Netflix star Peter Mullan revealed he was headbutted by a stranger after he attempted to stop a man from assaulting a woman.
The Ozark actor, 66, said he walked past a man who was manhandling his girlfriend outside a concert venue in Glasgow, Scotland, last September.
Speaking out after Dylan Bennett, 29, was jailed for assaulting the woman and the actor, Mullan said he intervened after he “sensed something wasn’t right.”
“I was walking past and saw what was going on. He was pulling his girlfriend all over the shop. I couldn’t, in all good conscience, walk away from what I was seeing,” the actor told the Scottish Sun.
“So I went over to him and said ‘look, the cops have been called, why don’t you just walk away?’ He then knocked the cap off my head.”
The Trainspotting and Braveheart actor said Bennett headbutted him after he told him to pick up his cap.
“That’s when he nutted me. He got me a cracker, but I didn’t go down. That scared the life out of him. I just glared at him and he started whimpering.”
Bennett also raised a glass bottle at the woman and Mullan during the ordeal.
Mullan sustained a head injury as a result of the incident.
He added: “I would do it again if I had to.”
Bennett pleaded guilty to two counts of assault at Glasgow Sheriff Court and was jailed for 18 months. His lawyer, Tony Callaghan, told the court his client had been at an all-night party and had taken drugs and alcohol prior to the incident.
“An argument developed between himself and his partner but they don’t know what it was about,” Callaghan said. “He deeply regrets his involvement in this incident, especially to the innocent bystander.”
Bennett grabbed his partner by the neck and “violently shook her back and forward and held her for 10 seconds,” before Mullan rushed over to help, prosecutor Josh Dowie told the court.
Mullan’s decision to intervene echoed experiences he had spoken about publicly in the past.
The Scottish actor has previously spoken about growing up in a violent household dominated by an alcoholic father, whom he said subjected the family to years of psychological and physical abuse.
The actor has also spoken about the lasting emotional toll of that upbringing, including a moment when, at age 14, he attempted to poison his father with sleeping pills.
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