James McAvoy has recalled how he "nearly died" following a botched medical procedure around eight years ago.
During an interview for the Armchair Expert podcast on Monday, the Scottish actor described how he went for a routine health check in early 2018 prior to starting production on the M. Night Shyamalan movie Glass. The thriller was released in 2019.
"I had a lung puncture because 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," he told host Dax Shepard. "But that was botched, and I nearly died. I was at home two days later, my lungs just collapsed in bed one night, and I was on my own as well, so it was crazy."
James went on to recount how he spent "two or three weeks" in the hospital following the procedure.
"(The surgeon) tried everything to clean (it) out - nothing was working," the 47-year-old continued. "So, they were like, 'We're going to cut you open, big style. Go in with, like, dish soap, basically, and just, like, clean you out, scoop it all out.'"
Once he recovered, James started hitting the gym to transform into The Beast for Glass while he was still shooting the 2019 superhero movie X-Men: Dark Phoenix, in which he reprised the role of as Professor X.
"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 the producers), like, 'You're going to get me a trainer. I'm going to need somebody that can make (me) look like a Greek f**king figure from mythology,'" he remembered. "The (trainer) that worked with me was amazing... For the first four weeks, he rehabilitated me. I could walk, but I couldn't run, couldn't cycle, couldn't jog... He did a lot of rehabilitation and functional movement and then put the pounds on me really fast."
Previously, James briefly opened up about his health ordeal in an interview for Men's Journal magazine in January 2019.
"It nearly killed me," the Atonement star said at the time. "It was very scary. A terrifying f**king thing to go through."
