Dev Patel broke his hand and carried on working while shooting his directorial debut Monkey Man.

In Monkey Man, which he co-wrote, co-produced and directed, the Slumdog Millionaire actor plays Kid, an underground Mumbai fighter who exacts revenge on a group of corrupt leaders.

After receiving a standing ovation at the film’s premiere at SXSW festival on Monday, Patel sat down for a Q&A and revealed he broke his hand on the second day of filming.

“I was thinking, here we go again, production is going to go down. I was on the Internet because I couldn’t wear a cast for long because we didn’t have the budget to paint it out,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

He finished filming that night with a hand the size of “an elephant’s” and flew to a hospital, where he had a screw inserted into it.

Because of the time and budget constraints, the British actor returned to the set and continued shooting the fight scene, although the stunt choreography was tweaked so he could do it one-handed.

“The doctor said, ‘You cannot put any pressure on it. You will ruin your hand.’ I said, ‘Got it, copy’ and went straight back into the action scene,” he revealed.

The production was plagued with problems and Patel himself experienced a series of health setbacks. He broke his toes two weeks before filming, tore his shoulder during another fight sequence, and got an eye infection after filming on a bathroom floor.

During the Q&A, the former Skins star admitted that he approached his Chappie director Neill Blomkamp about helming Monkey Man and he encouraged him to direct it himself.

“I was like, ‘I can’t do it.’ He goes, ‘You can.’ I reluctantly got pushed into the driver’s seat,” Patel explained.

Monkey Man was originally supposed to stream on Netflix but Get Out filmmaker Jordan Peele saw the movie and pushed for it to receive a theatrical release via Universal. It will debut in cinemas on 5 April.

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