James McAvoy opens up about the ‘botched’ procedure that almost killed him
James McAvoy has opened up about the “botched” procedure that left him fighting for his life in a new interview on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast.
The actor, 47, shared the “crazy” health scare which started off as a lung puncture and led to weeks in hospital recovering.
Actor James McAvoy revealed he almost died after a botched procedure left him in hospital for weeks. YouTube/Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
“I had a lung puncture [sic] … they saw a shadow in my lung, so they wanted to biopsy it to see if it was cancer, which it wasn’t, which was great,” McAvoy explained.
“But that was botched, and I nearly died.”
The reveal blew Shepard away, who looked stunned when McAvoy so casually said it almost killed him.
“Because you got an infection?” the host asked.
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“Yeah. I was at home two days later, and my lung just collapsed in bed one night. And I was on my own as well, so it was crazy.”
The X-Men star said he spent the next two to three weeks in hospital, where doctors were trying everything to be able to clear his lungs.
“Nothing was working,” McAvoy added.
“They were like, ‘We’re going to need to cut you open big style, go in with, like, dish soap basically and just clean you out, scoop it all out.’”
McAvoy explained that the biopsy led to an infection and a collapsed lung. YouTube/Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
McAvoy knew at the time he had some time to recover, but it was going to be a lot to put his body through preparations for his next role in one of the X-Men movies in the coming months.
He also discussed having to get back into shape for Glass, the 2019 sequel to the psychological thriller Split, while he was recovering too.
McAvoy reprised his role as Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man with 24 distinct personalities, in the sequel, but explained that in Glass he spent a majority of his time as The Beast.
“Unlike ‘Split,’ I was ‘The Beast’ [for] most of the movie, and I was just outside in broad daylight as well,” McAvoy recalled.
“So I was like, ‘I’m really going to need to do the real thing. I’m going to need to go for it.’ I remember saying to [M. Night Shyamalan], ‘You’re going to need to get me a trainer.'”
Despite the near-death experience, McAvoy went straight back into training to bulk up for his next role. Getty
Shyamalan, who directed both films, offered to arrange for McAvoy to work with a trainer at a local gym, but the actor said he needed someone who could “make [him] look like a Greek f--king figure from mythology.”
“The guy that worked me was amazing,” he added.
“For the first four weeks, he rehabilitated me. I could walk, but I couldn’t run, couldn’t cycle, couldn’t jog… so he did a lot of rehabilitation and, sort of, functional movement, and then put the pounds on me really fast.”
