Catching Up With...Peter Porte

In show business, Break a leg is a time-honored adage to wish a performer good luck, but it took on a literal meaning for Peter Porte when he was struck by a car while riding his Vespa in Los Angeles.

- Devin Owens

“There’s no such thing as a small accident on a Vespa because what would’ve been a fender-bender turned out to be me flying off the Vespa, the Vespa landing on my ankle and shattering my ankle,” the actor explains. “I was lying there and the adrenaline was just pumping like crazy, so it didn’t hurt like I thought it would. Then I was scoping out the situation and that’s when I saw my ankle was on top of my foot. It was at this horrible position, and then I pressed on my calf and I felt a pop. It ended up breaking in four different places.”

Porte was rushed by ambulance to the hospital, which was just the beginning of his ordeal. “There’s a very small window with this kind of injury before your leg just becomes too swollen to do surgery on,” he shares. “Since it was Friday and no one was available, I had to wait a week until I was able to have surgery, which was so much more painful than the accident.”

What followed was his recovery — months of being laid up at home in a cast. “My friends have really gotten me through this,” Porte says. “I scheduled lunch every single day with someone new and I had them walk around the block with me so I’d get stronger on crutches.” The downtime was also devoted to learning Spanish and calligraphy, plus building “the biggest LEGO set of the Taj Mahal.”