheels, kind of pretending that I know what I’m doing,” Gerard said. “Every time I bring my hands out, they’re covered in blood and green fluid, right? And I’m like, ‘I don’t know what this green fluid is.'”
On top of that, it was a hot day so Gerard was “covered in sweat” and was constantly wiping his face with his hands.
“I’m rubbing my face and, suddenly, it’s in my throat. It’s in my mouth. It’s up my nose. It’s in my eyes,” Gerard shared. “It’s burning my face, and I mean burning.”
That’s when he discovered the green fluid was “essentially phosphoric acid.”
“I’m just, like, burning alive…So it was intense. It actually burned for hours,” Gerard said.
Everyone on set quickly stepped in to try to stop the burning, eventually deciding to pour water all over his face and body.
And while it was pretty painful, Gerard joked that it ended up being “great for the sequence.”
