The Montreal actor who was shot three times during the Mumbai terror attacks last month says the experience reminded him of the many action sequences he has filmed in his career.
Michael Rudder had travelled to India to attend a yoga retreat and was enjoying dinner at the Oberoi Hotel when gunmen stormed the restaurant and opened fire.
"In my career I've done that, where they use squibs, or explosives, to simulate gunshot wounds and I've done my best to look like I was receiving them," Rudder said Friday during an interview with CTV's Canada AM. "But the actual act of receiving it was a very filmic moment for me, as well, as I was laying on the ground."
The co-ordinated attacks on Mumbai hotels, restaurants and train stations killed 170 people, including two Canadians, and injured thousands.
Rudder said that after he was shot - sustaining wounds to his stomach, arm and leg - he played dead while he plotted his escape route through a nearby kitchen service door.
He said he may have passed in and out of consciousness as bullets whizzed by him and the restaurant filled with smoke.
After he escaped the hotel, he spent three weeks in a Mumbai hospital.
Rudder returned home to Montreal on Wednesday and will continue to receive treatment at Montreal General Hospital.
Rudder said he knows he is lucky to be alive, and said he has learned a few lessons from his experience.
"I suggest that we do not bow once again to fear, but bow to love," Rudder said. "Just as those people train to hurt other people, we should train ourselves to love stronger, to love more often, to flow more loving thoughts to people, and to embrace our world and create a world that allows us to increase the power of the positive energy that's on this planet."
